Joan Logghe, a Northern New Mexico poet who often works with youth, is Santa Fe's third poet laureate.

The Santa Fe Arts Commission on Monday unanimously approved a special committee's decision to appoint Logghe. No other approval is needed.

"I can't believe this," Logghe shouted when told she had been appointed. "I got a call two and a half weeks ago, and I've had to behave myself since then."

Logghe follows Arthur Sze and Valerie Martinez as Santa Fe poet laureate — a position created in 2005 and first filled by Sze in 2006.

The two-year position is privately funded at $5,000 a year through the Santa Fe Community Foundation.

Logghe lives in La Puebla, but the Santa Fe poet laureate isn't required to live in town. Martinez lived in Rio Rancho during most of her term.

A graduate of Tufts University, Logghe moved to New Mexico 37 years ago after teaching in Chicago. She even remembers the day she arrived — April 11, 1973 — and that her first meal here was a red-chile enchilada at The Shed.

She is married to Michael Logghe, with whom she has three children and three grandchildren.

A committee composed of Bob French, Henry Shukman and Ramona Sakiestewa chose Logghe from three nominees.

Arts Commission Director Sabrina Pratt said the committee members liked the tape of Logghe reading her work and her ideas about working with young people for her educational project called "City of Poems/City of Poets."

Logghe, in her letter to the commission, proposed working with younger students on poetry in collaboration with musician Jeremy Bleich. Like Logghe, Bleich is an instructor at Santa Fe Community College.

"I am currently on tap for another fall semester at Santa Fe Community College, as well as the free ranging life in poetry that characterizes so many Santa Fe artists," she wrote.

Among her publications are What Makes a Woman Beautiful, A Lunch Date with Beauty, Twenty Years in Bed with the Same Man and Blessed Resistance. The University of New Mexico Press plans to publish her latest book of poems, The Singing Bowl, early next year.

In addition to the educational project, the poet laureate is expected to make four public appearances per year.

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.