Tyler Hall approached full capacity on Saturday, November 15th, at Bucks Community College wherein Madeline Marriott of Northampton Township was crowned the 49th Poet Laureate of Bucks County. Judged by poets Nicole Greaves and Jennifer Tseng, participants had to submit up to ten poems to be considered eligible for the competition. Rising near the top among 60+ submissions, runners-up included Tricia Coscia, Annika Crawford, and Lynn Fanok, who were welcome to read as well. Crawford, not in attendance, was previously named the Bucks County High School Poet of the Year in 2021.
After coordinator Dr. Ethel Rackin‘s brief opening remarks, guest judge Nicole Greaves took the podium to read some of her work. Noting their political relevancy, poems “Scars,” “A Play Within a Play,” and “Sorting Through my Inheritance” meditate on motherhood, menopause, and the poet’s experience as a first-generation immigrant. Lake Angela, last year’s poet laureate, read two poems from her latest collection Scivias Choreomaniae (2024) as well as “Trois à deux,” from an unpublished manuscript on “mad ballet.”
Runners-up Tricia Coscia and Lynn Fanok also took the stage. Coscia read the poems “Listen to the Oarfish,” “Boil it Twice and Eat the Stems,” and “Hospitality House.” Like Greaves, Coscia reflected on how “this is an important time to speak up” and how poetry is the perfect medium to realize this sentiment; from “Listen to the Oarfish”: “Let no one forswear // the rashes, droughts, fevers, floods, telegrams / that knock on the door of every generation.” Fanok revisited her childhood in fragments with “Haunt” and “Undone,” thereafter reciting a poetic suite from the recently published Weeds (2025).
Madeline Marriott wrapped up the ceremony by reading a chapbook’s worth of poems. Her work approaches the everyday and the ephemeral with a witty reverence, where small talk and littered prayer cards seemingly reveal the meaning of life. In “My Mother as Mary, Untouched,” however, a speaker promises that “I will not be God in this poem.” Afterward, attendees were free to converse and eat from an assortment of fruit and baked goods in the rotunda.
The Bucks County High School Poet of the Year competition, judged by incumbent laureates Lake Angela and Madeline Marriott, will open for submissions in mid-January of next year. Contributors can send up to three poems; results will be released during National Poetry Month in April.
