Montgomery County Poet Laureate

2025 Celebrity Judge Shawn Jones

Shawn R. Jones

Born in Hartford, Connecticut and grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Shawn Jones is a 2023 Civitella Ranieri Fellow, and her poetry collection, Date of Birth, has won the 2022 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry. She is also the author of two poetry chapbooks, Womb Rain (2008) and A Hole to Breathe (2015). Her work has appeared in Tri-Quarterly, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Essence, Obsidian, Peregrine Journal, The Journal of Baha’i Studies, and elsewhere.

Shawn is the co-owner of Tailored Tutoring LLC and Kumbaya Academy, Inc., a dance instructor at Halliday Dance, and a member of the poetry performance troupe, No River Twice. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers-Camden. When she is not writing, dancing, or teaching, she enjoys spending time with her family and her lucky pit bull, Ross.

2025 Youth Poet Laureate Judge Gabrielle Bates

Gabrielle Bates

is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023), a New York Times Book Review critics pick, NPR Best Book of 2023, and finalist for the Washington State Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Poem-a-Day, and Ploughshares, and she has served as visiting faculty for the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers’ Workshops. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium and co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon. www.gabriellebat.es

Over 20 Years of Poetry & Community

The Montgomery County Poet Laureate (MCPL) program was founded by Joanne Leva of Lansdale, PA, to recognize and promote excellence in poetry and support the growth and visibility of the poetry community. Since its inception in 1999, MCPL has expanded the many programs available to experience and learn about poetry in part through the Poet Laureate’s community service projects.

Lisa DeVuono

2024 Montgomery County Poet Laureate

Lisa DeVuono is a poet and printmaker living in Ambler.

Recently retired, she has worked as a librarian in a variety of medical and community-based settings, most recently with the Cheltenham Township Library System, creating and promoting adult programs. She was a poetry therapy facilitator working with cancer patients, teens in recovery and with members of various Clubhouse organizations. She wrote a peer-based curriculum Poetry as a Tool for Recovery: An Easy-to-Use Guide in Eight Sessions for use in organizations working with persons living with mental health challenges. This served as the basis of a full training module taught by John Fox, author and founder of the Institute for Poetic Medicine. She was a creativity coach for the Artist Conference Network, a nationwide coaching community for artists of all kinds.

Emi Maeda

2024 Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate

Emi Maeda is a Junior at The Baldwin School. Her work has appeared in the NY Seikatsu Newspaper, The Rising Phoenix Review, The Kenyon Young Writer’s Anthology, and more, and she is the first-place winner of the Charlotte Miller Poetry Contest. In her free time, she publishes zines with her friends and walks her dog.

Forgotten Voices

The Forgotten Voices Group and Workshops are hosted on a monthly basis virtually and on location at Indian Valley Public Library.

Details

Our Mission

The mission of MCPL is to bring poets together to share their thoughts and ideas about poetry and expose the community to rich poetic traditions. We invite the community to partake in the myriad of free programs and projects lead by our very own Poets Laureate. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the MCPL program regards poetry as a local public art form and offers both awareness of and involvement in an artistic and cultural outlet.

About Us

The Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program was started in 1998 by Joanne Leva. As a member of the Indian Valley Arts Foundation, Joanne recognized the value of personal expression through the literary arts and poetry and saw an opportunity to benefit the community, offer broad-based education for people of all ages, and improve the access to cultural outlets, leading her to form the MCPL.

The Poet Laureate competition includes a community service directive with a program developed by each Poet Laureate to elevate the literary arts in the community, expand their own personal experience and increase overall awareness of the program. As a result of this initiative, MCPL has expanded the many programs available to experience and learn about poetry including our most recent addition, the Montgomery County Youth Poet Laureate Competition.

2024 MCPL Judge Trapeta Mayson

2024, Feature, Poet Laureate

Poet, community arts practitioner, founder of the Healing Verse Poetry Line and co-administrator of “ConsenSIS” a year long project to survey, gather, and memorialize Black women poets in Philadelphia and the surrounding areas. Mayson was born in Liberia and raised in...

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Montgomery County Poet Laureate Competition

Poet Laureate Adjudication

A “celebrity judge” is called upon to adjudicate manuscripts for both the Youth and Adult Poet Laureate Competitions. Manuscripts are assigned numeric values to maintain anonymity to determine the winner in a fair and objective way. The winning poet receives a cash award and a year of opportunities to enhance their public profile as featured poets in events throughout the area in addition to their community outreach project.

What is a Poet Laureate?

A Poet Laureate is an individual who composes poems, who has the ability to express poetic ideas in beautiful language, and has been identified as having the highest degree of excellence in poetry. Submissions open in the Fall through February. Winners are announced in April.

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Meet the Poets Laureate

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