We at 64 Parishes are ecstatic to welcome Louisiana’s eighteenth Poet Laureate, Gina Ferrara.  Ferrara, who lives in New Orleans and is an Associate Professor of English at Delgado Community College, has published five poetry collections. Her work has also appeared in journals such as Callaloo, The Poetry Ireland Review, Tar River, and The Southern Review. To celebrate her recent appointment and introduce her to the state, we asked her to share a bit about her relationship with poetry and her home of Louisiana, as well as what she most looks forward to as Louisiana Poet Laureate.  

—64 Parishes editorial 

When I was a child, my grandmother made a big deal out of words. She taught me to play Scrabble at a very young age, and she also had me write letters to my uncle who was in the army and stationed in Germany. She instructed me that those letters needed to make him feel like he was in the same room and not one continent away. The specificity she encouraged ultimately found its way into writing poetry, something that I started when I was about fourteen and have been doing ever since.  

The inspiration to write is all around us. The land in Louisiana is beautiful and mystical, so it makes for perfect imagery—the Mississippi, the country’s meandering lifeline that ambles through the state, the Live Oak trees that are able to withstand hurricanes and extreme weather conditions, the sight of a sugar cane field at sunset just before harvest, the appearance of a red camelia on a bleak winter day. There is just so much that is inherently beautiful here, that enhances our way of life and informs our art and culture. It’s an honest wealth of riches.  

On a very basic level, my goal as the Louisiana Poet Laureate is to have people recognize the value and power of poetry, especially people who might not feel entirely comfortable with the genre or have some hesitation about it. Poetry is the connective tissue of the human experience. It documents our humanity through language and imagery. Poetry vibrates with potential. 

I am thrilled to be the Louisiana Poet Laureate. I look forward to meeting people throughout the state and sharing my own passion for poetry and its potential. I hope it is contagious in the best kind of way.  

—Gina Ferrara 

Variations in Fencing 

Always before the afternoon rains,  

when the sky was a chosen color and empty 

or held clouds harmlessly white,  

scalloped, voluminous,  

chain links obliterated, we sought the vine covered,  

lithe, armed with imagination: 

the objective to walk the fence, 

entrenched in tangles, twists, 

segueing to intricacies and gnarled complications, 

small trumpet blossoms, hidden droplets of nectar,  

appearing as a river, the verdant 

too dark, too jade to offer reflections, 

resistant to confinement and control,  

nothing landscaped, the patch of thorn prone pyracantha,  

loquats gold, dollop sized orbs, pink bristled mimosas, 

we took turns, some navigating, 

others shook with grinning intent,  

to simulate the feeling  

on either side of a fault line, 

seconds before the fissure.   

  January 2025 (One Hundred Year Snowfall) 

White rooftops, tiles, shingles obliterated, 

even buried my city became alive in snow: 

novel, a rarity each century,  

sporadic, usually sheathing 

then melting upon contact  

to disappointment’s consistency, 

the slush between solid and liquid.  

A pair of cardinals appeared on the white fence 

when we made snow angels with expedient wings.   

This time eleven inches on record,  

fell in muffled breaths, like Goliath exhaling,  

flakes, mottled banana and ginger leaves, 

drifts skirted camellias, 

satsuma roots concealed by accumulation 

different than frequent floods, 

those and this reaching our knees, 

ready to genuflect, bearing witness 

to another genesis.   

When My Father Looked Like Omar Sharif 

I remember that version when, 

without trying, my father looked like Omar Sharif, 

shared his gap-toothed grin and sun-tinged complexion, 

his roadside stops made to thrum and tap 

Mississippi grown gourds 

too heavy to glean or to pluck 

stacked as makeshift pyramids in the truck bed. 

He grasped the heaviest, sometimes striated  

interplays of celadon and jade, 

propped on his shoulder, skin against his ear,  

embracing the weight hoisted to carry home 

and place on the table, 

a nightly altar’s tremendous offering. 

Day old news, a printed sheath beneath, 

we gathered to witness the tip of the blade delving, 

sharpness entirely submerged 

to slice two hemispheric halves 

redness irrevocably exposed, then 

diminished with each cut  

into small skiffs, weighted, filled  

with another form of ocean. 

Uncaged 

At bamboo intersections 

of horizontal and vertical, 

the caged canary,  

heard and seen, superlatives, shrill and yellow 

within plaster walls,  

eyelet curtains spilling unstrung beads of light, 

pots, pans clattering, rhythmic, rapaciously chopping 

the trinity, onions, garlic, celery,  

the blade’s glint and edge swept the minced and cut,  

Sunday’s sounds, near noon, church bells 

a sway of bronze, the clapper’s strike against mouth and lip 

metallic ringing and reverberations  

agitating the bird flitting in repetition 

when I unclasped, unclasped that delicate latch,  

with its question mark inquisitive brass hook,  

my quietest heist,  

both hands, capable, cupping feathers, 

the color of caution, avian warnings, 

muscles and bones, the under tail’s brush 

bristling against skin,  

a furious heart, volcanic, vibratory wings, 

beak pecking flesh walls and lifelines, 

along crevices and the cartography of my palms, 

where once released,   

the bird would live like a legend 

among litanies of leaves. 

Louisiana Poet Laureate Gina Ferrara seated next to Pet Laureate Sugar. Photo by Zack Smith