Texas

State Poet Laureate

In 1993, Texas established a state poet laureate position, which is currently held by Kevin Prufer.

City and County Poets Laureate

Corpus Christi

In 2025, Kiya Vance was appointed the poet laureate of Corpus Christi, Texas.

Dallas

In 2024, Mag Gabbert was named the second poet laureate of Dallas.

Houston

In 2023, Aris Kian Brown was appointed poet laureate of Houston, Texas. Schwartz will serve a two-year term.

McAllen

In 2025, Victoria Lopez was appointed as the poet laureate of McAllen, Texas. Lopez will serve a one-year term.

Type	Title	State
Writing Program	University of Houston	Texas
Literary Organization	WordSpace	Texas
Writing Program	University of Texas Michener Center	Texas
Literary Organization	The Writer's Garret	Texas
Literary Magazine	Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review	Texas
Literary Organization	Writers in the Schools	Texas
Literary Magazine	Gulf Coast	Texas
Literary Organization	American Literary Translators Association	Texas
Small Press	Mutabilis Press	Texas
Literary Organization	Montgomery County Literary Arts Council	Texas

I never knew them all, just hummed
and thrummed my fingers with the radio,
driving five hundred miles to Austin.
Her arms held all the songs I needed.
Our boots kept time with fiddles
and the charming sobs of blondes,

the whine of steel guitars
sliding us down in deer-hide chairs
when jukebox music was over.
Sad music’s on my mind tonight
in a jet high over Dallas, earphones
on channel five. A lonely singer,

dead, comes back to beg me,
swearing in my ears she’s mine,
rhymes set to music that make
her lies seem true. She’s gone
and others like her, leaving their songs
to haunt us.

Walt McDonald

1999

Old fang-in-the-boot trick. Five-chambered
asp. Pit organ and puff adder. Can live
in any medium save ice. Charmed by the flute
or the first thunderstorm in spring, drowsy
heart stirs from the cistern, the hibernaculum,
the wintering den of stars. Smells like the cucumber
served chilled on chipped Blue Willow. Her garden
of clings, sugars, snaps, and strings. Her creamy breasts
we called pillows and her bird legs and fat fingers
covered with diamonds from the mines in Africa.

The smell of cucumber.... Her mystery roses....

Catherine Bowman

2006

You looked Texas today
road hard, scrubbed brush, blown tires
gasoline islands

But later California returned—fortune’s poster child
radiating. Truck full of gas,
cheap camera in the glove compartment
stuffed toys on the dashboard,
beads on the steering wheel,
a pretty girl’s picture—fatherly devotion.

What is lost when love ceases
is the power to forget

the early sweetness, the late bitter
talk, the longing for renewal—we all want
Spring, but

Spring does not want us.

Patricia Spears Jones

2006

Poetry Near You

Texas

Recent & Featured Listings

Naomi Shihab Nye

Susan Wood

Hayan Charara

Poetry Near You

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Texas

Recent & Featured Listings

Naomi Shihab Nye

Susan Wood

Hayan Charara

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