Lisa Schwartz was introduced as Newtown’s first Poet Laureate by First Selectman Pat Llodra on Saturday, September 19. The announcement was one of the opening events of the 2015 Newtown Arts Festival (see related story, “Festival Weekend Continued A Month-Long Celebration Of Arts”).

She joins seven other town Poet Laureates in Connecticut.

The poetry editor for the now-defunct The Newtowner magazine, Ms Schwartz organized and promoted a poetry competition in 2012 for which State Poet Laureate Dick Allen served as judge. She is also a visiting instructor at the Community Learning Project and a former vice chairman of the Newtown Board of Education.

Her work will be featured in a forthcoming collection of writing generated by a writing workshop at Byrd’s Books in Bethel.

In introducing Newtown’s first Poet Laureate, Mrs Llodra described the position as the public face of the arts in Newtown, an idea reflected in Ms Schwartz’s vision of her position.

In her application Ms Schwartz noted that she will use her position to promote poetry and the arts “wherever and whenever I can.” She hopes to create a town wide poetry competition and “concentrate on drawing Newtown’s students into the fold.”

The idea of a Newtown Poet Laureate was proposed by the Board of Selectman in April. At that time the Board of Selectman turned to the Newtown Cultural Arts Commission for “guidance and recommendations.” NCAC was charged by the town’s selectmen in June to solicit applications for the voluntary post.

NCAC received what Cultural Commission Chairman Laura Lerman called “four strong applications.” Ms Schwartz was chosen based on the poetry she submitted as well as her vision of the position. Her term runs three years.

Following the announcement on September 19 that she had been appointed the inaugural Newtown Poet Laureate, Ms Schwartz read the following work, which she had reportedly written for the occasion:

Homage To Art

You can’t define it,

No less try to rhyme it

You must simply accept that it is;

Sometimes inscrutable, indeed irrefutable

Art is the Gee to our Whiz.

She may be soulful or shrill,

Inclined to the thrill,

Her gifts runneth over with zeal;

She’s known to be foxy, She delivers with moxie,

She meanders in rivers surreal.

Consider Whitman and his leaves of grass,

Or Keats and his passion for rhyme;

Shakespeare scripting the great morass,

Or Dalí and his melting of time.

Think Mona Lisa and the art of beguile

Or Pity poor Annabel Lee;

Ponder the thinker musing in style

Or Mozart scoring symphonies.

Over the rainbow, born to run;

Like a rolling stone, let it be.

Rogers and Hammerstein, Simon and Garfunkel,

Music, Stand by me.

Now, conjure a world without all this,

Without canvas or lyric or carving;

What’s left is a void, a gaping abyss,

A place unmistakably starving.

For what’s grand about art

Is her command of our soul;

Her decree to forever redeem.

To move us, upend us, and even transcend us

Toward wonders sublimely unseen.

So let there be art, let us savor her light

Here among friends on this field;

Let the music suffuse us,

Let the poets amuse us,

Let love be the bounty we yield.

—Lisa Schwartz