Following the recommendation of the West Tisbury public library trustees, the West Tisbury selectmen voted recently to appoint West Tisbury resident Fan Ogilvie to the position of town poet laureate.

Mrs. Ogilvie is a poet, teacher of poetry and organizer of poetry workshops and events in Washington, D.C., New Haven, Conn., New York city, and the Vineyard. In 1984 she received a Chester Jones Foundation commendation award. She is included in two chapbooks, The Other Side of the Hill and In a Certain Place. Her poems are published in The Poet and The Poem Anthology, Poet Lore, Three Sisters, Z’Arts, Fulcrum, An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics, The Martha’s Vineyard Journal of Writing, online on Fieralingue, the Poet’s Corner and others.

Her public readings include the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Corcoran Museum of Art, Georgetown University, the Stirling Library, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others. She established the Folger Shakespeare Library’s poetry board and served as its chairman from 1986 until 1995. In addition, she helped to organize the Martha’s Vineyard Writers Program. She taught poetry at the Featherstone Center for the Arts on Martha’s Vineyard from 1996 until 2007. She graduated from Smith College, and earned a master’s degree in arts from George Washington University. She now lives on the Vineyard with her husband, Donald. They have two children, Jennifer and Adam.

Poet laureate is a municipal appointment with a term of one year (renewable up to three). There is no budget, no salary, no benefits and no power. The West Tisbury poet laureate is asked to help raise the awareness of poetry within the community. Aside from that, he or she must write one poem per year to be printed in the town report, and to present that poem at the annual town meeting. Beyond that, the job is left to the poet’s individual imagination.

The town position was the brainchild of Cynthia Riggs, a longtime town resident and author. Cynthia’s mother, Dionis Coffin Riggs, was a widely published and beloved local poet who often heard herself called the West Tisbury poet laureate. Dionis bristled at this, however, protesting that poet laureate is not a lighthearted sobriquet; it is an officially conferred title. She died in April of 1997, and the idea became dormant but never quite forgotten. Nearly 10 years later, in spring of 2006, Cynthia Riggs petitioned the town to put an article on the annual town meeting warrant establishing the position of poet laureate. The town voted in favor, and the rest is history.

The town’s first poet laureate, Dan Waters, was appointed in 2006. He has since served the maximum three-year term, and became a member of the search committee that ultimately recommended Mrs. Ogilvie.