Columbia visitors and residents will one day be able to drive down Distant Star Lane, Rustling Sky Way or Singing Stone Terrace — street names inspired by celebrated former Columbia resident, poet Lucille Clifton.

The streets will be part of Lakefront North, a new 11.4-acre mixed-use housing development in Columbia. Three apartment buildings with 701 residences, including 77 affordable units, retail spaces, below-grade parking and two community parks, were part of the project’s site development plan approved by the Howard County Planning Board in June.

Clifton served as Maryland’s poet laureate from 1979 to 1985, the second woman and first African American to earn the honor. She lived in Columbia until her death in 2010 at age 73.

The street names were inspired by Clifton’s poems, “angels,” “there is a star” and “you.”

Clifton was an award-winning author of more than 30 books, including the beloved Everett Anderson series. In 1974, she shared an Emmy award for co-writing the television special “Free to Be You and Me,” and she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1988 for “Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980” and “Next: New Poems.” In 2000, she earned the National Book Foundation Poetry Award for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000.”

Although Columbia has hundreds of streets named in honor of people of achievement, only two people of color — 18th century astronomer and naturalist Benjamin Banneker and musician Stevie Wonder — have Columbia street names inspired by their work. One other female writer, 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson, is also honored with street names in Columbia.

The new street names will honor Clifton’s legacy and her contributions to her community, said Greg Fitchitt, president of the Columbia region for the Howard Hughes Corporation. He said the corporation selected Clifton’s poems to honor the community’s mission of being inclusive and welcoming.

“It’s fitting because [Clifton] is a woman of color and of all the different literary figures who are used as the source material for street names throughout Columbia, we’re not very diverse,” he said. “I thought it couldn’t be a more fitting choice to recognize the inclusivity that was intended to be a part of Columbia from the beginning with a Columbia resident [and] a leading literary figure who had this deep connection to Columbia.”

Clifton visited Columbia for the first time in 1974 for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society’s (HoCoPoLitSo) inaugural reading and continued appearing for the society over the years, eventually moving to Columbia in 1991, according to a news release. She later served as the society’s artistic adviser and helped members make connections with distinguished writers outside the community.

Tara Hart, HoCoPoLitSo co-chair and professor and chair of humanities at Howard Community College, said the street naming paves the way for people of color and women to be recognized in the community and beyond.

“We can’t state enough the importance of [Clifton’s] legacy not just in our community, but she is one of the greatest American poets that we have,” Hart said. “We take our place here in Columbia among many cities who recognize her important legacy as a great American poet, as an African American poet and as a female poet.”

Nearly a decade after her death, Clifton’s family purchased their childhood home in Baltimore and established the nonprofit Clifton House to continue her legacy. The nonprofit provides mentorship, local and global resource access, training and development in the creative arts to underrepresented and underserved people of all ages in the Baltimore and surrounding communities, with particular focus on African diasporic, female and gender-nonconforming, LGBTQIA+ and international poets, writers, artists and creative activities, according to its website.

Lexi Clifton, 57, of Hanover, Clifton’s daughter, said she hopes the street names honor her mother’s legacy.

“My hope is that someone who does not know who she was will take a moment to try and find out about [her] and there will be something that they read or that they see or that they hear that will resonate with them and it will be something that they needed to know in order to feel more validated in living their life the way that is most authentic,” she said.