Bucks Seeks Creative Types Who Can Stanza the Rigors of a Poetic Challenge

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Bucks County Community College announces its 46th annual poet laureate competition.
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Area wordsmiths, attend! Bucks County Community College has announced the opening of its 2022 Poet Laureate Competition.

The literary competition is in its 46th year, making it the longest-running poet laureate program in the state, according to its director, Prof. Ethel Rackin, Ph.D,

The contest is open to Bucks County residents over age 18 who have not previously served as poet laureate, said Rackin, who teaches language and literature at BCCC, where the program is based.

Each entrant must submit 10 original poems of any style or length along with an entry form to the college’s Language and Literature Department.

All submissions must be original, published or unpublished, typewritten or word-processed, one poem per page, in black ink. They can reflect any style of the art.

Works must be submitted online by Friday, Sept. 9, 2022. There is no entry fee.

The 2022 final judge will be Tsering Wangmo Dhompa of Tibet.

Dhompa earned a BA and an MA from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi, an MA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University.

Her published works are extensive, comprising individual poetry and collections:

  • In Writing the Names (2000)
  • Recurring Gestures (2000)
  • Rules of the House (2002)
  • In the Absent Everyday (2005)
  • My Rice tastes like the lake (2011), which was a finalist for the Northern California Independent Bookseller’s Book of the Year Award for 2012
  • Revolute (2021).

The winner receives a $500 honorarium, a proclamation from the Bucks County Commissioners, and will be featured at a Fall reading and reception at Bucks County Community College with the previous year’s poet laureate, Nicole Steinberg, and contest runners-up.

Additional information is available by emailing Dr. Rackin.

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