Mayor Buddy Dyer officially announced Orlando’s new poet laureate Monday amid increased focus on the position after criticism from Florida’s DOGE team about its existence and salary.
Dyer named poet and mental health therapist Camara Gaither to the position, in which she will compose original poems and present them at city events and youth activities “to inspire emerging generations of literary artists and poets,” according to a news release from the city.
If she is confirmed Monday afternoon by the Orlando City Council, she would become Orlando’s third poet laureate.
“We are excited for Camara to use poetry and the literary arts to tell our community’s stories,” Dyer said in the release. “There is no doubt that Orlando is a better place to live and work because of our vibrant arts and cultural scene. Our Poet Laureate will help continue to add to our City’s unique sense of place.”
Gaither will receive a $6,000 annual salary — a $2,000 increase from the salary of her predecessor, Shawn Welcome. The poet laureate also gets reimbursed for approved expenses related to the role. The appointee serves a one-year-term with annual renewals for a total of four years.
The position and its salary drew the ire of Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia, who leads Florida’s DOGE effort to identify what it views as wasteful government spending.
“In the city of Orlando there is a poet laureate program that uses your tax dollars to pay poets to write poems,” Ingoglia said at a Wednesday news conference alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis in Jacksonville. “So in an effort to save taxpayer money we wrote a couple of them for free: Roses are red, violets are blue, our property taxes are high, because of you.”
The $6,000 salary is 0.0008% of Orlando’s $742.6 million general fund budget, part of an annual $1.8 billion spending blueprint.
In paying its poet, Orlando appears to be an outlier. Other Florida cities have poet laureates, including Gulfport, St. Augustine and St. Petersburg, but none of those are paid by the local governments.
Florida has its own bard-in-chief, an honorary role within the Department of State. Peter Meinke has held the unpaid post since his appointment by then-Gov. Rick Scott in 2015.
