BOSTON — Invoking Emily Dickinson, Phillis Wheatley, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Sam Cornish and Robert Frost, Gov. Maura Healey recently signed an executive order creating a position of poet laureate in Massachusetts for the first time.

“Poets and poetry have had a profound role in our state’s history,” Healey said.

She continued, “I think of Phyllis Wheatley, who was kidnapped and enslaved as a child, but using the tools of poetry to make her voice heard and her humanity undeniable, is something that I’m thinking of this morning. I think of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, turning legends from our history into verses recited all over the world. Sam Cornish, bringing the civil rights movement into the arts and into the lives of generations.”

Massachusetts was one of only three states without a poet laureate, according to the Library of Congress, joined by New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

The executive order created an advisory Poet Laureate Nominating Committee to review applications for the role and submit recommendations to the governor. The chosen candidate will be eligible for a stipend from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The poet — the first of whom has not yet been selected — will be charged with writing pieces for ceremonial occasions, advising the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on an outreach program for schools focused on poetry, attending public readings and statewide literary and cultural events, and “encouraging the appreciation of poetry and creative expression across Massachusetts,” according to an announcement from the governor’s office.

“With this beautiful announcement, we affirm that poetry, this beautiful and powerful art form, is for everyone, and we celebrate the impact it will have for generations to come,” said Michael Bobbitt, executive director of the Massachusetts Cultural Council.