Norbert Krapf, left, poet laureate of Indiana, and David Evans, poet laureate of South Dakota, talk about the importance of poetry in today’s world.

NARRAGANSETT — An invasion force of poets, the likes of which Rhode Island has never seen, landed in Galilee Monday morning, its mission clear.

Under the cover of gray April skies, the elite group of nine from such distant places as Alaska and South Dakota compared notes briefly on the breezy ferry landing. Then, armed with books of verse and prose, they dispersed in teams to various South County schools.

Off on the first leg of a week-long operation — to spread the words.

In her travel bag, Joyce Brinkman, a former Indiana poet laureate, carried a first impression of Rhode Island — a haiku she’d written on Sunday from Block Island, where the poets first converged. It was titled Block Island Choir:

“Spring Peeper carols / loft through night’s dark cathedral. / Anthem to new life.”

To be a poet, Brinkman told a group of elementary school students an hour later in the gymnasium of Monsignor Matthew F. Clarke School, in South Kingstown, requires careful observation, the examination of one’s surroundings and emotions. And yes, there is still value in those written contemplations, she said, even in this frenetic digital world where it may seem that most of what is read sparks and dies on cell phone screens.

“We like to share our love of poetry with people like you,” she told the students. “Mother Teresa said don’t do great things, do small things with great love.”

The assembly of poets this week — during National Poetry Week — marks the fourth biennial gathering of state poets and writers laureate, of which there are 40. Each serves as his or her state’s official ambassador for the written word.

Lisa Starr, Rhode Island’s poet laureate, organized this year’s Poetry for Hope meeting in collaboration with regional tourism offices, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities.

“My job is to be an advocate for poetry in as many different ways as I can,” said Starr. “Poetry is a way to almost beat back the progression of time. It is the opportunity to just sit. Even if poems are written on the fly, they are often naming moments. Sometimes they are navigational tools in life. That’s the part that really matters in the middle of all the harried confusion, the noise, the e-mails. Poetry allows me to reconnect with me, that sense of self that gets lost in this world.”

The poets were scheduled to have a formal welcoming Monday night at Providence City Hall, where each would read a poem and watch a hip-hop and rap presentation by members of Providence’s Institute for the Study & Practice of Nonviolence. They will spend the rest of the week visiting schools during the day, holding evening writing workshops or speaking at various locations around the state.

(A full schedule of events is available at the state arts council’s Web site: www.arts.ri.gov/blogs/index.php/?p=5195)

Norbert Krapf, Indiana’s current poet laureate, said people need poetry now, perhaps, more than ever.

“We need the work of the writer and the local poet to help us see things. Poetry slows things down.”

David Allan Evans, the poet laureate from South Dakota, agreed: “There are a lot more distractions today with the Web and computers and games. Poetry makes us pay attention.”

One poem from Evans’ Web site, titled Next Morning, seems to do just that:

“Two swallows / flit and skim a drink / four geese / clamber up the bank into some weeds / you can hear a calf suck / what happened last night / or a thousand nights ago / doesn’t matter / I thread a worm / and cast as far as I can.”

Maggi Vaughn has been the poet laureate of Tennessee for 17 years. She said poetry’s popularity has ebbed and flowed over the decades. Many people were turned off to poetry during the 1970s and 80s, the result of “uppity” academics who routinely recited each others work “even though no one could understand a word they were saying.”

Many poets, she said, have come back to a more grounded, organic style that many readers enjoy.

“I got my voice listening to country music,” Vaughn said. “It amazed me how writers of those songs could condense a whole novel in 12 lines and to a meaning that people could relate to.”

Contrary to what many may think, Brinkman said poetry fits perfectly into peoples’ busy lives.

“It doesn’t take long to read a couple of poems and you can be inspired for the day, or healed for the day,” she said. “And you can carry them in your pocket and read them again.”

The visiting laureates

•Marjory Wentworth, South Carolina poet laureate

•Nancy Lord, Alaska writer laureate

•Joyce Brinkman, former Indiana poet laureate

•Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, Virginia poet laureate

•Norbert Krapf, Indiana poet laureate

•David Allan Evans, South Dakota poet laureate

•Maggi Vaughn, Tennessee poet laureate

•Marie Harris, former New Hampshire poet laureate

•Lisa Starr, Rhode Island poet laureate

tmooney@projo.com