The second verse will be the same as the first, at least when Eau Claire’s poet laureate is concerned. On March 26, the Eau Claire City Council voted unanimously to appoint Bruce Taylor to a second term as the city’s preeminent poet. Taylor, a professor emeritus of English at UW-Eau Claire, was first chosen for the position in 2011. He’s humble about being given a second two-year term. “My guess is they asked around and couldn’t find anyone else to do it,” he said, “because I asked around and couldn’t find anyone else to do it.” Taylor spent his first term promoting the written (and spoken) word through a variety of literary events in the Chippewa Valley, including readings at the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center, Acoustic Café, and the public library. He hopes to continue and expand these endeavors: Taylor will oversee a forthcoming Volume One column featuring the poetry and prose of local writers, and he also plans to seek a grant to fund a reading series called “Word for Word” that would pair a local writer with a visiting one from another part of the state. Taylor is the author of eight collections of poetry – including, most recently, The Longest You’ve Lived Anywhere: New & Selected Poems – and his work has been published in numerous periodicals, including The Chicago Review, The Columbia Review, New York Quarterly, and The Nation. “I want to volunteer my services to the community, and this is probably the best way to do that,” he says.