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 “
2011 Poet Laureate – Amy Small-McKinney
Poet Laureate 2011
Amy Small-McKinney
Amy Small-McKinney is the author of a new collection of poems,Life is Perfect (BookArts Press), and two chapbooks of poetry, Body of Surrender (2004) and Clear Moon, Frost (2009), both with Finishing Line Press. She was nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, such as The Cortland Review, The Pedestal Magazine, upstreet, Blue Fifth Review, SAND, Berlin’s English Literary Journal, Switchback (U of SF), and LIPS Magazine. Small-McKinney was guest editor for the June 2006 issue of The Pedestal Magazine and recipient of the 2011 Toni Brown Memorial Scholarship, judged by several poets, including Peter Murphy and J. C. Todd. She was the 2011 Montgomery County Poet Laureate, selected by poet, Christopher Bursk. Her poetry was part of a collaboration of women artists and poets for the project, The Poetry Dress, at the 2011 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She is founder of the program, Finding Our Voices: Poetry & Resilience, using poetry to help others, particularly those struggling with mental health, to find their voices.
“I was immediately won over by the complexity of the language in the deceptively local poem “Dillsburg, PA,” a poem hardly provincial in its immersion of us in the syntax and in the setting.” This poet is not afraid to try all the tools available in poetry, all the ways it can take form on the page, all the ways it can tease and mystify and provoke us…”
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Poets Laureate
