Dallas just crowned its newest champions of verse, as Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced Dr. Mag Gabbert and Naisha Randhar as the city's newly minted Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate, respectively. The announcement came during a special ceremony at City Hall on Wednesday, marking a continued commitment to the city's cultural vitality.

Dr. Gabbert, a Dallas native now waving the poetry flag for Dallas, is set to serve a two-year term as the ambassador for the written word. Her resume boasts a Pushcart Prize and a chunky volume of poetry that won the 2021 Charles B. Wheeler Prize. She's out to get the community jazzed up about all things literary—planning to hit up schools, and community events, and play host during office hours at the Central Library, according to the City of Dallas.

Toting degrees from UC Riverside and Texas Tech, Gabbert's no stranger to the academic world either. Before her new gig, she's been molding minds as a clinical assistant professor at SMU. Her work's not just stuffy textbook material though—it's graced the pages of outlets like The American Poetry Review and The Paris Review Daily.

On the junior front, high schooler Naisha Randhar is taking the Youth Poet Laureate title. This literary prodigy has been flexing her creative muscles since at least the ripe age of twelve when she self-published a fantasy novel. When she's not penning potential bestsellers, the Hockaday School student is busy with extracurriculars like debate, Model UN, and keeping pace on the track team.

The Dallas poet laureate program is a fairly new addition to the city's creative scene, kicked off in 2021 by the Dallas Public Library, the Office of Arts & Culture, and literary powerhouse Deep Vellum. Funded by local heroes like the Friends of Dallas Public Library and the Joe M. and Doris R. Dealey Family Foundation, it's looking to make poets more than just page-fillers in textbooks.