LIE Drivers See Red, The Mets Wear The Blue, Queens Is Searching For Its Next Poet Laureate And That Scribe Could Be You!

Queens is looking for its next poet laureate:

“We are looking for a talented and energetic individual whose writing will inspire young and old,” Borough President Helen Marshall said at a press conference yesterday. Plus, “He or she must be proud to live here in Queens.”

The position is an honorary, three-year appointment created in 1997 by the Friends of the Queens College Library. It gained mass media attention in 2004 when Run-DMC’s Joseph “Rev. Run” Simmons unsuccessfully applied for the position. More than 78 poets applied that year. More are expected in 2007.

Queens is not a stereotypically poetic place, admitted Marie-Lise Gazarian Gautier of St. John’s University. “But poetry is all around,” she said. “If you look, there is beauty everywhere.”

And having a poet laureate is vital to cultural life in Queens, says James Muyskens, president of Queens College.

“A social scientist may be able to describe what it is like to live here,” he said. “But a poet can tell us how it feels to be alive in Queens.”