Poet Laureate

         I am absolutely thrilled to announce some Huge News: I have been named the Poet Laureate of Needham, MA!  Okay, this may not be huge news on the global level, but it’s hugely exciting to me, having loved poetry and fancied myself a poet for about as long as I can remember.  (Regarding which, I plan to share in a future post some of my own history with poetry.)  But what exactly does it mean to be a Poet Laureate?  Well, on the larger scale, such as the poet laureate of an entire nation, it’s an honor for eminent achievement, but at the local level it’s more like being a cultural ambassador to bring more poetry into the life of the town.  In my case, since Poet Laureate of Needham is a brand new position and I’m the first to fill it, I’m a bit of a guinea pig and I get to contribute to making it up as we go along.

        So far I’ve kicked off with participating in two poetry programs at the public library.  Both programs had been in the works for a while and were organized by others; I got to waltz in at the last minute and participate enthusiastically without having had to lay the groundwork.  First was a session of the poetry discussion group “Cup and Chaucer,” and second was an after-school program for teens to play with found poetry, blackout poetry, etc.  (The kids had fun with the transgressive thrill of cutting up old books!  I went with the ransom note or refrigerator magnet style of poetry, and my creation - with golden glue for even more glamour - can be seen in the photo.  Click to enlarge.)

        I’ll be putting a little Poet Laureate column in the library’s monthly newsletter, and we’ve got lots of other ideas in the works including hosting some poetry events, presenting my own work, doing some workshops in the schools, adding poems to town events, and more.  (When I refer to “we” I mean primarily the library’s director Rob MacLean and technical services director Tamara Dalton, who are my support committee.  Plus I also want to thank Town Manager Kate Fitzpatrick, whose idea it was for Needham to have a Poet Laureate, plus all the members of the selection committee, and of course the Needham Council of Arts and Culture and Mass Cultural Council, which awarded a grant to help support this program.)

        If you want to read more about all this, you can find an article from Needham Local here: Needham’s Poet Laureate Finds “Magic” in Written Word

and an article from Needham Observer here: Needham names first Poet Laureate.

         Because this role is all about bringing people together through literary arts, and fostering connections in the community, I’d love to hear ideas for what we should consider doing.  If you’re in Needham, what programs would you like to see?  If you’re elsewhere, do you know of any similar programs that have done cool things?  Go ahead and send me your brainstorming!  Given the small size of the grant and the finite limits of my time, we won’t be able to do everything, but I’d certainly love to consider lots of creative ideas.

[Pictures: photo and poem by AEGNydam, 2024;

other images from Needham Free Public Library and Needham Local.]