AUGUSTA — The state’s new poet laureate wants Mainers to know one thing about poetry.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” said Dawn Potter of Portland. “It’s not stuff way up here, it’s stuff in your life. That’s where poetry comes from, the things of your everyday life. It’s not some highfalutin art. It’s an art of the people.”
On Friday during a Maine Arts Commission ceremony at the State House, Gov. Janet Mills announced that Potter will take over as poet laureate July 1, following the five-year tenure of Julia Bouwsma.
Mills, herself a poet, talked about the important role the arts play in helping us understand the world.
She said the arts “expand our horizons, they help us see what is not obvious. Help us hear things unheard. Help us think differently, see differently, find connections between disparate things and know that our world is a greater, much larger place than otherwise we would know.”
Friday marked the second year the arts commission invited several Maine poets — including winners of the Poetry Out Loud competition — to the State House for a celebration during National Poetry Month.
Since 1995, Maine has had a Maine State Poet Laureate who serves a five-year term. The position, which comes with a $5,000 annual stipend to cover mileage and other costs, is “designed to promote appreciation of poetry throughout the state,” according to the commission.
In her job as a visiting artist in schools across Maine, Potter already works with high school writers. She plans to use the next three months to decide how she wants to reach more Mainers as poet laureate.
“I think poetry is something people reach for when they have emotions they don’t quite know how to frame,” she said. “People getting married, people at funerals, even people who would never think to write a poem or read a poem reach for poetry in those moments.”
Potter said it’s up to poets to help others.
“Poets have the job to tend that flame, that emotional flame,” she said. “I think it’s a pretty important job to let people understand that they need to let those feelings into their life. They need to hear what other people feel and to learn from that.”