Literary world mourns loss of Renee Nicole Good’s poetry

Minneapolis poet laureate Junauda Petrus was reading her poem “Ritual on How to Love Minneapolis Again” to students in a south Minneapolis grade school classroom in October when an impatient voice piped up.

“This is a long poem,” the boy said.

The little voice belonged to the son of Renee Nicole Good, the 37-year-old mother, poet and community activist killed by an ICE agent Jan. 7 in Minneapolis.

As the world grapples with Good’s death, many in the tight-knit Twin Cities literary community have been writing verses, having dinners and keeping vigil for the loss of one of their own — an award-winning writer of conscience whose promise has been cut short.

Petrus met Good on the two occasions she did poetry workshops at Good’s son’s elementary school.

“Renee and her wife were volunteers over lunch there and her son looked just like her,” Petrus said. “He was free-spirited, feral and a truth-teller — I’m feeling for him and for all those kids who knew her.”

In 2020, while a student at Old Dominion University, Good won an Academy of American Poets Prize for her work, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs.”

“She’s an engaged student reading science and religious texts, and they’re colliding together with big questions,” said poet, poetry teacher and retired lawyer Michael Kleber-Diggs of the poem.

On Jan. 9, poet Gretchen Marquette placed 25 copies of Good’s poem with stuffed animals, LGBT pride flags and bouquets of flowers at the memorial near E. 34th Street and Portland Avenue, where Good was shot and killed.

“It was just really important to me that there was this fragment of her, her tender and intelligent mind and spirit present in a place where she suffered violence,” said Marquette, 45. “On a spiritual level, it just helped to know that her words were there.”

Kleber-Diggs got a sense of Good’s radiance from her work.

“In poetry, we often talk about dwelling in uncertainty and the unknown,” he said. “Our job is not to answer, sometimes, but to go towards wonder. Her poetry is spectacular in that regard, and, also, heartbreaking in light of how she died.”

“It’s a lot of grief to carry but is also a call to action for people of conscience,” he said. “We’ve got to show up, witness and coalesce past differences to protect each other.”

Good died in the neighborhood where Petrus grew up and still lives. She went to the vigil to be in community with others, and she’s crafting work that she hopes will help the nation connect and heal.

“Poetry and art have always been guides in moments like this,” Petrus said. “It’s a way to solace and truth. I want to create space to hold softness and vision for our community at a time of militarism and bold-faced lies about the humanity of this woman.”

Danez Smith, the award-winning St. Paul-bred poet, learned about Good’s work after her death. Her powerful poem made Smith think of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer’s “If I Must Die.” (Alareer was killed Dec. 6, 2023, in an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza.)

Good’s poem echoes beyond her life and confronts the world in the same way Alareer’s poem does, Smith said. Sometimes poems are the last things people remember about the person.

Heid Erdrich, the 2024 inaugural Minneapolis Poet Laureate, said that Good looked familiar. The two might have crossed paths at a poetry reading.

Erdrich has crafted a work in Good’s honor: “Do I Know You? (If it was you beside me at the bookstore).”

Poets often meet the public during difficult times, she said.

“Poetry is a place that people go when there is great tragedy, great sorrow or great joy.”

Good is being lionized and mourned not just by writers in Minnesota, but across the country and globe. Amanda Gorman, the young poet who read her work at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, has posted a new work on social media titled “For Renee Nicole Good Killed by I.C.E. on January 7, 2026.”