Meet the Poet Laureate

Portsmouth's newly chosen poet laureate, Mark DeCarteret, right, is cheered on by supporters at the City Council meeting on April 6, 2009. Deb Cram photo

It’s a good trick if you can pull it off. As a poet you can’t be just game. You must also nip some gumption. Toss back some brass. “You must go on your nerve,” as Frank O’Hara half-in-jest requests from us. And you must be willing to take risks. Kiss-off a few relics. But enlist them as well. Remind yourself what really holds reign on those book shelves of yours. And always do the body’s bidding as much as the brain.

As a poet you hoist and raise up the mundane. Presto-ing the plain-spoken and preposterous—nickels and pickled eggs, pyres made out of matches and napkins, this phoenix to be snuffed out with a shot of whatever’s cheapest, and palming it all into keepsakes, minor-miracles. Or, something so lucid, so clued-in, it’s criminal.

But you can never do it alone. It calls for accomplices. Ones who are willing to be at-a-loss or bewildered. Even outwitted, taken-in. “At last between two persons,” there’s O’Hara again, “instead of two pages.” Without which the poem is a singular task. A past-act or worse, something passed-off, this transaction. And so it is here. In those gaps. That poetry matters again. Not only now. But just… then.

Here is what I had written to supply to the papers:
As a teacher, Mark DeCarteret says he tries “opening an unexpected door or two”; today he opens a new door for himself: Portsmouth Poet Laureate.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1960, Mark DeCarteret attended and graduated from Emerson Collegein 1990 with his B.F.A. in Creative Writing (their representative at the 1990 Boston Inter-Collegiate Poetry Festival) and from the University of New Hampshire in 1993 with an M.A. in English – Writing. Since then, DeCarteret has been a fixture in the New Hampshire/Southern Maine poetry scene as a reader/editor, a performer and a publishing poet.

DeCarteret will be the city’s seventh Poet Laureate, serving for the next two years as the public face of poetry in the community and creating a project that supports the mission of the Poet Laureate Program: “building community through poetry.”

Mark DeCarteret is no stranger to the Poet Laureate Program’s work. He was the teacher/facilitator for one of the writing groups in Mimi White’s 2005-2007 “What is Home” project and the group he led continues to meet locally. He was also the Esther Buffler Poetry Fellow at Portsmouth High School in 2007 and 2008, bringing his teaching expertise to several English classes. In addition, Mark DeCarteret co-edited Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (1999) and has been a featured poet at many local and regional Poetry Events including the PPLP Poetry Hoot and Jazzmouth: The Seacoast Poetry and Jazz Festival.

Poet laureate nominees must have a history of sharing poetry, live or work in the Portsmouth area, and demonstrate excellence in writing poetry. A committee of seven, made up of poets, local citizens and community leaders, chose DeCarteret from a list of five nominees. “It was a difficult choice,” reported the selection committee’s chairperson. “Mark is an exceptional choice for Portsmouth Poet Laureate,” said PPLP co-chair Lesley Kimball, “He is an award-winning, experienced and widely published poet who is dedicated to teaching and sharing poetry with others. We’re looking forward to a very exciting two years.”

Current Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish wrote “He is a poet of considerable intellect and has the possibility of becoming a major American poet,” on DeCarteret’s book Review: A Book of Poems. DeCarteret was introduced at the City Council meeting by Walter Butts, the newly appointed New Hampshire Poet Laureate.

DeCarteret’s poems have appeared in over two hundred different reviews including AGNI, Chicago Review, Phoebe, Poetry East and Salt Hill as well as such anthologies as American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press, 2000) and Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press, 2000). His books of poetry are Over Easy (Minotaur Press, 1990), Review: A Book of Poems (Kettle of Fish Press, 1995), The Great Apology (Oyster River Press, 2001), and (If This Is the) New World (March Street Press, 2007) about which former Portsmouth Poet Laureate Mimi White wrote: “No new poet writes with such grace & quirkiness, awe & irreverence. Read these poems. You’ll wander in a land of bees & meringue…you’ll be ‘maneuvered by chance’ and when you are done, your racing heart will be knocking to get back in.”

DeCarteret currently teaches at New Hampshire Institute of Art and says in his teaching statement: “Here, the imagination doesn’t have to travel far for its next meal. It seems always at work. So, we play with it. Seriously.”

DeCarteret named Portsmouth poet laureate

By Adam Leech

aleech@seacoastonline.com

PORTSMOUTH — A man well-known for his passion for teaching and writing poetry will be the city's seventh poet laureate.