Gabbert is coming into the position with several ideas, all centered around the genre’s relevance and accessibility. Poetry, she believes, is vital, timely and for everyone.
“Unfortunately, a lot of folks have only ever been exposed to ‘stuffy, old-timey’ poetry — the kind in which people who are now dead considered events and issues that are now irrelevant — if they were ever even exposed to poetry at all,” she tells the Observer. “My goal is to change that. So, in order to start tackling this goal, I believe that poetry needs to be moved off of the page and off of the stage. People need to encounter poetry.”
The application process for the poet laureate position involved submitting project proposals. Gabbert’s largely involved public art installations in addition to the expected speaking and reading engagements.
“I have some very specific ideas for how those installations might manifest, but I don’t want to go into too much detail until the wheels are in motion,” she says.
Gabbert is the second poet to hold this position, following a successful inaugural term carried out by Joaquín Zihuatanejo. The program was launched by the Dallas Public Library in 2021 and was partly inspired by Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate whose address at the inauguration of President Joe Biden made her an overnight celebrity.
“We looked into other libraries around the country who were taking the lead in having a poet laureate, including Los Angeles,” says Melissa Dease, community relations administrator for the Dallas Public Library. ”You know, Amanda Gorman was the Poet Laureate for Los Angeles. So that really inspired us to get it set up.”
Gabbert, a Dallas native and graduate of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, has been published in over 50 magazines and journals and is the recipient of several honors for her work, including the Pushcart Prize and the Charles B. Wheeler Prize in Poetry. Her full-length book of poetry, Sex Depression Animals, was published last year.Mayor Eric Johnson named Dr. Mag Gabbert the City’s second Poet Laureate in a special ceremony this Wednesday morning at Dallas City Hall. 🎉Naisha Randhar, a student at The Hockaday School, was named Youth Poet Laureate. 🌟 pic.twitter.com/lnBRxQQCUn
— City of Dallas (@CityOfDallas) April 10, 2024
She says that being named Dallas’ poet laureate was a longtime dream of hers.
“I attended college at Trinity University in San Antonio, and they’ve operated a poet laureate program down there for quite some time. I’d already started imagining the possibility of one day serving as Dallas’ poet laureate long before the position became a reality in this city,” Gabbert says. “With that said, as cliché as it may sound, taking on this role as Dallas’ second poet laureate is sincerely a dream come true for me. “
At the same ceremony where Gabbert was bestowed her new position, Naisha Randhar, a student at The Hockaday School, was named Youth Poet Laureate.
Randhar will hold the title for one year and use her platform to encourage youth poetry. As is to be expected, though, the ninth grader will have considerably stripped-back responsibilities compared to her adult counterpart.
“The Youth Poet Laureate is [...] kind of more of a scholarship for a student to encourage their pursuit of poetry,” Dease explains. “Just like with the poet laureate, she'll be invited to read at different events around the city.”
Community engagement is at the core of the poet laureate program. Above all else, it will be Gabbert’s responsibility to help Dallas citizens engage with poetry in ways they never thought possible. She seems up to the task.
“I honestly believe there are millions of people in the world who would be poetry’s biggest advocates if they only knew what contemporary poetry is like,” she says. “That it can speak to their interests, that it uses voices they can relate to, and that it remains a living, accessible art form.”
