I like to think of the position of Maryland's Poet Laureate as being about both language and the imagination.  Poetry addresses our shared human desire for what is meaningful and beautiful.  It provides windows to help broaden our perspectives and mirrors to help us reflect on our experiences.  It can serve to help bring increased meaning and grace into the public discourse.

Poetry also helps us make sense of the challenges we face in this increasingly complex and interdependent world.  It can contribute to our ability to understand complex relationships and accept necessary ambiguity so that we might be wiser, more compassionate and more productive citizens.
  
Indeed, poetry seeks to encourage us in our efforts to live significant lives. It can, as Benjamin Demott has written, "help us explore our human connections as well as our distinct human otherness."

I would like to engage the position of Poet Laureate as a way to help encourage the vision, moral imagination and artistic expression necessary for us to embrace constructively and energetically the necessary work of the 21st century.  I hope to serve both poetry and the citizens of Maryland as we move into the challenges and opportunities of the future.