AUSTIN — On Friday, October 26, at 5:30 p.m., Huston-Tillotson University named student, Earlyssa “Earl the Poet” Cooper, as its first poet laureate. The ceremony took place on the patio of the University’s Downs-Jones Library.
“I’m honestly speechless,” Cooper said of her honor. “I’m a poet who is speechless. Imagine that. I was thinking “Wow, people still see something in myself that I possibly haven’t seen in myself yet and that they know that I’m capable of impacting many in the position that I am now in.”
English Professor Jennine Krueger, also a distingui With the backing of over 5,000 followers on her Instagram page, @theheartofearl, not counting the fans who have attended her showcases and the children and their parents who have been inspired by her impromptu poems on the back of receipts and H-E-Buddy Bucks, the poet laureate title only affirms the talent of the junior – communications major – from Houston, Texas. “Never put down your pen,” Ms. Eunice Terry emphasized. Terry was Cooper’s fourth-grade teacher who inspired her to keep writing and speaking. Terry was at the induction ceremony on Friday to witness her student receive the honor. “That statement (of Terry) has been motivation since I left Lantern Lane Elementary School,” Cooper said. “To know this, to know a teacher planted a seed in me, I have to reach back and bring up her name often as I can, so we can understand the importance of educators and, if
