The best New Mexico poetry starts with Arthur Sze — the Santa Fe poet who is the current U.S. Poet Laureate and won the 2019 National Book Award for Sight Lines — alongside Jimmy Santiago Baca, Joy Harjo, Luci Tapahonso, and the poets of the old Santa Fe colony. For a small state, New Mexico's footprint in American poetry is enormous: it has produced or formed multiple national poets laureate and a continuous tradition stretching from the 1920s art colony to today. This is a reader's path in. For the collector's view, see the New Mexico poetry collecting guide; for the full canon, Best Books Set in New Mexico.
Published June 2026 · Curated by Josh Eldred, New Mexico Literacy Project
Sight Lines — Arthur Sze
The contemporary master. Sze — Santa Fe's first poet laureate, a professor emeritus at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the current U.S. Poet Laureate — won the National Book Award for this prismatic collection that braids the ecological, the personal, and the cosmic. The place to start with living New Mexico poetry.
Martín & Meditations on the South Valley — Jimmy Santiago Baca
Baca taught himself to read and write in prison and became one of the essential poets of the Chicano Southwest. This American Book Award–winning sequence is rooted in Albuquerque's South Valley — a poetry of barrio, family, and survival. Pair with Immigrants in Our Own Land.
An American Sunrise — Joy Harjo
Harjo was formed as a poet at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and went on to become the first Native American U.S. Poet Laureate. An American Sunrise is a powerful late collection; her breakthrough She Had Some Horses is the other essential.
Sáanii Dahataał: The Women Are Singing — Luci Tapahonso
The Navajo Nation's first poet laureate writes in a warm voice steeped in Diné language and family. This collection mixes poetry and story and is the best door into a beloved contemporary poet of the Four Corners.
The poems of Peggy Pond Church
The poet of the Pajarito Plateau — the mesa country that became Los Alamos — Church wrote a quiet, rooted body of verse alongside her prose classic The House at Otowi Bridge. The essential bridge between the old New Mexico and the atomic age.
The poems of Witter Bynner
A central figure of the Santa Fe literary colony from the 1920s, Bynner anchored a circle of poets in the city and left a substantial body of verse and translation. The historical foundation of the New Mexico poetry tradition — and a fine read in his own right.
Going further
The Pueblo and Diné poetry tradition runs deep alongside these voices — Simon Ortiz of Acoma above all; see Best Pueblo & Native New Mexico Books. For the wider field, including the small-press poetry chapbooks that are a New Mexico specialty, see the poetry collecting guide.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the most famous New Mexico poet?
Arthur Sze of Santa Fe — the current U.S. Poet Laureate and a National Book Award winner — alongside Joy Harjo and Jimmy Santiago Baca.
Which New Mexico poets won major awards?
Sze (National Book Award, U.S. Poet Laureate), Baca (American Book Award), Harjo (U.S. Poet Laureate), and Tapahonso (Navajo Nation's first poet laureate).
Where should I start with New Mexico poetry?
Arthur Sze's Sight Lines, Jimmy Santiago Baca's Martín & Meditations on the South Valley, and Joy Harjo's An American Sunrise.
Cite This Guide
Eldred, J. (June 2026). Best New Mexico Poetry & Poets to Read. New Mexico Literacy Project.
https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/best-new-mexico-poetry
Original curation by Josh Eldred. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.