Jim Coppoc performs on June 25, 2025, at Traer Ripley UCC’s The Parsonage. Coppoc, Ripley’s bridge pastor, recently won Poet of the Year at the 4th annual Iowa Music Awards. PHOTO BY RUBY F. MCALLISTER

TRAER – Congregants at Ripley United Church of Christ in Traer may harbor slightly higher expectations for the weekly sermon now that their minister, renaissance man Jim Coppoc has been named 2025 Poet of the Year by the Iowa Music Awards.

“Sadly, I didn’t attend the awards. I had no idea I was even in the running,” Coppoc told the newspaper following the awards ceremony which was held on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025, at Burlington’s Memorial Auditorium.

Coppoc won the category with his poem “TO THE GIRL I’M NOT DATING (WHO DOES NOT BELIEVE SHE IS BEAUTIFUL) which he performed at the Oster Regent Theater in Cedar Falls on March 7, 2025, and can be viewed here: https://jimcoppoc.com/poetry.

Coppoc, a graduate of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, began serving as Ripley’s part-time bridge pastor/lay minister in the fall of 2023. In addition to his pastoral duties, he works full-time as a musician in the Iowa Veterans Home memory care unit. He previously worked as Director of Integrated Health at Center Associates in Marshalltown and Toledo. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in poetry. According to his website, Coppoc previously taught literature, creative writing, and American Indian Studies at Iowa State University.

During the summer of 2024, Coppoc began hosting monthly community open mic nights and ‘house concerts’ inside (and outside) his home, Ripley Parsonage, as part of his congregation’s ‘conscious decision to become a mission-oriented church.’ Since that time, dozens of local and not-so-local musicians have queued up to The Parsonage’s mic, including Coppoc himself.

During this past summer’s concert series, he performed a stirring original song titled “Soldier for a Son,” written in honor of his son, Spc. William Coppoc who deployed on May 28, 2025, along with nearly 1,800 other soldiers from the Iowa National Guard as part of Operation Inherent Resolve in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria.

“He was born on a Thursday in a two horse town / Raised him up the best I could, didn’t want to let him down / Told him all the stories of great men who went before / Now my son is dressed in camouflage, and he’s headed off to war,” Coppoc sang that June evening to a packed Parsonage Great Room as part of Katie and the Honky Tonks’ opening act. As he sang, several in the audience wiped tears from their eyes.

“I love the work I do. I love the songwriting process. I love the feeling of sharing something important to me with a roomful of good people, and using my voice and my guitar to do it,” Coppoc writes on his website. Of his poetry, he writes, “Although my career has taken a slightly different path in recent years, I’m still proud of the poems I’ve made and I love to find the occasional stage to share them with my people.”

For more of Coppoc’s work, visit jimcoppoc.com. He can also be found on Facebook (jim.at.ripley) and, of course, his door is always open on Sundays (and many a day in-between) at Ripley UCC which is located at 400 S. Main Street on the hill in Traer. Services begin at 9 a.m. and all are welcome.

For more information on the 2025 Iowa Music Awards, visit https://t1entertainment.com/awards.