My guest this week on Poetry from Daily Life is Matt Hoisch, who lives in London though he grew up in Los Angeles, California. Matt is a broadcast journalist whose work has been featured on NPR and PBS stations across the United States. He is currently at work on The Laureate Project, by interviewing state poets laureate. “I’ve always been interested in poetry and writing,” he says, “and over the past few years have become interested in the ways people build a sense of place, so this project felt like a great way to combine those interests.” In 2020, Matt worked as a radio journalist in Colorado and put together a radio that featured local musicians who wrote original songs inspired by one month of the year. As a writer for the PBS TV show Articulate, he wrote TV profiles of creative people. His team was nominated for an Emmy. Matt claims to be the only person he knows who really likes grape candy. ~ David L. Harrison
A little over two years into my time as half of a two-person news team at a public radio station in rural Colorado, a member of our small mountain community named Rick died. He was a quiet, unassuming man whose frequent presence around the library, in the parks, and on the benches throughout town, to me, said more than he often did. The sort of man whose passing might pass with little if any public acknowledgment.
Then, I learned our local librarian and county Poet Laureate, Joanna Spindler, had written a poem about Rick. With her permission, I ran the piece on our nightly newscast. It felt a fitting way to memorialize someone whose modest-yet-visceral contributions to the fabric of our community nearly escaped words.
A little less than two years after that, Joanna and Rick were once again on my mind. I got to thinking about the other Joanna’s across the United States: publicly-appointed poets devoting attention to the people, environments, and events that form a place in that special way that only comes from being around a good while. Who were these people? What language were they finding to see the things that others might have missed? What would it be like to try to see America — with all its joys, anxieties, contradictions, and promises — through their eyes?
That was the beginning of The Laureate Project. For nearly a year, I’ve been speaking with some of these people — I decided to focus on state-level poets laureate — across the U.S. about their lives, the places they live, and their time in poetry. The project has been filled with surprises. These writers come from such a variety of backgrounds. In Montana, there’s Chris La Tray, a member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians who’s played in rock bands almost non-stop since the 1980s. In Maine, Julia Bouwsma lives off the grid with her partner on a patch of land where they raise animals, grow plants, and barter. In Missouri, David L. Harrison seems to have crammed two or three lives into one, having studied parasites, edited greeting cards, sold concrete, and written children’s books.
Common threads and patterns have also started to emerge. A lot of these bards are fascinated with the immensity of the natural world: vast lakes, old trees, bitter cold. Many of them find peace in the simple details of daily life: gardening in the evening, sipping ice water in the summer, the “good salsa.”
There’s something to be said for the mobility of Americans because the willingness to pick up and go when opportunity or necessity calls for it is one of the key ingredients of our country’s dynamism. But there is also something to be said for the willingness to stay put, try trusting a place for a bit, and see what that trust reveals.
Why do the vast majority of states devote taxpayer dollars to finding and supporting public poets? After almost a year speaking with these vibrant, perceptive people, I believe one answer is that poetry really is a public good. We all need someone to speak poetically about our lives and the things we share. We all need someone to help us notice the things we might miss. We all need someone to help us find the language to adore, parody, criticize, and memorialize the world around us. It is one of the great joys and sources of sanity in life to read a poem about a corner of the world you know and love and say to yourself “Yes, exactly,” or, even better, “I’d never thought of it like that!”
When I think of Rick, now, I think of Joanna’s poem. That’s the power of a good poem — it carries something (or someone) forward to be shared by all. In the words of Texas Laureate Amanda Johnston, “Poetry is for the people.”
You can subscribe to The Laureate Project at hoisch.substack.com and you can learn more about Matt Hoisch at hoisch.com.