Lacey City Council names new poet laureate 

Four years after naming its first poet laureate, the City of Lacey is now passing the torch to another individual.

The Lacey City Council voted unanimously to appoint Sonya Wohletz to the position, following Cynthia Pratt's exit after a tenure that helped shape the program's founding policy. The council installed Wohletz for the 2026-28 term decision at a meeting on May 19.

Special Projects Administrator Shanelle Pierce presented the recommendation of Wohletz to the council.  

The city accepted applications from Jan. 8 to March 6. Despite outreach through social media, flyers, word of mouth campaigns, a local arts newsletter and press coverage, the city received just one application, Pierce said. Staff extended the deadline, but no additional candidates applied. 

With no arts committee in place, program policy called for an advisory board to take up review of the position. 

The panel, which convened on March 23, included Pratt, Commission on Equity, Parks and Library Boards, as well as representatives from South Puget Sound Community College and Saint Martin's University. 

Pierce said an English professor from South Puget Sound Community College noted the low turnout was not a surprise, attributing it to what was described as the current climate surrounding poetry and literature. 

The panel initially flagged accessibility concerns after reviewing Wohletz's poetry samples, which some members found too esoteric, Pierce said. After meeting her in person and hearing her proposal, panelists concluded her planned programming was aimed at a general public audience. 

Poet profile 

Wohletz, a nine-year Lacey resident, works as a Behavioral Health Specialist with the Washington State Health Care Authority. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, according to her application materials. 

Her debut poetry collection, "Bir Sira Sonra/One Row After," was published in 2022. A second collection, "Milklings," is forthcoming from South Broadway Press this year. She is also fluent in English and Spanish, with reading ability in Portuguese, Italian and intermediate Turkish. 

Wohletz proposed a $5,000 annual budget for her two-year program, as per her submitted documents.

Key initiatives include in-person and virtual poetry workshops, a community collection called "Letters to My Hometown" that invites multilingual written contributions from Lacey residents, and outreach to local schools to recruit two paid student interns for editing and publication work. She also proposed tracking community impact through satisfaction surveys and annual written reports submitted to the city. 

Council member Nicolas Dunning said he got several pages into Wohletz's application before realizing he was still on the first of six questions. He credited the depth of her responses before the vote. 

"If you put as much effort into being the poet laureate as you did to this, we have a great applicant," Dunning said. 

Mayor Andy Ryder then spoke to Pratt's legacy before calling the vote, noting she was the longest consecutively serving deputy mayor in Lacey's history. He also credited her volunteer work and love of reading as contributions that predated her time on the council. 

He cited her endorsement of Wohletz as a deciding factor. 

"If Cynthia supports you, and she does, then (who) am I to question Cynthia Pratt," Ryder said.