Doylestown Resident Named 2014 Bucks County Poet Laureate

Provided by Bucks County Community College:

Sandra Becker, who turned to poetry for its ability to both communicate and heal emotions, has been named the 2014 Bucks County Poet Laureate, officials at Bucks County Community College have announced.

The Doylestown resident and native New Yorker rose to the top of 80 entrants in the 38th annual contest. She’ll be honored with a reading and reception at 2 p.m. Sunday, November 16, at the college’s Newtown campus.

Final judges Kim Addonizio and Kasey Jueds also named three runners-up: Elizabeth Austin of Newtown, Camille Norvaisas of Feasterville, and Kathryn Ionata of Doylestown. They’ve been invited to read at the November 16 reception, along with outgoing poet laureate Alexa Gutter of Yardley.

Becker, who had been named a runner-up in the Bucks County Poet Laureate contest three times, says she began writing about 25 years ago when she felt a need to articulate her experiences for herself.

“Poetry gave me a language that other forms of speaking or writing could not,” says Becker, noting that she grew up in a family where emotions were never communicated and trauma was plentiful, such as a father who died when she was four, and a mother who suffered from a serious mental illness. In fact, she became so traumatized as a child that she refused to speak for a few years.

“Writing became a coping mechanism,” explains Becker, who cites Allen Ginsberg and Emily Dickinson as early influences on her work. “No matter how dark the subject, the process of writing a poem, submerging myself in it, had an alchemizing effect on me. I would emerge feeling lighter and more whole.”

After earning a degree in psychology from CUNY Queens College, Becker studied at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, a Buddhist school where some of the Beat poets taught. She later studied poetry with Martha Rhodes, director of The Frost Place in New Hampshire, at Rhodes’ brownstone in SoHo, New York. The exposure to other poets made her yearn to improve her work.
“Thus began a more serious study of poetry, not just as a survival tool, but as an artist,” explains Becker. “My poetry became a portal to inhabiting my feelings and experience rather than trying to transcend it all. It was like climbing down a ladder, and having my feet touch the ground.”

Her feet touched Bucks County ground in 1994 when she moved to Doylestown from New York City, and was delighted to discover the community of poets that she would come to know and grow with year after year, including Christopher Bursk’s annual poetry workshops, “his incomparable generosity and mentoring of writers.” Becker has since published three books of poetry: Foreign Bodies (Carolina Wren Press, 2004), At the Well of Flowers (Virtual Artists Collective, 2011), and Imperfect Matter (Wordtech Editions, 2013).

Becker’s poems have been published in Comstock Review, Flesh & Bone, Main Street Rag, Raving Dove, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Wild River Review, and many others. Her poem “A City Girl Feeds Country Cows” was read by Garrison Keillor on his Writer’s Almanac podcast on September 27, 2014. She’s currently working on a manuscript of stories based on the disabled people with whom she works as support staff, providing a window into their worlds.

In addition to the inaugural reading and reception, Becker will be honored with a $500 honorarium and a proclamation from the Bucks County Commissioners.

The 2014 Bucks County Poet Laureate reading and reception takes place at 2 p.m. Sunday November 16 in the Orangery building. Bucks County Community College is located at 275 Swamp Rd., Newtown, Pa., 18940. Admission and parking are free.

The Bucks County Poet Laureate program – the longest-running such program in Pennsylvania – is another way that Bucks County Community College contributes to the cultural heritage of the region. For more information, contact co-director Dr. Christopher Bursk at 215-968-8156.

A City Girl Feeds Country Cows

With handfuls of mown grass, I reach out to the shy cows
in their graze-hungry fields who resist my offering,

retreat backwards from the barbed fence that shocks my hand.
I am a New Yorker, dumb to the ways of cow, eagle, horse,

familiar with the aggressive ways of the pigeon who pimps
for crumbs, the squirrel who sprints across window panes,

armies of cockroaches who invade the night.
Now, I see cows corralled in their own muck,

stopped by fences just beyond lush green
meadows, assailed by armies of flies.

Cows, I pray you fresh cool breezes and plentiful
rich pastures. Cows, I pray you kind masters.

– Sandra Becker

Praise the Body

Slapped into the loud insistent world,
a wailing body,
you find your voice—
wheeze, croupy cough,
inarticulate bark.

In time, you learn
to dowse and unearth
the precise words
you come to need,
hide them in a chest,
return to them
on days the impertinent sun
refuses to show its face

and the moon, well,
the moon, hardly a sliver
of consolation
with its idiot promises,
high tide that pulls you in
and dashes you against
the unyielding rocks. No matter,

you lift each syllable from its dark
bed, place it
on your tongue, allow it
to speak to you
in a half-forgotten language.

– Sandra Becker, from Imperfect Matter