Lawrence resident Eric McHenry has been named the 2015-2017 Poet Laureate of Kansas, the Kansas Humanities Council announced Thursday.

During his term, McHenry will take part in public readings, presentations and discussions about poetry across Kansas — or, in his words, “be the Johnny Appleseed of poetry in the state.”

Eric McHenry

“Eric brings to the Poet Laureate of Kansas position an abundance of talent and enthusiasm,” said Julie Mulvihill, executive director of the Kansas Humanities Council in a news release Thursday. “As a writer, his words seem effortless, although we know how meticulously and thoughtfully he deliberates on each. As a teacher, his intelligence and humor make poetry come alive. The combination of these qualities will make Eric an exceptional poet laureate for our state.”

Though his two-year stint won’t officially begin until early May, McHenry said he’s excited to share poetry with those who might view the art form as “abstruse and inaccessible.”

“Poetry, for me, isn’t something you experience solely on your own. It’s a social thing,” he said. “It’s most alive when it’s words in the air rather than just words on a page.”

McHenry, an associate professor of English at Washburn University, has seen his work featured in publications such as Poetry International, Slate, Yale Review and others. He also contributes poetry reviews to the New York Times and Columbia magazine, and is a seven-time Pushcart Prize nominee as well as a 2011 Theodore Roethke Prize recipient.

He also boasts some pretty deep Kansas roots. As a seventh or possibly eighth-generation Topeka native, McHenry has long admired the work of William Stafford, whose poems “had a way of recognizing the quiet and subtle beauties of the state,” McHenry said.

The late poet was born in Hutchinson, grew up in Liberal and attended Kansas University.

“I think that if we’re paying more attention to language, we’re paying more attention to life, including the lives of others around us. I think poetry has made me a better person and a better neighbor,” McHenry said. “I never feel that I understand my state as well as I do when reading a Stafford poem. I hope to share his poetry with people across Kansas.”

McHenry’s third book of poems, “Odd Evening,” will be published by Waywiser Press in 2016. His debut, “Potscrubber Lullabies,” earned him the Kate Tufts Discovery Award in 2007, the largest American prize for a first book of poetry.