Who is Dallas’ new poet laureate? Meet Mag Gabbert

Mag Gabbert has been named Dallas’ second poet laureate and will work to connect the community with the written word.

She looks forward to “bringing poetry to people” and envisions public art installations where people exercise, enjoy nature and window shop.

“I want to see poetry in public, in high-traffic areas where anyone and everyone can encounter it just as they go about their daily lives,” she said. “My goal is to enrich the lives of folks who don’t even have poetry on their radar yet, who would never have thought to seek out a poem.”

Gabbert will also host reading, speaking and workshop events, including keeping office hours at the downtown Dallas Public Library. She’s passionate about sharing poetry with people from all walks of life.

“I think poetry is important because it invites us into a place of unknowing, a place where we are forced to ask questions and make new discoveries. Whether you are reading or writing a poem, you’re not going to think exactly what you thought before by the time you come out of it. That is, to me, the very essence of what poetry does: it changes your mind. It shifts. It transforms.”

In 2023, Gabbert published a book of poetry Sex Depression Animals, which won The Journal/Charles B. Wheeler Poetry Prize. She is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Discovery Award from the Unterberg Poetry Center and fellowships from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Idyllwild Arts and Poetry at Round Top.

Her work has been published in The American Poetry Review, The Paris Review Daily and more than 50 other magazines and journals.

The Dallas native graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. She is currently a clinical assistant professor at Southern Methodist University.

Gabbert has a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Riverside, and a doctorate in English from Texas Tech University.

Gabbert’s two-year term as poet laureate follows her predecessor Joaquín Zihuatanejo, the inaugural Dallas poet laureate.

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