 Pawlenty reversed his opposition and signed Section 4, Chapter 148 of the Minnesota Session Laws 2007, establishing the state poet laureate.Robert Bly was appointed the first Minnesota poet laureate on February 27, 2008, succeeded on August 23, 2011 by Joyce Sutphen.Mississippi

In 1963, Governor Ross Barnett appointed Mississippi's first Poet Laureate, Maude Willard Leet Prenshaw.