Congrats to Mike Hickey, who won this year's Poet Populist:

Hickey, who went on to win the post -- with 491 votes out of 2,550 cast -- is no less passionate about his mission to transform society.

"I want to spread poetry to the masses," he said, stuffed into a faculty office that fit his beefy frame like a sausage skin.

He grouses that "much of what I read by big-name poets feels obscure and pretentious -- like someone blowing pipe smoke in my face."

Hickey, 52, will assume the Poet Populist mantle Sunday in a reading with Seattle's departing bard, Cody Walker, and San Francisco's 2006 poet laureate, Jack Hirschman.