Elizabeth Alexander, the poet asked to read at Barack Obama’s inauguration Jan. 20, is a “citizen poet,” her publisher at Graywolf Press said in a press release.

Fiona McCrae, the publisher, said: “This is a brilliant and absolutely right choice for the president of change.  Elizabeth Alexander has established herself as an important voice for a new generation.  She is a citizen poet-passionate, deeply engaged, with an expansive, inclusive sensibility.”

She’ll be only the fourth poet to read at a presidential inauguration, following Robert Frost (for John F. Kennedy) Maya Angelou and Miller Williams (Bill Clinton).  Graywolf Press will publish a chapbook featuring Alexander’s original poem.

Alexander told guardian.co.uk that the challenge would be to write a poem which “speaks to the occasion [and] has its own integrity”. “But it’s a good challenge”, she added. “It’s the balance between listening to the muse and speaking to many many people.” A personal friend of the Obama family, Alexander said the friendship made the opportunity “all the sweeter”.

Here is Alexander’s bio information from Graywolf:

Elizabeth Alexander was born in New York City and raised in Washington, D.C. She is the author of four collections of poetry, American Sublime, Antebellum Dream Book, The Venus Hottentot, and Body of Life, which was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She is also the author of two collections of essays, The Black Interior and Power and Possibilities: Essays, Interviews, Reviews, and a collection of poems for young adults, Miss Crandall’s School for Young Ladies and Little Misses of Colors (co-authored with Marilyn Nelson). She recently edited The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks. She has read her work across the United States and in Europe, the Caribbean, and South America, and her poetry, short stories, and critical prose have been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies. She has received many awards and honors, most recently the Alphonse Fletcher, Sr. Fellowship for work that “contributes to improving race relations in American society and furthers the broad social goals of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954,” and the 2007 Jackson Prize for Poetry, awarded by Poets and Writers. Alexander is a professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University, and also teaches in the Cave Canem Poetry Workshop. She lives with her family in New Haven, Connecticut.

To see some of Alexander’s poetry, go to her web site, www.elizabethalexander.net