BCCC launches 48th Bucks County Poet Laureate Competition

The 2024 search is on for the 48th annual Bucks County Poet Laureate, according to Bucks County Community College professor and director of the program, Ethel Rackin.

The Bucks Laureate Program is one of the oldest in the country. It also holds a High School Poet Contest every spring. The Bucks County Poet Laureate Program is seeking the 2024 Laureate. The postmark deadline for submission to the competition is Friday, Sept. 13, 2024.

The winner of the competition will receive a $500 honorarium, a plaque from the Bucks County Commissioners, and a reading at Bucks County Community College in the fall with the previous year’s laureate, Tara Tamburello.

The 2024 final judge will be Kasey Jueds. “Keeper,” Jueds’ first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published by Pitt in 2013. Her second book, “The Thicket,” was published by Pitt in 2021. Jueds has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation; she has also been a visiting poet at the University of Pennsylvania, LaSalle College, and the University of Northern Colorado. She resides in New York State.

The preliminary judge will be Thomas Devaney, a poet, facilitator and educator based in Philadelphia. He is a Pew Fellow in the Arts with a focus on city building and community engagement. He wrote and co-directed the film “Bicentennial City” with Green House Media (2020). Devaney is the author of “Getting to Philadelphia” (Hanging Loose Press, 2019) and “You Are the Battery” (Black Square Editions, 2019).

Entrants to the competition must be Bucks County residents and 18 years or older. Poetry of any kind is welcome. The entry requires 10 poems, any style, form, or length. All work must be original, published or unpublished, typewritten or word-processed, one poem per page, in black ink. Poems and entry form must be submitted online at bucks.edu/poetlaureateentry.

For information, contact Dr. Ethel Rackin at ethel.rackin@bucks.edu.

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