Bucks County Poet Laureate To Launch Chapbook At Doylestown Bookshop

DOYLESTOWN BOROUGH, PA — The Doylestown Bookshop presents the official launch and book signing of “The Write Metaphor,” a new chapbook by Bucks County Poet Laureate Tom Mallouk of Doylestown.

The event, to be held at 6 p.m. on Friday, October 27, will include a brief reading, questions from attendees, book signing, and meet and greet.

“To be named Poet Laureate after 13 years of trying and three runner-up finishes has been the greatest honor of my life as a writer. For years I worked on my craft but submitted very little. When I finally won, I had this mountain of poems that needed an audience," said Mallouk. "My wife, Eileen Engle, volunteered to put them in some kind of order in what I imagined would be a full length, manuscript titled 'Rupture, Repair, Redemption.' But surprisingly, out of more than 150 poems, the 26 that make up 'The Write Metaphor,' separated themselves, and I decided to put off the larger project and publish the chapbook."

The poems represent the full arc of Mallouk's writing life with one having been written in 1976 and the most recent, penned in the spring of 2023.

“The Write Metaphor” consists of 26 accessible and nuanced poems all of which explore or allude to Mallouk’s experience of the poetic enterprise. From the sublime to the ridiculous, the challenges, delights, and frustrations of attempting to write poetry populate this book and reveal the deepest longing of the poet in attempting to connect with the reader.

From the prologue poem to the final one titled “At the End,” Mallouk’s poems take the reader on an expedition into the redemptive possibilities offered by poetry. In this way “The Write Metaphor” is itself a metaphor for our noblest and most daunting ambitions.

When asked about holding the event at the Doylestown Bookshop, Mallouk smiled broadly.

“The Doylestown Bookshop is the perfect venue," he said. "It has been stalwart in supporting local writers and poets, hosting monthly poetry readings, and stocking the books of our finest local poets. It has personal significance to me in that I did my first public reading there, and it is where my wife and I brought our grandchildren to purchase their first books. I am grateful to Glenda Childs for welcoming the launch, and hope to draw as many people as possible to what has become under Glenda‘s stewardship, one of the cultural hubs of Bucks County.

"The fact that this is the end of Glenda’s tenure makes it especially meaningful to me and this is also, in my small way, an opportunity to welcome Lauren and Damian Ford as the new owners of this remarkable independent bookstore,” he said.

Mallouk 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. 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 in his 70s, 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.”

The Doylestown Bookshop is located at 16 S. Main St. in Doylestown. Pre-order a copy of "The Write Metaphor" by calling: 215-230-7610.