Doylestown Resident Named 2022 Bucks County Poet Laureate

NEWTOWN, PA — Doylestown resident Tom Mallouk has been named the 2022 Bucks County Poet Laureate, officials at the Bucks County Community College announced.

Mallouk, a psychotherapist, rose to the top of 60 entries in the 46th annual contest, said Dr. Ethel Rackin, director of the poet laureate program administered by the college. The contest is sponsored by the Bucks County Commissioners.

Mallouk and his wife, Dr. Eileen Engle, raised their daughters in Doylestown, where, in addition to his psychotherapy practice he pursues his passion for golf and fishing.

Mallouk said he began writing poetry after experiencing a “devastating” psychosis at age 20.

“Poetry began for me in the hospital as I emerged from the chaos of psychosis to the barely articulate sense making of the poem," he said. "That was more than 50 years ago. I wrote mostly prose in my chosen field of psychotherapy for 30 years before resuming poetry in 2002 after September 11 left me numb for a year. The poems came in a flood then and I've been writing ever since.”

Now, at age 73, Mallouk said he looks back “with gratitude for the chance I've been granted to build a life out of such chaos, a life filled with the love of my wife, children, and grandchildren, with meaningful work, enthusiasm for sport and the solace of poetry.”

Mallouk will be reading his poetry on Sunday, November 13 at 1 p.m. in Tyler 142 on the Newtown campus. He will be reading with 2021 Laureate Nicole Steinberg and they will be joined by the three runners-up, Steve Nolan, Lake Angela, and Christine McKee. Shawn R. Jones will also be reading.

The judges this year were Philadelphia poet Shawn R. Jones and Villanova Professor and poet Tsering Wangmo Dhompa. Both judges commented on the strength of this year's entries.

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 program director Dr. Ethel Rackin at 215-497-8719.

Fallow Field
For my father-in-law John Engle

So I decided to just sit with him,
not start the conversation.
Such a quiet man and calm
and me so garrulous and not,
he nourished the soil, his soul so old
inconsolable infants found comfort in his lap.

Our rocking chairs on the deck faced west
and the landscape unfolded —
freshly planted fields, the Perkiomen Valley,
steaming stacks of Limerick’s nuclear plant
and the soon descending sun.

He rocked and puffed, rocked and puffed,
the pungency of pipe tobacco and manure,
incense for my vigil. I waited with
the perfect circular holes
of carpenter bees in railing slats,
the chipped and faded deck stain
and lengthening shadows, colors brightened
then faded when clouds obscured the sun.

Birdsong, the breeze, the rasp and hiss
of pipe draw and the metronomic creek
of our rockers soon synced to each other.

I can't tell you when I stopped waiting,
just that I did. The way you don't know
when you fell asleep.
Nor how long it was before his voice
like the voice of the field itself said
If we get a little rain,
the corn should come in good this year.