News Release

Corie Feiner Named 2011 Bucks County Poet Laureate

Yardley resident is the 35th to receive the honor in the longest-running poet laureate contest in Pennsylvania. 

Sellers often give advice to those buying their house, such as how to find the nearest coffee shop or best pizza place. But Corie Feiner, who recently relocated to Yardley from New York, got advice of a different sort. She was encouraged by the owner of the house she was buying to enter the Bucks County Poet Laureate Contest.

Those words of wisdom – from 2006 laureate Marie Kane – paid dividends, as Feiner has been named the 2011 Bucks County Poet Laureate by officials at Bucks County Community College. She rose to the top of 72 entrants in the 35^th annual contest, the longest-running poet-laureate competition in Pennsylvania.

Feiner was celebrated with a poetry reading and reception November 13 in the Orangery on the Newtown Campus. She was joined by the three runners-up in the contest: first runner-up Geri Ann McLaughlin of Quakertown; second runner-up Katherine Falk of Newtown; and third runner-up Nick Hiser of Warrington. Outgoing poet laureate Lorraine Henrie Lins of Langhorne also read from her works.

Poet Martha Rhodes, the finalist judge in the contest, said Feiner’s poems had “wonderful and unexpected moments throughout. ...Poem-to-poem, stanza-to-stanza, line-to-line, these poems are clear, moving, and multi-dimensional.” The preliminary judge in the contest was Barbara Daniels. 

Feiner is the author of the poetry collection Radishes into Roses (Linear Arts Press). Her work has been published in journals such as Calyx, Kalliope, The Cortland Review, Zeek, Runes, The Jewish Review, and Natural Bridge. Her poem “Subway Pastoral” won the 2007 Vent Your Inspiration Poetry Contest, and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first children's book, Who Was Born at Home? was released in September by Four Steps Press.

Feiner is also an internationally known performance poet who has been featured at venues such as the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, the 92nd Street Y, The Joyce Theatre, and Tel Aviv University. She has also taught at New York University and Manhattanville College, and is a longtime teaching-artist for organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative, Poets & Writers, and Poets House.  

Feiner received a degree in English from the University of Pittsburgh before earning her MFA in Poetry from NYU in 2001. While at NYU she was awarded the Starworks Teaching Fellowship and the Goldwater Writing Workshop Fellowship for two consecutive years.

In addition to being celebrated at the November 13 inaugural reading, Feiner receives a $500 award and a proclamation from the Bucks County Commissioners.

This year’s contest was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Allen Hoey, the Bucks professor who passed away last year while serving as the director of the program. The current co-directors are former poet laureate Dr. Christopher Bursk and Dr. Charlie Groth, both professors of language and literature at the college.

As the Bucks County Poet Laureate Program celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, an anthology of past laureates is being prepared for release in spring 2012. The program is sponsored by Bucks County Community College’s Language and Literature Department and the Bucks County Commissioners. For more information about this and other writing contests, contact the Language and Literature Department at 215-968-8150.   

UNDERNEATH

For my great-great grandmother, Minnie Fine

Thank you for the irregular heart of my face, the sand
in my skin, the dark yellow rim in my eyes. Thank you
for the burnt red in my hair, the hard stare, Minnie,
sit with me, drink

a glass of peppermint schnapps. I want to tell you
of these things: the pickles I let rest on my tongue,
the ginger I grind in my gums, I want
to ask you why

I spell every Yiddish word wrong? Why my language
fits like a coat I stole from a barroom
rack? Minnie,

I wear thin shirts, show my stomach and bare arms
on public streets. I let the skin of my tattoo loose
like a flag for your brother, your sister, your parents.
Mine. Minnie,

sit with me, hold my cigarette. Show me how you close
the hot tip inside of your cheeks. Show me how
you once lifted your skirt to dance on a rooftop in rain,
your face as hard

as an unsoaked bean. How underneath there are coals.
Enough to keep the house warm.

– Corie Feiner
– Previously published in Calyx Magazine

BURDOCK

“…black from dust but still alive and red in the center …
it asserts life to the end.” - Tolstoy

I want to be that stubborn root,
limbs interlocked with soil and rock.

To be that long muddy weed
of clingy burrs.

To be tenacious and ugly.

I want to smell of sulfur, bug rot, and salt.

I want to cling to your cuffs,
hitchhike on your heels.

Call me Gypsy Rhubarb, Beggars Button,
Gobo, or Burr.

I want to grow alongside your quiet street
and in your tailored garden,

I want you to pull me from your compost
and rock, dislocate your shoulder,

I am buried deep within the earth.

- Corie Feiner
- Previously published in The Food Anthology