(AP) – Kansas has named a Leawood woman as the state’s new poet laureate.

The Kansas Humanities Council announced Wednesday that Wyatt Townley is the 2013-15 Kansas Poet Laureate. Townley, a fourth-generation Kansan, says she hopes to use poetry to help Kansans explore the concept of home.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports (http://bit.ly/YfhBUH ) that Townley is the first poet laureate selected by the Humanities Council, which took over the program from the now-defunct Kansas Arts Commission.

She’s a founding board member of The Writers Place in Kansas City, Mo., and has appeared at writers’ conferences and literary festivals in the Midwest and Northeast. She takes over the post from Lawrence resident Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, who was the 2009-2012 Poet Laureate of Kansas.
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