Montara Resident Caroline Goodwin Appointed as County's First Poet Laureate

By Bay City News Service

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors Tuesday morning officially appointed a Montara woman to serve as the county's first poet laureate.

Caroline Goodwin, an adjunct professor of writing and literature at San Francisco's California College of the Arts, thanked the board and said she was "really honored" to be appointed to the newly established post.

"This is really special," Goodwin said. "A lot of times we write and we wonder if it goes anywhere or reaches anyone."

Goodwin, an Alaska native and former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford University, was chosen from a pool of 15 candidates who were selected by a Poet Laureate Advisory Committee formed in April.

The 12-person committee included literature professors, county supervisors, an arts columnist, a librarian and the poet laureates of East Palo Alto and the state of California.

Before reading a poem titled "Invitation," Goodwin said she would devote her two-year term as poet laureate to bringing poetry-related events to the diverse population of the county.

"Poetry should be fun," Goodwin said. "It is one of the oldest art forms that we have as human beings."