NYC Poet Laureate Field Sort of Crowded

Upon reading the news that Tina Chang is to be Brooklyn’s new poet laureate, we wondered what kind of environment she’d be entering. Would she stand alone and represent the entire city by proxy, or would she have to jockey for position amidst a tangle of other wordsmiths?

As it turns out, it’s a little of both. The only other borough besides Brooklyn to have a poet laureate (at least if Google is correct) is Queens. (We’re not counting the woman in Staten Island who simply declared herself the laureate there. You need government approval!) There is no citywide laureate except Manhattan’s Zora Howard, our Youth Laureate. Apparently, no adult wanted to handle that hot potato. So, kudos to Chang for stepping up to the Brooklyn post. She can’t really speak for the whole city, but she can probably try to represent the Bronx and Manhattan grown-ups.