Eau Claire poet laureate sits front and center as he emcees one of the Outloud open readings, a series he created, at the Acoustic Café in downtown Eau Claire.

Like a sonnet approaching its final rhyming couplet, the two-year term of Eau Claire’s poet laureate is almost at an end.

Bruce Taylor’s stint as the city’s officially appointed bard expires April 1. Taylor, a retired UW-Eau Claire professor and author of multiple volumes of poetry, was appointed by the Eau Claire City Council to the honorary, uncompensated position in May 2011.

“It sort of puts a face on literature in the Chippewa Valley,” Taylor said recently of being poet laureate. “It attaches a personality to that. It gives that person a little credibility.”

“I think that if you’d made things a little better for both writers and readers in the Chippewa Valley, then that would be a good thing.” – Bruce Taylor, on a successful poet laureate

Taylor has traded on that credibility, as well as his deep roots in the local literary scene, to aggressively promote poetry and writing in the Chippewa Valley in a number of ways. In the past two years, he has organized regular readings in the Janet Carson Gallery at the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center, at Acoustic Cafe, and at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library. Other forthcoming projects – which no doubt will continue after his term expires – include getting writers to volunteer at senior citizens’ facilities, fostering workshops with singer-songwriters, and finding a venue where local poets can get their work published regularly.

“I think that if you’d made things a little better for both writers and readers in the Chippewa Valley, then that would be a good thing,” he said when asked to define success for the post.

Taylor said he looks forward to the poet laureate program continuing, and said a new poet might take over some of the efforts he has started or head off in a new direction. On a national level, he noted, poets laureate tend to each pursue their own projects or ideas.

And as on the national level, the motivation for creating the position of poet laureate was to advance the medium of poetry – especially locally produced poetry – in the city, said Eau Claire City Council President Kerry Kincaid.

“One purpose is that we get to hear more poetry from local writers, and who can say that’s a bad thing?” Kincaid explained recently.

Kincaid lauded Taylor’s efforts as poet laureate. While the resolution that created the program allows the City Council president to assign the poet duties – a sample position description from the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association recommends the poet be asked to write two poems about the community per year – Kincaid noted that she didn’t have to put Taylor to work because he did so much on his own to boost the literary arts in Eau Claire. (By design, the job duties of poet laureate are more akin to free verse than to a strict series of stanzas and stressed syllables.)

Taylor admits he hasn’t penned any local poems solely because of his poet laureate position, but adds that his work is heavily inspired by the Chippewa Valley. His most recent collection, The Longest You’ve Lived Anywhere, which was published late last year, is a case in point. A section of the volume titled “These Days” features poems written about a fictionalized version of Eau Claire’s Mount Simon neighborhood, where Taylor owned his first home. Those familiar with the physical and psychological geography of that place will find it reflected in references to ballparks, tinny radios, screeching screen doors, alleyways, and back yards that face each other so “whatever we have to hide we fail to.”

As Taylor quipped, “I don’t have a lot of poems about sandy beaches and palm trees.”

According to the resolution that created the poet laureate program, near the end of a poet’s term in each odd-numbered year, the City Council president is supposed to convene a seven-member committee selected by the local chapter of the Wisconsin Regional Writers Association, “consisting of Eau Claire writers, teachers, book group members, and interested citizens.” That committee will them recommend a candidate, who must be appointed by the City Council. Kincaid said she will “absolutely” start the process to pick a new poet laureate. For his part, Taylor said he has a few potential poets in mind, but he hasn’t spoken to any of them about the gig.

Taylor hopes he’s had some success in the role of poet laureate, particularly in breaking the stereotype that poetry is a rarified art that only the elite can comprehend.

“Poetry is elemental,” he said. “It’s right in the middle of our lives if we look around a little bit.”