Louisiana’s bicentennial is this year, and the region has several events planned, according to the Southwest Louisiana Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The Calcasieu Parish Historic Preservation Society will celebrate the centennial of Margaret Place Historical District with a tour of homes noon-5 p.m. April 1. It will feature docents dressed in vintage clothing, as well as an interactive oral history of the neighborhood and its architecture.

The event will also have an exhibit of local artist Sue Zimmermann’s watercolor representations of nine homes in the district. The exhibit will be inside Immaculate Conception Cathedral School. It will subsequently be displayed in government buildings and museums across the parish.

Four Lake Charles landmarks — Central School, the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse, Immaculate Conception Cathedral and the 1911 Historic City Hall — will simultaneously host open house celebrations 10 a.m.-4 p.m. April 28. They will feature live music; educational tours; and collections of memorabilia, photos and artifacts.

Julie Kane, Louisiana’s poet laureate, has been commissioned to compose a series of five to seven poems using the history of Lake Charles and the Louisiana Bicentennial as inspirations. The series will be revealed during a poetry reading by Kane at 4 p.m. May 12 under the Imperial Calcasieu Museum’s 375-year-old Sallier Oak.

The series will celebrate the intersection between landscape and identity while uniting both the raw and the rapturous images and symbols of Southwest Louisiana.

Kane, who lives in Natchitoches and is an English professor at Northwestern State University, was appointed poet laureate by Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2011.

Louisiana Public Broadcasting will present a screening for “Louisiana: 200 Years of Statehood” at 7 p.m. May 17 in the Central School Arts and Humanities Center theater.

The 56-minute documentary, narrated by Harry Connick Jr., will follow a glimpse of the newest downtown public art murals on the side of Sweets and Treats dessert shop. Local artist Fred Stark, whose murals appear in 16 states, is creating a large-scale mural to illustrate Southwest Louisiana’s connection to the state’s 200-year legacy.

The mural, composed in three layers and timelines, will show the visual history of Louisiana from 1812 to 2012 and include local ties with the centennial anniversaries of four local historic landmarks.

The Imperial Calcasieu Museum will host a George Rodrigue exhibit, “200 Years: The Faces and Places of Louisiana.”

It will feature prints and paintings of significant Louisiana figures from both history and folklore. Rodrigue will be at the exhibit’s Sept. 14 opening reception to discuss the featured pieces and his ties to both Louisiana art and history.

Other bicentennial events with historical components include the Downtown Crawfish Festival, April 12-15; the Louisiana Railroad Days Festival, April 12-14; Spring Fest and Civil War Reenactment, April 20-21; the Sulphur Heritage Festival, May 25-26; and Downtown at Sundown, May 18 and 25 and June 1 and 8.

Online: www.visitlakecharles.org/200.