Talk:List of U.S. states' poets laureate

Incorrect title?
Shouldn't the title of this article be "Poets laureate of U.S. states"? As far as I know, that's the correct pluralization of Poet laureate (like Sergeants Major as the plural for Sergeant Major, for example). An "s" is added to the first part of the title, not both. Kafziel 17:31, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
 * This is supported by Webster's. It can be pluralized as either "Poets laureate" or "Poet laureates"; never "Poets laureates". Kafziel 20:33, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I'm new at this. I just updated the Texas Laureate position (replaced the 2005 Birkelbach with the 2008 Larry Thomas). Unfortunately, the current holder has the same name as both a Baseball player and an actor on Seinfeld. Can anyone change the link so that it goes to a dead end (he doesn't have a page on wikipedia)? --138.237.134.14 (talk) 21:16, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed organization (JAN2014)
Aiming to improve this toward FL status. Proposed revision (may change from time to time). --ColonelHenry (talk) 16:24, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Lede
 * 1 - Description of the posts, duties, history, legacy
 * 2 - Unique situations (rename section)
 * 2.1 - Indiana has a "premier poet" and a "poet laureate"
 * 2.2 - Why NJ and PA abolished their posts
 * 2.3 - About Idaho's "Writer-in-Residence"
 * 2.4 - states without--why?
 * 3 - List of current state poets laureate
 * 4 - List of past state poets laureate (possible?)
 * Notes/References
 * External links


 * Questions
 * Are there PLs for US territories (Puerto Rico, Samoa, Virgin Islands, etc.)?
 * Do we want to keep this as just "current" PLs, or add in past PLs (separate list or same list)?
 * Should I add a section in table of the statutes that create/govern the office?
 * should I add a link to the various state PL's official webpages (if on a government website) to the table rather than clog up the External links section?

Names of state articles?
I just noticed doing Google searches that we have State pages of the form Not sure if we should standardize.Naraht (talk) 05:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
 *  Poet Laureate (ex. North Carolina)
 * Poet Laureate of  (ex. Virginia)
 * Poets Laureate of  (ex. Maryland)
 *  State Poet Laureate (ex. Indiana)
 * Not sure either. Some states title their post differently, and that might be the reason for the inconsistency. Others are common names...NJ's title as "PL of NJ" wasn't official...the "PL" was just the recipient of the William Carlos Williams Citation of Merit officially, part of which was being considered PL. Would require some research before proceeding either way.--ColonelHenry (talk) 07:26, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Should this list be exhaustive or broken out?
It should be relatively easy to identify every state poet, regardless of title, since the Library of Congress maintains lists. It would make this list long, but probably not overly so. The alternative would be to create lists (in some cases, there might be enough coverage for an article) for each state, but that would result in numerous short lists (e.g. State Poet of Rhode Island). Currently there are breakouts to categories, but that only works if there is an article about a poet. I'm going to start populating this list in bullet point format, because tabular format consumes space. (I expect this to take days.) I started this thread because I have only a vague idea of what might happen, and I wanted to plan for input. BiologicalMe (talk) 18:29, 8 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree with you that bullet lists are much easier to work with and take up less space. I also think that the individual states should have their own articles, especially if they still have a poet laureate program, since right now only 17 states currently have their own articles. However, New Jersey, despite only having had two poets laureate, does have its own article, so I don't think the number matters so much. I think it'd be good for consistency. Also there is significant overlap in the poet laureate article which also lists the U.S. State poets laureate as well as municipal and county poets laureate although those are not exhaustive. The formatting and what is said for each state isn't consistent between this page and the general poet laureate page. For example some states only list the first poet laureate, some list the current, and some have a more detailed description of a program and who appoints the poet laureate. I'm trying to clean this up and make it more consistent. I think the more exhaustive information belongs on individual pages for each state. Some states like California, for example, have numerous cities with poets laureate and therefore warrant individual listings of municipal and county laureates as well. I tried to start that list at List of municipal poets laureate in California. Kiddo27 (talk) 23:05, 1 August 2022 (UTC)