Leo Connellan, Connecticut Poet Laureate from 1996 until his death 20 years ago this February, lived in Norwich and Sprague for the last two decades of his life. He was a man to be noticed when he lived and to be remembered for all he accomplished.

Connellan wasn’t a mainstream poet out of an ivory tower. He was tidewater out of Maine. You could tell from his ratty sweater vests, his sore-hip shuffle, his perpetual disgruntlement, and his growl at any sign of injustice or disrespect for the shaggy side of life.

His life took a turn for the better in 1987, when he was named poet-in-residence for the Connecticut State University System. But he trusted good fortune about as much as Downeasters trust a sunny sky.

In 1996, life got even better when Connellan replaced state poet laureate James Merrill upon his death that year.

The two poets could not have been more opposite. Merrill was born into the fortune of the founder of the Merrill Lynch investment firm. He never held a job other than eight months in the army and a leisurely lifetime as a writer and poet. Merrill accepted the poet laureate position under the condition that it would require no public activities.

Connellan, on the other hand, was born to a small town attorney and postmaster in Rockport, on Maine’s Penobscot Bay. His mother died when he was 7, leaving him torn and traumatized as he was raised by a step-mother.

His neighbors were the type of people who wrestled lobster pots, hauled fish from an ice-cold sea, or took a chainsaw to work.

Once old enough to be on his own, he thumbed and bummed his way across the country for a few years, sleeping in fields, alleys and church missions, taking any little job he could find, panhandling when he found none.

He was 32 before he landed a real job, married a girl named Nancy, and settled down in Clinton, Conn.

It was a good job for a while. He was a regional sales manager, peddling typewriter ribbons and carbon paper from New England to Baltimore. Needless to say, his days as such were numbered. Three years before retirement, in the 1970s, his company went broke, and his family sought cheaper rent in Norwich and then, even cheaper, in Sprague, where he lived in the Hanover Apartments complex until he suffered a lethal stroke in February 2001.

Poetry is not a poor man’s profession. It’s a job for the wealthy or those who land a professorship with a salary. Leo Connellan got out of bed at 3 o’clock each morning, seven days a week, to sit at a typewriter and think, perhaps to write. A couple hours later he went off to sweep floors, substitute teach or do whatever else he could to support his family and his writing.

Despite his humble background, Connellan was not a humble man. He was proud of his accomplishments, which included more than a dozen books of poetry and several prestigious awards. But he felt he deserved more than what he got. He didn’t like The New York Times calling him a poet for the “voiceless working class.” He considered himself a poet for everyone.

So he was a bit bitter about his lot in life. He treasured his hard-scrabble background, but he sensed an injustice at how hard he had to work while other poets hobnobbed in higher social circles.

A conversation with Connellan could quickly range across a spectrum from gruff righteousness to warm concern. He suffered the curse of the Irish but also their gift of gab and poesy.

As one friend said at his funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Norwich, “Sometimes it was impossible to love Leo, and at the same time, it wasn’t possible not to.”

Connellan took his laureateship seriously. He went to elementary and high schools all over the state to plant the seeds of future poetry. He dispelled any notions that poetry was for the hoity-toity. He taught that the raw material of poetry was in the homes and streets and workplaces where plain people lead plain and beautiful lives.

It should be no surprise that such a poet found a home on the hardscrabble side of Connecticut.

Glenn Alan Cheney is the author of “Poems Askance” and more than three dozen other books. He can be reached at glenn@nllibrarium.com.