As the first poet laureate in Coconut Creek — or, for now, any municipality in Broward County — Laura McDermott Matheric has volunteered to use her art form to connect with the community and help others express their feelings.
It’s not only about sharing her words, says Matheric, but what she can teach others.
“The role of the poet is not to just pontificate. There’s a teaching element, empowering others to take their own voice and write,” says Matheric. “If you look at the history of how bards have served society, they are the archivists of the community.”
Matheric was appointed to the two-year post in 2022. Her term ended in August 2024. In that time, she wrote 414 poems, organized 27 events and produced publications on social media.
Of the 414, more than 365 are haiku poems about Coconut Creek, which she playfully calls “Creekus.”
“They are haikus written and inspired by photos that are sent to me by residents of and about Coconut Creek,” says Matheric. “Now that I have 365 I want to put a calendar together of these poems.”
Matheric shares three of the Creekus haikus that could find their way onto the calendar.
Shhhh, my dear. Our love
speaks in decibels only
our bodies should hear.
And another:
Amidst the green maze,
secrets wrapped in leafy shade,
forest lost in dreams.
And a third:
Silent vigil kept,
eyes trace your every move,
my secret longing.
For the Creekus, Matheric uses her Facebook page. Followers send photos that have to do with Coconut Creek, and Matheric writes a Haiku about them. Sometimes the poems have far-reaching results. One recent photo and Haiku about a cat resulted in the homeless feline being adopted, she says.
“I connected with someone,” says Matheric. “I just kind of wrote what was in my head and what I wrote about the cat tapped a good nerve in someone.
Matheric is also called on by the city to compose poems for special events such as Veterans Day and Juneteenth for Coconut Creek, and a diversity event for the Florida Department of Transportation. In July, she attended a national Poetry Foundation event in Chicago, where she met poet laureates from other cities and learned about national grants that could bring programs like Poetry in Public Places to Coconut Creek.
“I’m an advocate for the arts on a local, state, county and national level,” she says. “It’s about giving my community a voice and sharing that voice with others. It’s about serving as a historian, an archivist of the histories of your community.”
Coconut Creek Commissioner Josh Rydell was instrumental in bringing Matheric on as poet laureate when he was serving as mayor of the city. He had seen some of the literary activities she was doing in the community and says he brought the idea to his colleagues.
“I said I’d love to have a poet laureate – somebody at our special events,” he says. “I think it engages people, not only in literary things, but also cultural events.”
The commission was receptive and Matheric was appointed, according to Rydell.
“It’s been amazing ever since – the engagement, the thought, the thoughtfulness that she’s brought to our community events,” says Rydell. “It really changes an event, where normally you’re seeing somebody just cut a ribbon, or somebody speak on Veterans Day, but the poetry – in whatever form it comes – has really re-engaged the arts in municipal government, which sometimes in smaller cities, you don’t necessarily have.”
The two-year poet laureate position began as a volunteer designation and an appointed position. This year, the Coconut Creek Commission opened it to all city residents, and there is an application process. The 2024 laureate will receive a $250 per year honorarium for the two-year term. Matheric says she has applied. The 2024 laureate will be announced in September, according to Rydell.
With a grant from the Broward Cultural Division, Matheric led Poetry in the Park gatherings in June and July 2024, bringing people of all ages together in a three-session workshop to learn how to express themselves through the art form.
Participants gathered at Coconut Creek parks to observe nature, create their own poetry and eventually performed a public reading. Matheric led them through exercises and eventually published an ebook anthology of their works alongside nature photos.
“I collaborated with the urban forester of Coconut Creek and the landscape inspector,” she says. “In one discussion the landscape inspector was talking about bald cypresses and their knotty knees that grow up out of the ground . . . I said to the group ‘What does this make you think of?’”
Matheric says she drew a parallel between the cypress tree’s knotty knees, arthritic knees and herself as an athlete and sports coach.
“I did this extended metaphor of a poem about my ailing body and this comparison of the tree with its knotty knees, and how that could be the catalyst for expressing my story,” she says.
Coconut Creek residents, says Matheric, also reach out looking for help to express themselves.
“People call me all the time, asking ‘Hey, could you help me write a poem for my wife for our anniversary?’” she says.
Coconut Creek resident Rosemary Papagno attended Poetry in the Park and other workshops by Matheric. When Papagno’s father went into hospice for 151 days, Matheric’s teachings helped her through it, she says.
“She gave me an outlet for my grief, in teaching me how to write poetry,” says Papagno, whose father died in December 2023. “It really assisted me in processing my feelings and grief, just by learning how other poets write. . . In the beginning, the writings were just for myself, but I did perform them at two poetry slams as well.”
Matheric says she was honored to help Papagno work through the end-of-life experience. “That’s what a laureate is supposed to do. It’s supposed to be there for the community and to serve the community for whatever their needs may be,” she says.
Since 2007 Matheric has been a full-time faculty member in the English department at Broward College, where she teaches composition, fiction, creative writing and as a poetry professor. She has a master of fine arts in creative writing and is working on her Ph.D. in higher educational leadership and research methodologies at Florida Atlantic University.
She also has been a poet in residence at the Girls Club Fort Lauderdale, a gallery that promotes and exhibits female artists. Matheric was so moved by the experience that she turned it into a picture book, “Visions on Alligator Alley: Ekphrastic Story in Verse,” using the art and related poems side by side.
“I started writing about the pieces and I realized that I had a central voice, a fictional character,” says Matheric. “So I started writing from that central character and voice, and I brought in a little of my own life growing up in South Florida.”
Matheric says she considers it an honor to be poet laureate.
“Poetry is such a raw form of communication. It’s compressed language. It deals with emotions and goes far beyond the jingle-jangle rhymes of Dr. Seuss,” she says. “It’s also a cathartic release and we need that right now. There’s so much being invested in mental health and we need outlets. We need safe and healthy outlets to vent those pent-up feelings.”
