New Hampshire is recognized as home to many of the nation’s best poets, such as former U.S. laureates Donald Hall, Charles Simic and Maxine Kumin. And Portsmouth is purported to have the most poets per capita.

Mark DeCarteret says poets have historically filled pages during long winters away from big cities. But, he said, even on a summer afternoon, when people could be out “running through sprinklers and eating fruit,” a Portsmouth bookstore can host a packed poetry reading. He said that has a lot to do with the city’s poet laureate program.   

DeCarteret recently became the seventh poet laureate of Portsmouth. He was nominated by Walter Butts, New Hampshire’s new state poet laureate, who introduced him to the City Council last week. He was selected by a local committee among five nominees.

DeCarteret hasn’t announced the community project he’s expected to complete during the next two years, saying he may spend most of the first year developing his plans. But he will certainly continue to write while serving as a public figure in poetry.

He teaches poetry at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester, where he looks for originality and effort in student writing. Before that, he worked for several years at the former Stroudwater Books in Portsmouth, where he hosted monthly readings. His experience at an independent bookstore may be the inspiration for his project, he said.

Before creative writing programs, DeCarteret said, poets used to hone their craft by reading books from small presses or buying them directly from other poets. He hopes to bring more attention to small presses and local book stores. 

While new media allows writers to reach broader audiences, books and readings provide a necessary personal connection. “Really, a book is about as intimate as it gets,” DeCarteret said. 

Always interested in art, he initially explored visual arts, but was drawn to the relative simplicity of creating poetry. Poetry is not the most popular art form, he said, but subversion is part of its definition. It requires quiet and concentration, both of which are becoming less popular, he said.

DeCarteret added that more people are writing and publishing than ever before in the nation’s history, but few people are reading poetry. “We need good readers, as well as writers,” he said.

Though he never settled into a particular style, DeCarteret said he tends to approach poems by making himself “available.” He opens his mind, gathering as many thoughts as possible before assembling them. Like a collage, he pieces together phrases, triggered by a fragment. Rather than write a poem about something, he finds out what the poem is about by writing it. This intuitive process surprises even the author.

He has a similar way of talking, often quoting other poets and poems. While gesturing emphatically, his train of thought turns in different, though distantly connected directions. After realizing he jumped the track during an interview at a local coffee shop, he quietly said, “Oh boy.”   

Born in Lowell, Mass., in 1960, DeCarteret graduated from Emerson College and represented the school at the 1990 Boston Inter-collegiate Poetry Festival. He got his master’s at the University of New Hampshire, where he received the Thomas Williams Memorial Poetry Prize. He has been a fixture in the Seacoast poetry scene, as a reader, editor and performer in the Dadaist troupe Carteret Voltaire for the last 15 years. He lives in Stratham with his wife, Anne.

DeCarteret’s poetry has appeared in more than 200 different reviews, as well as such anthologies as “American Poetry: The Next Generation” in 2000. His books of poetry include “Over Easy, Review: A Book of Poems,” “The Great Apology” and “(If This Is the) New World.” He also co-edited “Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets.”

As the Port City’s new poet laureate, Mark DeCarteret has issued a homework assignment: Write an “ABC poem,” 26 words long, with each word starting with a different letter in alphabetical order.