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 “
2017 Poet Laureate – Chad Frame
Poet Laureate 2017
CHAD FRAME
Chad Frame’s work has appeared in decomP, Rust+Moth, Menacing Hedge, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and elsewhere. He has been nominated for Best of the Net 2016 and The Best Small Fictions 2017. He earned his MFA at Arcadia University, and feels that waiting ten years to do so after finishing his undergraduate work at Penn State left him better equipped to appreciate it and more experiences to write about.
Chad Frame is a founding member of the No River Twice poetry improv troupe. He is also the poetry editor of Ovunque Siamo: New Italian-American Writing and co-founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival. Chad has been published in various journals, including decomP, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, as well as featured on the radio program The Poet and the Poem hosted by Grace Cavalieri in association with the Library of Congress.
What free time he manages to have is often spent reading voraciously, playing obscure board or card games, or fencing foil and historical rapier. He lives in Lansdale with a bobtailed Maine Coon named Jabberwocky among precarious piles of books.
“These poems are both daring and precisely made. There is powerful longing here and, without a carefully measured restraint, this emotive force could derail the poems, but they remain richly evocative and ask for the reader to be present in numerous and surprising ways.”
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
Poets Laureate
