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Bucks County Community College

Poet Laureate

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  Academics  —  Academic Schools  —  Language and Literature  —  Bucks County Poet Laureate

Bucks County Poet Laureate

The Bucks County Poet Laureate Contest, the oldest such program in the Commonwealth, was started in 1977 by the Bucks County Council on the Arts. From the beginning, the County Commissioners presented the laureate with a Proclamation, and the laureate read a poem at the weekly (now bi-monthly) meeting. A reception and reading was held at the Rodman House at the County Complex on Rt. 611.

In 1986, when the Arts Council’s activities were about to be subsumed by the Michener Art Center, Bucks County Community College was asked to assume sponsorship for the County. Stan Heim, the 1980 Laureate and professor in the Dept. of Language & Literature, became the Laureate Program Director. Heim continued the traditions started by the Council and in 1988 began the Bucks County High School Poet of the Year Contest. After Heim’s retirement from the College in 2001, Dr. Christopher Bursk, 1978 Laureate and professor in the College’s Language & Literature Dept., became Interim Director of the Program, succeeded in 2002 by Prof. Robert Bense, who served as Director for two years. In 2004, Dr. Allen Hoey, 2001 Laureate and professor in the Dept. of Language & Literature, became the Program’s Director. In recent years, Dr. Christopher Bursk served as Co-Director of the Program, first with Dr. Charlie Groth and then with Dr. Ethel Rackin, who assumed the Directorship in 2019. Laureates and runners-up are now invited to read on the Bucks County Community College campus for a reading and reception to celebrate the vitality of poetry in the County.

A résumé of past Laureates reveals a multitude of backgrounds, many awards, publications, and professional achievements. Included in these are Guggenheims, NEA, and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships, Pennsylvania Professor of the Year, a Pew Foundation on the Arts grant, and more. The vision of the founding Council has been more than realized.

48th Bucks County Poet Laureate

Lake Angela

Lake Angela, a published poet, translator, and dance choreographer, holds a Ph.D. in intersemiotic translation and is a medieval mystic. Her poems have appeared in Seneca Review, BODY, The Common, Passages North, and Poetry Salzburg Review, among others; her books include Organblooms, Words for the Dead, and Scivias Choreomaniae. She is the director of the poetry-dance group Companyia Lake Angela, and her current hobbies involve exchanging multimedia dialogues with disabilities advocacy artists and translating poetry into movement to further her project of illuminating the creative potential of schizophrenia-spectrum associative thinking; she invites you to view some of this work online. Residing in Warrington, Pennsylvania, Angela works alongside poet Sara Ries Dziekonski as Poetry Midwives, part of the nonprofit literary organization Keep St. Pete Lit that assists writers around the world. Lake also collaborates with her spouse, writer and multimedia artist Kevin Richard Kaiser, and their baby, Quixot, who likes to compose atonal music for their performance projects.

Dr. Allen Hoey Memorial Legacy Scholarship

Awarded to a BCCC student who specializes in the writing of fiction. Applicants must be enrolled at least part time (minimum of three (3) credits) and intend to return to BCCC in the following academic year after the award is made to enroll in a minimum of three credits. There is no minimum grade point average required. Learn more.

  • Past Poets Laureate
  • High School Poet of the Year

Ethel Rackin

Contest Director
ethel.rackin@bucks.edu Cottage 1

Professor of Language & Literature

Ethel Rackin

Contest Director
ethel.rackin@bucks.edu Cottage 1

Professor of Language & Literature

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