SPREADING POETRY ACROSS TEXAS

poet laureate karla k. morton

utside the school library at Mansfield High, a neon yellow banner screams “Welcome, Karla Morton! MHS alumni 1982!” Students mill around, curious about the local girl made famous – no, not on American Idol, but by the Texas Legislature. Karla K. Morton is the new Texas State Poet Laureate for 2010. A Denton resident, she is the first woman in more than 15 years to receive the title, and she’s at her old high school beginning a yearlong tour of Texas to make poetry more accessible and relevant to teens.

Yes, poetry and teens. Here at Mansfield, they are respectful of the lady in white wearing cowboy boots. They want to learn from her, they want to be inspired by her. Like Karla, they also write stories and poetry, but they want to get better at it. They want to know how she got started, where she gets inspiration, if she writes every day. Then she begins to read from her book of poems, Becoming Superman. The poems are about knowing yourself and tapping into your dreams – just as Karla Morton tapped into hers. There are poems about her son’s first date, about mother-daughter relationships, about death and her own mortality. A breast cancer survivor, she has a missionary’s zeal and a sense of urgency to reach people who can be healed by poetry.

“As far back as I can remember,” she says, “I’ve had words in my head that rolled over and over and over again until I wrote them down. When I was in 5th grade, I had a great teacher and I had to write a poem about my favorite color. My favorite color was white, so I wrote a poem about white and she loved it … and I was like, Wow! You get to see the effect that something you created had on someone else. From that moment on, I knew I was going to write.”

Being Poet Laureate in Texas carries no obligations or requirements. There’s no funding and no agenda from the state Legislature. But Karla, a published poet, knew right away she wanted to take poetry to teens, especially those in towns underserved by the arts. For much of 2010, she will be traveling from Denton to cities such as Alpine and Salado with her Little Town, Texas Tour. “Each Poet Laureate kind of makes their own agenda and mine is going back to the roots, going back to the kids. I was so inspired in school.”

A day with Karla includes poetry and art contests for students, as well as readings from her book Becoming Superman and favorite poems. “I love to make the focus those little towns … people that normally maybe wouldn’t have the opportunity to have a Laureate. I just want to reach the roots of Texas. I want to inspire them.”

Karla sits and talks over a cup of coffee, thinking about the good and the bad that life has already dealt her at age 45. “Those high school years at Mansfield were really precious,” she says. In 2008, Karla was diagnosed with breast cancer. Writing her way through chemo, she found strength – and inspiration for her poetry. One year to the day after her cancer surgery, she learned she would be Poet Laureate. “There’s no doubt that poetry helped me,” she says. “I needed grit; I needed a slap in the face. I told myself: No, you are not going to sit here and feel sorry for yourself, you are going to get up, you are going to fight, damn it!” While in pain, she wrote Redefining Beauty, which she says is not a pretty book. “It is not soft, kind or gentle. There is some kickass in there,” she says, pumping her fist. (One critic hailed the book as “a universal manifesto for the rage to live.”)

Today, cancer free, Karla wants to innovate as the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate and find sponsors for the Little Town, Texas Tour. “Half of this is just going on faith. I have always lived by faith. This will happen,” she says. “My final goal at the end of this tour is to publish a book where I would write a poem about each town that I go to and choose kids’ poems or artwork for the book. I think nothing gives you the writing bug faster.”

Karla, a board member of the Greater Denton Arts Council and founding member of Denton Poets’ Assembly, released Redefining Beauty (Dos Gatos Press) last fall. She has two books out this spring: Stirring Goldfish (Finishing Line Press) and The Poet Laureate Series (Texas Christian University Press).

by Manuella Rogers