Lacroy “Atlas” Nixon doesn’t start as Williamsburg’s first poet laureate until July, but he feels like he’s been in the role for years.
He first brought the idea of the program to the Williamsburg Regional Library before taking it to the Williamsburg Public Art Council. Nixon noticed that the city didn’t have a thriving poetry scene after graduating from Liberty University in Lynchburg in 2021 and returning home.
Nixon got his nickname “Atlas,” based on the Greek god who carried the heavens on his shoulders, for his tendency to lift people up while in college. Now, as laureate, he wants to lift up Williamsburg's budding community of poets.
“It’s so surreal, I get to do what I love to do,” he said. “It doesn’t get better than that.”
Nixon has been a poet for more than eight years. He dropped his first lines of spoken word at Warhill High School after being introduced to it in Ms. Whitehead’s 10th-grade English class.
Nixon was assigned to write a villanelle, a form of poetry consisting of 19 lines. He was too shy to read it in front of class, so his teacher did it and saw the potential in his writing.
She encouraged Nixon to participate in the NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics, or ACT-SO program. He won the poetry and engineering championship twice. Nixon’s success didn’t carry to the national tournament, but the experience inspired him to stay in the art.
“If I would have told myself ‘Oh yeah, people are going to pay you to stand in front of people and talk,’ I would have laughed,” he said. “I was so introverted.”
Nixon has built a career supporting teens. He works with them through his day job at the YMCA and is a member of the Poetry Society of Virginia and on the Writers Guild of Virginia’s executive board.
Nixon also founded Slam Connection, a nonprofit that uses spoken word to spur community action. It hosts poetry workshops, competitions, open mics and, in addition, helps incarcerated teens find an outlet for their emotions. Slam Connection’s latest six-week workshop at Merrimac Juvenile Detention Center just started.
“A lot of kids crash out because they don't know how to maneuver or operate those emotions,” Nixon said. “Poetry is an avenue that, by nature, makes you face those emotions and makes you communicate with them.”
Nixon is growing the scene with friend Daniel Garwood, Slam Connection’s director of artist development. Garwood said the laureate program is “showing that you can start a rose from the concrete.”
“I think that’s going to be the shift of art in the city,” he said.
The Williamsburg Public Art Council and City Council opened applications for the position in 2024. The laureate receives a $3,000 stipend for a two-year term.
It was a moment of pride for his father, Larry Nixon.
“I remember when it was just a vision,” he said. “I didn’t have to push him, he was the engine.”
While Nixon came up with the idea for the laureate program, he wasn’t guaranteed the position. Vice Mayor Pat Dent said his passion and involvement with youth mentorship helped him stand out.
I “think it's really going to engage our school-age children in what poetry is all about and how they can participate in poetry and hopefully build that desire to be a poet laureate in the future,” Dent said.
Nixon's big focus is on exposing students to the art of spoken word. He will present original work at city events, advocate for a cultural arts center and plans to establish a youth slam poetry league.
“If there's no generation coming after you to do it, then it dies,” Nixon said. “It doesn't matter how dope any artist is, doesn't matter how amazing you are or whatever you do; this isn't just poetry, this is any art form.”
Nixon said he’s heard some skeptical comments about being selected. It reminds him of when he was in kindergarten and a teacher singled him and other Black students out for the way they talked, and the teacher seemed to discount their abilities.
“I recognized even by taking the office, even by starting this, that me being here breaks up a lot of fallow ground,” Nixon said. “It breaks up a lot of the status quo that has been here in the city for a long time.”
He’s hopeful that by taking the position, his work can break up old prejudices and foster new opportunities for artists.
“People are hungry to hear from other people, you can only silence somebody so long before the room's silence becomes way too loud,” he said. “Even after my laureate term is over, the work is not going to stop. There will be other people that will come alongside me, or that will come after me, that will speak about things that need to be spoken about, that'll carry on the cause, that'll make space for everyone.”
