Poet Laureate 2022

Jennifer Schneider

Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She loves words, experimental poetry, and the change of seasons. She’s also a fan of late nights, crossword puzzles, and compelling underdogs. She has authored several chapbooks and full-length poetry collections, with stories, poems, and essays published in a variety of literary and scholarly journals. Sample works include Invisible Ink, On Habits & Habitats, On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility, A Collection of Recollections, and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups. She is currently working on her first series, which (not surprisingly) includes a novel in verse.

 

This is an extraordinary piece of writing, mixing pop culture with the existential. The writing is neon, lighting experience, and each line sparkles with detail. If life were photographed from its socks to its rush hour, the collage would look like these pages. Surprising juxtapositions make bursts of energy within the line, and then, from line to line. There’s bravery here, as well, the courage to be inimitable. This manuscript is not a book; this is a living pulsating thing. Motion makes joy.

Grace Cavalieri

2022 Celebrity Judge