9th Berks County Poet Laureate Competition 2021: Now Accepting Submissions.

Submissions are welcome now into early December 2020 for the 9th Berks County Poet Laureate Competition, for 2021, sponsored by Reading Area Community College.

Berks Bards is honored to be a collaborating organization for this laureateship.

 

 This competition is for adults who are residents of Berks County, Pennsylvaina.

Visit www.racc.edu/poetry to see all details for the competition.

Join Randolph Bridgeman on Zoom September 3rd, 2020 at 6 pm

 

Join Randolph Bridgeman on Zoom!

When: September 3rd, 2020 at 6 pm

Where: TinyURL.com/VirtualBard

If required, please enter the Meeting ID 759 062 6042

Below is a sample poem from our featured poet:

when i write

sometimes i can hear the boy i once was
answering for things that wasn’t
my fault

in my writings like the spark of a welding
rod against the metal of conformity

or in my words that appear like those on
faded blackboards in empty summer
classrooms

they are as elusive as the moonlight was
in the tall grass around my secret
fishing hole

and are like a rope swing tied to a limb
above a dry creek bed

they chop at the air like that metal bladed
fan in my curtain less window

in that bedroom where i pumped up
my daisy BB gun until my arm
got tired

then shot a sparrow off the sill and watched
with a curious pleasure as it spiraled
to the grass below

there is something there in my writings more
than childhood cruelty

a meanness –

that comes with the determination of a bull fly
beating itself against a kitchen window

a secret shame –

the kind that comes only out of abuse
or from the turning of heads
and the loss of innocence

Read the biography of Randolph Bridgeman below:

Randolph Bridgeman graduated from St. Mary's College of Maryland. He is the recipient of the prestigious Edward T. Lewis poetry prize. His poems are published in numerous poetry reviews and anthologies. He has five books of poems, South of Everywhere 2005, Mechanic on Duty 2008, The Odd Testament 2013, The Poet Laureate of Cracker Town 2015, and The Not So Happy Hour Poems 2020.

“The way to create art is to burn and destroy ordinary concepts and to substitute them with new truths….”

                 ~ Charles Bukowski