Mag Gabbert was named Dallas’ second poet laureate in April. The Pushcart Prize winner is a graduate of Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and now teaches at SMU. Gabbert will serve a two-year term during which she’ll maintain office hours at the downtown J. Erik Jonsson Central Library.
What advice did outgoing poet laureate Joaquin Zihuatanejo give you? There are times when it’s OK to say no. Lots of opportunities have already come my way. I couldn’t be more grateful. But already there are moments when it has become overwhelming because I also have a job.
You meet someone in a bar, and they ask what you do. What’s your response? Before becoming poet laureate, my first response would be I’m a professor. For your average everyday person, that sort of translates better. When you say, “I’m a poet,” people become suspicious. They are like, “OK, sure, we all have written poetry at some point in our lives. Surely that’s not what you do.” Now, though, what’s great about a position like the Dallas poet laureate is that it validates that poetry is a living, breathing art form. There are poets out there practicing this craft. I can easily explain, yeah, here’s the evidence that this is actually what I do. I go out a lot less frequently to bars and things. I’m sure eventually I’ll have the opportunity to answer that question. I’m looking forward to it.
What is the secret to reading in public and doing it well? Time yourself. Make sure that you stick to that time limit and actually stay under it because you want to leave people wanting to hear more. And if you’re part of an event where there are other folks being featured, there’s nothing worse than pulling attention away from others who are partaking in that event by using up more than your share of the time.
I’ve heard you talk about how you’ve read the dictionary cover to cover multiple times. Give me your three favorite words. Wow. “Tube” was my favorite word as a little kid. I’m actually going back to words that I loved in childhood. My therapist would say this is like me delighting my inner child, but these are the words that first brought me to language and brought me to being really invested in it. Another favorite is any French word that ends in an X but you don’t hear it. Like “grand prix,” for example. Oh! “Pageantry” is another fantastic word and also a fantastic concept.
Do you subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary? I use the dictionary.com app. I am a huge advocate of that app for my students in particular. One of the things that everyone could benefit from doing more often is just simply looking up a word before they use it to make sure that it means exactly what they think it means. I do this multiple times a day because I may have heard a word in conversation. I have a general concept of what it means. But before I put it down in writing, I’m going to make sure that I don’t have a slightly skewed perception of it.
You live near Dealey Plaza. So do you have any theories? My only theory is that I do live in a haunted building. I don’t know that it’s our friend JFK specifically who is here, but my building is near the Sixth Floor Museum. I’ve had strange things happen. For example, I may come home and one book is pulled out from my shelf. The spine is sticking out by a couple of inches from the others. No joke. And I have this metal giraffe statue that I inherited from my grandmother that sits on a console table under my TV. It faces to the side. But I came home from a short trip recently, and I was watching TV at night. I glanced down, and I noticed it was facing directly at me.
“When you say, ‘I’m a poet,’ people become suspicious.”
Have you given up your dreams yet of joining a SWAT team? [laughs] You could say I’ve given up my dream of that primarily because I’ve come to accept that while I am strong of spirit, I am weak of body and small, and so I wouldn’t really be the best fit for a SWAT team. But having said that, it would be interesting to collaborate with other elements of public service, not just the Dallas Public Library but things like the police force. Is there a way of bringing poetry to the folks who serve our city in that capacity? I don’t know yet, but it would be cool to find out.
We all know Dallas is a literary city. Is it a poetic city? I think that it is a poetic city. To be poetic is a concept that is slippery and ephemeral and tough to nail down. But there are many ways in which, for me, Dallas is a poetic city. We have a really inspiring skyline. We have beautiful parks, with beautiful pieces of artwork. We have incredible cuisine here. I actually find something poetic in just a delicious new taste on my palate. The list could go on and on. All of those elements to me are poetic.
This story originally appeared in the July issue of D Magazine with the headline “Rhyming and Feeling.” Write to timr@dmagazine.com.
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