Serendipity. Happy chance!

Friday morning just as I was getting my mind ready to write this column about Betsy Sholl, Maine’s poet laureate, reading at Pennacook Art Center at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 20, Garrison Keillor began his weekday morning “Writer’s Almanac.” I stopped to listen.

The poem Keillor chose to read that morning was “To Walt Whitman in heaven…” by Betsy Sholl. It’s a fine poem in which she manages to take us back to her own adolescence, evince the feeling of Whitman’s poetry, and bring to life an aspiring young basketball star. Wonderful.

In the 1500s, Be Jonson had become England’s first poet laureate. In 1937, Joseph Alexander was named the first American poet laureate. Why then, the first year of FDR’s second term?

Haven’t yet delved into that story, but I’m betting on Eleanor.

And whose birthday was on Aug. 11? Louise Bogan, born 1897, Keillor reported, in Livermore Falls, distinguished editor of Poetry magazine for many years and the third poet laureate of the United States. Quite a few U.S. poet laureates have been New Englanders, Robert Lowell and Robert Frost (a transplant), among them. Donald Hall of New Hampshire becomes poet laureate in October.

Almost 50 years after the first poet laureate of the United States was named by the Library of Congress, Maine chose its first state poet laureate, Kate Barnes.

Sholl, named laureate in April, teaches at USM. She has published six volumes of poetry. You can find her works at the Rumford library this week.

The Pennacook Art Center at 82 Congress St. on Rumford’s Island is a young organization, but thriving. Executive Director Betsy Bell told me there are 23 exhibiting artist members and a fast-growing body of community members.

The center is a bustling enterprise, offering exhibit and instruction opportunities and a full calendar of exhibits and special events – like next Sunday’s poetry reading.

Variety is the spice of life: Sunday afternoon this week, off to East Dixfield for the weekly Country Folk Jam Session (645-4875); next Sunday, Pennacook Art Center (364-9922) for a poetry session with Maine’s poet laureate, Betsy Sholl.

Linda Farr Macgregor lives in Rumford and is the author of “Rumford Stories.”