Poet laureate the honour that no formal effusions from him should be required. Due to his age, he became the only laureate to write no official poetry. Tennyson was generally happy in his numerous poems of this class. On Tennyson's death there was a considerable feeling that there was no acceptable successor. William Morris and Swinburne were hardly suitable as court poets. Eventually the undesirability of breaking the tradition for temporary reasons, and severing the one official link between literature and the state, prevailed over the protests against allowing someone of inferior genius to follow Tennyson. Abolition was similarly advocated when Warton
North Carolina Poet Laureate of the North Carolina General Assembly created the office, giving the Governor of North Carolina the power "to name and appoint some outstanding and distinguished man of letters as poet-laureate for North Carolina." Changes to the position began in 1997 when Governor Jim Hunt appointed Fred Chappell as poet laureate, changing the term of office from a lifetime appointment to a term of five years. Hunt stated that he did this because the state had many quality poets. Lisbeth Evans, Secretary of the Department of Cultural Resources (which oversees the NC Arts Council), organized a committee in 2004 to update