CONNIE WRZESNIEWSKI
Despite the global pandemic, poetry remains alive and well in Bucks County and the show will go on – 1:15 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15, on the You Tube Channel of Bucks County Community College, (BCCC) when the 2020 poet laureate is featured at youtube.com/user/BucksCCC.
The Bucks County Poet Laureate Contest, oldest in the Commonwealth, was begun in 1977 by the Bucks County Council on the Arts.
Stan Heim, professor, Department of Language & Literature at Bucks, was the 1980 Laureate who soon became the Laureate Program director followed in turn by professors Christopher Bursk, Robert Bense and Allen Hoey. Most recently Dr. Ethel Rackin took over that position.
“Spring 2019 is when I started as director,” said Rackin. “I had been working as co-director with Chris for several years before that.”
The first place winner of the contest is Jane Edna Mohler whose interest in poetry has never waned since the age of 9. Jenny Isaacs, Maureen Connolly and Melinda Rizzo were runners-up.
“I am grateful for the seamless transition between Drs. Chris Bursk and Ethel Rackin,” said Mohler. “Also, I’m grateful for the unyielding guidance of Chris Bursk in his master classes. The level and intensity of my work was greatly influenced by it.”
Mohler is a native of Bucks County born in Doylestown Hospital. She is a purebred product of Doylestown schools, crediting teacher Gerry Fabian of Central Bucks West High School with reaffirming her writing talent.
Previous runner-up in Bucks County’s Poet Laureate competition, she bolsters that with placing first in the 2016 Main Street Voices poetry competition, two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Robert Fraser finalist, and presenter at the 2020 Bay to Ocean Writer’s Conference in Maryland, scheduled once again for 2021.
Upon recommendation of a friend, Mohler taught English for two summers at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China as an exchange student and has left her footprints on the Great Wall twice. Her poetry often exemplifies this Asian connection.
The title of her full-length book, “Broken Umbrellas,” reminds one of the prudent use of umbrellas in China for sun as well as rain. In the following poem, “Everything Will Be Yours as Well,” Mohler shares her poem of the heart intermingled with Chinese culture.
There are red silk lanterns twisting and groaning
in the summer night’s wind inside my heart.
Above them bats snip the frail paper of a charcoal sky.
I wait in the sanguine light and sip amber tea
with wedges of watermelon so ripe they helplessly bleed
over the gold rim of a thin plate and onto the white cloth.
No scalpel ever found this clearing. If you find me here,
I’ll share everything with you. If you find me here,
everything here will be yours as well.
“The poems have a casualness of observation I admire, a kind and thoughtful consciousness behind them, and are full of clear, resonant images and nice sounds throughout the lines,” said final judge Grady Chambers. Preliminary Judge Liz Chang, who narrowed down the field of high-quality poetry submitted, is a former poet laureate of Montgomery County.
With well over 75 entries, the contest was somewhat different this time with each contestant entering a manuscript online. Entry via U.S. Mail was abandoned due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, the prodigious amount of entries speaks for itself.
A reading and reception to celebrate laureates and runners-up has taken place traditionally on the BCCC campus in the Orangery or Tyler Hall. This is the first year ever that it will differ, because of COVID-19, with the celebration happening on the college’s You Tube Channel, youtube.com/user/BucksCCC .
Poetry is not just alive and well but it thrives in Bucks County. A form of self-expression, it is a relief from the pandemic.
-Connie Wrzesniewski
Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage.
Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong.
Donate today.
