JOHN TOBIN is Boston's unofficial city councilor of cool ideas. His latest proposal is that Boston should have a poet laureate.

"Poetry is really a news story," Tobin says of how moments are captured in verse.

Tobin has been steeping in poems. He recalls memorizing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Children's Hour" and reciting it in grade school. Last year, Tobin was asked to read poetry -- his own or someone else's previously published work -- at an event in Jamaica Plain. He read Joyce Kilmer's "Trees," ("I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree. . . . ") to more than 120 people. Tobin has also been talking to Joe Bergin, a member of an organization of carpenter-poets featured in a Globe story by Bella English.

Tobin's conclusion: a poet laureate could add literary depth to the changing city, writing to celebrate events or mark solemn occasions.