The Gift of Gifted Teachers: Poets Laureate

With great whooping cheers I celebrate the appointment of Sydney Lea as Vermont’s new Poet Laureate.  At the same time, I wipe away tears of gratitude as I realize that as a creative writing student, first at the University of Louisville and then at Vermont College, I had the privilege to study with two exceptional writers, both of them brilliant and generous teachers, who would later be each be named poet laureate of their home states:  Sena Jeter Naslund of Kentucky, and now, so well-deserved, Sydney Lea of Vermont.