If you search various online dictionaries for the meaning of the word lauraete, you will find variations of: a person who is honored with an award for outstanding creative or intellectual achievement. Some will mention, as in Nobel laureate or poet laureate.
Laureate is derived from the ancient Greeks’ use of crowns of laurels as a sign of distinction, honor, or merit. The leaves of the “Laurus” plant/tree were associated with divine inspiration. These trees were also associated with the Greek god Apollo. They were planted at the sanctuary of Delphi, where the oracle of Apollo spoke. The Greeks held Pythian Games (in honor of Apollo) every four years. These were like the Olympic games for singing, poetry, dance, and rhetoric. The laureate crown was the prize given to victors.
Today, a “poet laureate” is a poet regarded as the most eminent poet of a country, state, or region. In the United States, the honored author is appointed by the Librarian of Congress. The position was known as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1937 to 1985. In 1985, the title was changed to Poet Laureate. The first poet named with this new title was Joseph Auslander. Other notable poets who have been appointed include Robert Penn Warren, Robert Frost, Louis Glück, and W. S. Merwin.
According to Wikipedia, one of the main responsibilities of the Poet Laureate is "to seek to
raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry."
Today, Ada Limón is the U. S. Poet Laureate. Her term was extended by two years to be held until 2025. The Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, said, “Ada Limón is a poet who connects . . . Her accessible, engaging poems ground us in where we are and who we share our world with. They speak of intimate truths, of the beauty and heartbreak that is living, in ways that help us move forward.”
Nature provides inspiration for much of Ada Limóns work. Here is Ada Limón’s poem
Instructions on Not Giving Up
More than the fuchsia funnels
breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
ADA LIMÓN, Current Poet Laureate of United States
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