Montgomery County Poets Laureate
The Annual Montgomery Poet Laureate Competition is the foundation upon which the MCPL Program was built. The competition is the ultimate expression of the program’s mission; creating an ever expanding community of poets, supporting their work and providing opportunities for poets to elevate their visibility while also benefiting the community with their service project, many of which continue long beyond their tenure.
How does the competition work?
Each year MCPL recruits a celebrity poet with a national reputation, who along with two additional local Delaware Valley poets, adjudicate the submitted manuscripts.
The newly selected Montgomery County Poet Laureate is honored with an award in the amount of $500 along with a personalized statement about their work, which is shared through MCPL and other local organizations.
The Award is presented during an Award Ceremony and Reading, open to the public and attended by the celebrity judge and previous poets laureate to read with and welcome the newest member of their esteemed ranks.
Who can compete?
Poets of all ages and backgrounds are encouraged to submit their poetry for review and adjudication in the annual competition. Poets must also be residents of Montgomery County. The window for submissions generally opens in early December and closes mid-February with the winner to be announced at the end of March.
The role of the Poet Laureate
The Poet Laureate functions as an ambassador for poetry in Montgomery County from April 1 of the year of his/her naming to March 31st of the following year. This role includes working with MCPL’s Executive Director, Joanne Leva, to develop a schedule of readings, workshops
Appearances may include the Forgotten Voices Poetry Group, Farley’s Bookshop First Thursday Poetry Reading Series, and the annual Caesura Poetry Festival. They may also hold the office of “
2012 Poet Laureate – Liz Chang
Poet Laureate 2012
LIZ CHANG
Liz Chang was selected as the 2012 Montgomery County Poet Laureate by Kathleen Sheeder Bonnano. Chang recently published her second book of original poems and literary translations with Book&Arts Press, What Ordinary Objects. Her poems have recently appeared in Philadelphia Stories, Breakwater Review and Apiary. Her translations of the French Surrealist poet Claude de Burine were also published in The Adirondack Review. Chang received her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Delaware County Community College. Liz lives with her husband and their two cats outside of Philadelphia.
“Liz Chang’s compelling poems explore themes like the frailty and temporality of the human body, the inevitability of death, and the responsibility of family as witness. They contain surprising metaphorical shifts and lurches as in “Water Main,” where the foreman emerging from the pit becomes the surgeon emerging from the table with the speaker’s mother’s blood on his septum.” Some of the poems express both the beauty and the entrapment of sexual desire and the need for intimacy. And throughout, Chang gifts us with her imagery — beautiful , fluid images of suspension, floating, water and the sea — the speaker who grows gills and “drowns kissing air,” or contemplates the “lavender wash of the empty fields,” or who takes a photo of you, with “your grown up watch/ resting against the tank of ethereal jellyfish. Chang’s poetry is riveting and ambitious – I’m honored to introduce her as the 2012 Montgomery County Poet Laureate.”
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Poets Laureate
