In a media release, Halifax Regional Municipality has announced Sue Goyette as its newest poet laureate.
The role serves as an ambassador and advocate for literacy, literature and the arts and reflects the vitality of the local community through appearances and readings of poetry at civic events and other activities.
Goyette will serve a three-year term beginning on April 28. The municipality’s eighth poet laureate, she takes over from Dr. Afua Cooper, who served in the position since 2018.
“This proud municipal tradition which relies on the written and spoken word to articulate the joys and struggles of our shared community takes on new significance in these unprecedented times,” says Mayor Mike Savage in the release.
Currently teaching in the creative writing program at Dalhousie University, the award-winning author has published six books of poems and a novel. Her newest collection, Anthesis, will be released later this year by Gaspereau Press.
“I think poetry is vital to these times we find ourselves in for how it engages and connects us and for how it invites a wider way of knowing and being,” says Goyette in the release. “I am grateful that the municipality is continuing to support poetry’s vital role in community, and I am honoured and ready to promote it.”
Visit halifax.ca for more information about Halifax’s poet laureate.