Meet 2025 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow DeeSoul Carson

Leading up to the 2025 Ruth Lilly-Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows' reading in Miami on Friday, April 10 as part of O, Miami's Poetry Festival, we will feature profiles of each of the five fellows. We are excited to continue introducing you to and celebrating these outstanding young poets. 

DeeSoul Carson has been thinking about the role of the artist in our current moment. He is honored to have been awarded the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship, and hopes to redistribute some of the funds to support people experiencing tragedies and atrocities in the world. “I think the role of the artist is to witness,” he says, “and not only to witness, but then, as much as one can, to take action amongst that witnessing.” He hopes his work inspires others to think about what it is that poetry can do and where the work is pointing. 

Carson found poetry in middle school when his teacher, in what was meant to be a punishment for a chatty class, assigned the class to write poems. He started performing spoken word poetry in ninth grade and has been doing it ever since. To Carson, poetry allows us to trouble language in a way that we often aren’t asked to, to question without having concrete answers. He draws a parallel between good comedy and good poetry, defining poetry as “rhetorical experimentation.” He is inspired by the following poets, some of whom also performed in slam spaces: Franny Choi, Karisma Price, Porsha Olayiwola, sam sax, and Danez Smith. He is also inspired by friends like Tariq Thompson. “I draw inspiration from my friends all the time,” he says. “I think there’s a lot to be gained from writing as if it’s a collaborative effort.” 

Originally from California, Carson is currently based in Brooklyn, New York, working as an administrator for a college readiness and career exploration program. Moving to the city was really good for his writing—he goes to more events with poets and writers, and the city has so much energy around the literary arts. He is currently working on his full-length manuscript, The Laughing Barrel, a collection interested in absurdities—of capitalism, racism, genocide, war—and the poetics of disbelief. “How do we hold that next to our grief? How do we maintain our joy amidst all that?” These are questions Carson is interested in exploring through his work. In addition to the manuscript, he is working on a series of poems inspired by video games. Carson is a lifelong gamer as well as someone interested in form and format, and is intrigued by how the mechanics of video games translate into poetry. He has drawn inspiration from games like Hades, Season: A Letter to the Future, and The Talos Principle. 

Although Carson has a home office that he shares with his husband, he often ends up writing wherever the poem hits him. He often starts with a title, and then a line or two, after which he lets the poem sit for a bit while he figures out where else it wants to go. If not the title, he’ll sometimes begin with a subject matter and a structural idea. A crucial element of his writing process is also reading. “Reading just opens up new doors for what we think language can do,” he says. In terms of the fellowship, he hopes for community and solidarity, as well as people to bounce ideas off of. 

Carson encourages other young writers to “keep going, keep reading,” and to make friends in poetry. “People would like us to think that writing is a lonely life. I think it’s the exact opposite. I get so much life and so much knowledge and so much of my creative energy from being around other writers.” He believes that so much of writing comes from our daily lives, and advises young writers to go out, explore the world, and talk to people. 

Carson’s The Laughing Barrel, is set to be released in the spring of 2027 with Alice James Books.