Poet Laureate > View Laureate-related news < > Invite the Laureate to speak < > School Visits by the Laureate < > Graduate Student Poets in the Schools < Dr. Fleda Brown was officially appointed Delaware's Poet Laureate by Governor Minner on October 26, 2001, at the Delaware Arts Summit Conference in Dover, Delaware. The poet laureate for Delaware represents poetry in the State---not any particular kind of poetry, but poetry as art. Art is a discipline. It requires study, knowledge of its own history and of its contemporaries. The laureate position is not to endorse any form of poetry, traditional or avant-garde, but to encourage all attempts toward the art, with the goal of excellence in use of the written word. Since poetry is historically and currently a spoken as well as a written form, the laureate also represents the spoken word, always with the understanding that excellence and precision in the use of language are the underpinnings of the art.