A poet laureate is (typically) a poet appointed by a government to do any or all of the following: write or commission poems for commemorative events, promote and advocate for poetry in public spaces like schools, community events, and local festivals, engage the public with words, connect poets with one another, broadly advocate for literacy, and mentor young and emerging writers. We have poets laureate at the national, state, and city level all over America, serving as ambassadors for the literary arts in their communities and the wider world.
Here in my home state of South Carolina, the office of poet laureate was created in 1934. We’ve had six poets laureate since. When current Governor Henry McMaster took office in 2017, Marjory Heath Wentworth had held the post for 14 years. She resigned in 2020, and despite a rich, long history of poetry in our state1, we haven’t had a poet laureate since.
Until this month.
If it walks like a duck…
The process for choosing a poet laureate varies from place to place, but generally a state-level arts organization makes a list of recommendations and presents them to the governor, who then chooses a poet. Some states have their arts council or commission make the selection directly, with little involvement from the government, which tends to produce more traditionally-credentialed choices like professional poets and educators, and because the poetry community is relatively small, also tends to produce uncontroversial candidates the community knows and supports.
South Carolina’s process is by direct governor appointment, meaning the governor can just choose someone. Traditionally those appointments have been from the list provided by the South Carolina Arts Commission. The law that established the office says, “Upon the recommendation of qualified candidates by the South Carolina Arts Commission, the Governor shall name and appoint an outstanding and distinguished person of letters as poet laureate for the State of South Carolina.”
Perhaps it’s noteworthy to say two things here:
Legally speaking, that’s not a dependent clause — upon the recommendation, the governor shall name. It doesn’t explicitly say the governor has to name someone from the list, so technically they can choose anyone they want to.
“[An] outstanding and distinguished person of letters” isn’t specifically a poet. A “person of letters” traditionally meant an author. Perhaps the lawmakers involved in creating the office of poet laureate didn’t think it was important to specify they be a poet since it’s in the name of the office, but the broadness leaves it open to interpretation.
After 17 years as state poet laureate, Wentworth resigned in 2020 when she moved to a different state. When Gov. McMaster announced open applications for the vacant office he said, “South Carolina has a long, storied history of gifted poets and writers. I have no doubt the next poet laureate will continue this tradition of excellence and will serve as an inspiration to our next generation of artists. I look forward to reviewing the candidates and making my selection.” The Arts Commission provided a curated list of potential poets laureate to his office the following year. Some reports said he requested a broadened list. Then, instead of reviewing the candidates and making his selection, McMaster did nothing. He ignored the recommendations for years, despite passionate advocacy and organizing from local poets, for reasons never made public. When questioned, the governor’s team deflected, dodged, or was silent.
Six years later, seemingly suddenly2, on March 19 a few weeks before National Poetry Month, the governor’s office announced a new South Carolina poet laureate — Patrick Davis. Davis is a singer songwriter who grew up in Camden, SC, but currently resides in Nashville, where he’s made a career writing songs for artists like Darius Rucker, Jewel, Jimmy Buffet, Morgan Wallen, and others. Davis has kept his ties to South Carolina, like a home in Camden, writing songs like “Big Ole Cock” for his alma mater the University of South Carolina (coincidentally also Governor McMaster’s alma mater), hosting a tv show on SCETV called Southern Songwriters, and being awarded the Order of the Palmetto in 2019 (by McMaster), the highest civilian honor we bestow on people for “contributions and friendship to the State of South Carolina and her people.”
By all accounts, Davis seems like a nice guy with a successful career who loves South Carolina, and wants to use that success to champion music, songwriting, and storytelling. But he’s not a poet. And no one in the poetry community knows him. As Charleston poet laureate AsiahMae said, “My initial reaction was, ‘Oh, we have one,’ and then I read the name, and I was like, ‘Whose mans is this?’”
Where art and politics collide
From the outside looking in, it’s fairly easy to imagine the governor not filling the poet laureate role for the last six years because modern poetry, especially in the south, and especially in a state like South Carolina, can tend toward political speech. People talk a big game about free speech, but for some reason seem wary of poets using their platforms and voices to talk politics.
I try to stay aware of what’s happening in my state’s poetry community because I run a literary arts non-profit called Poets Live. And because of my awareness of that community, I’d guess a number of the people on the Arts Commission’s list of potential poets laureate were black South Carolinians who don’t shy away from writing about the black experience in America. So it’s not a stretch to think a red state governor might look at a list of voices like that, saying things like that, and go “I’d rather not have anyone in there than have someone problematic for the base.”
Hypothetically.
This highlights the tension in governor-appointment states like mine: the poet laureate office is a literary arts position, but it’s filled through a political process with no legal requirement that the governor follow the expert, informed recommendations of the literary arts community. And much of our current political climate seems to revel in ignoring the expert, informed recommendations from the arts and sciences. Maybe McMaster picked the closest thing to a poet he felt comfortable with — a minorly-famous guy from here who wrote a song about their college — and didn’t care about the optics, logistics, or purpose of the office. Which, honestly, isn’t all that surprising. Even if it is disappointing.
Isn’t it all just words anyway?
There are only two historical precedents I’m aware of where states appointed songwriters as poets laureate. John Prine was posthumously appointed an honorary Illinois poet laureate in 2020. (Prine likely wouldn’t have considered himself a poet, but it’s tough to argue there wasn’t a poetry to his songwriting.) And Norman Kay was appointed the Nevada poet laureate in 1967. He was a lounge singer friend of the governor, and Nevada is just weird enough to have left him in the post for decades, despite not really doing much to promote or advocate for poetry in the state.
And I suppose that’s the rub — from his public comments Patrick Davis seems to humbly want to do well in the role of South Carolina poet laureate, but he’s not a part of the community. He’s not already doing the work, like so many poets are who have been passed over. Davis says, “whether you’re writing novels or poetry or songs, it’s really storytelling” which is partially true, but also glosses over a simple fact — songwriting isn’t poetry. Poetry isn’t songwriting. They share DNA, like a love for words (sometimes) and diction, metaphor and imagination. But they’re distinct disciplines, with existing communities and needs for advocacy.
Imagine if the situation were reversed — there’s a state-level office for Musician Laureate and the governor doesn’t really know much about music but has a buddy who writes novels, so they appoint the novelist3 to the office because, “it’s really storytelling.” The music community would likely, rightly, take issue with the appointment. It’s difficult for someone who doesn’t live in that world every day to understand the needs of the community. And it would be hard for the community to rally around and support someone who was appointed over more deserving candidates already doing the work. After all, I thought we were all about meritocracy these days? Shouldn’t we put the most qualified people into culturally-shaping roles? Or does meritocracy stop where political lines get drawn? I fear I know the answer.
Choosing optimism in the face of [gestures broadly at the world]
I don’t love gatekeeping as a general rule, and maybe there’s enough overlap between poetry and songwriting that Davis can be a good advocate for the literary arts and an involved community organizer for poetry in South Carolina. He’s already doing it for songwriting with the Southern Songwriters show. But I’m curious how he can be a great poet laureate for us from Nashville while maintaining his songwriting career and other extracurriculars. And I’m even more curious how he can do that without the support of much of the existing poetry community and organizations in the state, many of whom view his appointment as a slap in the face after the position was ignored and vacant for so long. That’s an uphill climb.
For my part, we’ll continue to do what we’ve been doing with Poets Live here in Greenville — monthly open mics, community building, workshops, supporting live poetry in the area, supporting poets in our community, and helping to identify and encourage the next generation of poets who haven’t found their voices yet. I’d love state-level support for those endeavors, but we’ve been doing it without for years, and we’ll keep at it no matter what.
If you’re reading this and want to tell Governor McMaster what you think, you can email, snail mail, or phone call him from this website. I find the email contact form to be the most useful. Only takes a few minutes. I wrote him today.
For all my local poet friends and neighbors that this appointment hurts, I see you. I’m sorry you waited so long only get passed by. I’ll end with an excerpt from SC poet J. Drew Lanham’s Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves.
Joy is the payoff, for those often down but never out.
The Poetry Society of South Carolina was founded in Charleston in 1921, and remains the oldest state poetry society in the country. They continue to hold events, workshops, poetry contests, and are a robust community of writers.
“Why now?” is a common question I’ve heard from a few folks, to which I’d simply say after being the longest-serving governor in South Carolina, McMaster’s current and final term expires in nine months in January 2027. But the state poet laureate serves a four-year term “until a successor has been appointed and qualified” and they’re eligible for reappointment one time. So hypothetically one of McMaster’s last acts as governor is appointing a non-poet to the poet laureate from now until 2034 (or even longer if a successor isn’t chosen in a timely fashion).
I’m unaware of any situation where a novelist (who wasn’t already well-known as a poet) was appointed as a state poet laureate. Some states have broadened the traditional role (Alaska has a “State Writer Laureate,” Idaho appoints a “Writer in Residence”) or split the roles (New York has a “State Poet” and a “State Author” (for fiction writers). But generally speaking, poets laureate are poets, first and foremost.
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