Philip Levine recently completed his yearlong tenure as the U.S. poet laureate, a position that gave nationwide attention to his affinity with working people. With his writing roots deep within the world of work—and encapsulated in his signature poetry collection, “What Work Is”—Levine gave us all in the union movement the opportunity to engage with the art of poetry and understand more about the role of poet laureate.

In a recent final interview, Levine described his days as poet laureate as shaped around the familiar schedule of writing poetry, but embellished now with opportunities to interact with people and take part in worlds he had never known. Among the most interesting of those encounters, Levine said, were Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor.

I didn’t know there were still little groups of people coming to college to learn how to make our society more equitable and democratic. The place has a powerful social conscience, and the folks there take their ethical and civic duties very seriously.

Writing about his poetry reading here at the AFL-CIO last fall, Levine said he was: 

deeply moved by those I met. President Richard Trumka has turned their headquarters into a house that welcomes artists of every shape. I had a marvelous audience made up of the counterparts of the people—imagined and real—who inhabit my poems.

Over the course of his year as poet laureate, Levine said he met many interesting people he would not have otherwise. As with his poetry, in which the workers who fill his poems carry with them the hope and perseverence that belies their often brutal environments, Levine said there is one constant that carries him through:

I do believe in people.