George School Senior Named Bucks County High School Poet Of The Year

NEWTOWN, PA — Rhianna Searle, a senior at George School, has been named the 2023 Bucks County High School Poet of the Year, officials at Bucks County Community College announced.

Searle, who was first runner-up in last year’s contest, rose to the top of more than 120 entries in the 36rd annual contest, part of the Bucks County Poet Laureate Program administered by the college.

For the first-place finish, Searle wins $300 and will be honored with a poetry reading on Saturday, May 13 from 2 to 4 p.m. in Tyler Hall 142 on BCCC's Newtown Campus. The event will feature winners, finalists, and judges.

The three poems Searle submitted for the contest were entitled “Steady,” “Sugar Snap Peas” and “Springtime Sonnet.”

The judges were Tom Mallouk (the current Bucks County Poet Laureate) and Nicole Steinberg (last year's BCPL).

In addition to the winner, the judges also named Olivia Cao, a junior Central Bucks High School South, as first runner-up. Second runner-up was senior Eva Houlton from New Hope-Solebury High School. Third runner-up was Charlotte Smyth, a junior from Central Bucks High School West. The three runners-up will also read from their works during the celebration.

The annual Bucks County High School Poet of the Year contest is another way that Bucks County Community College contributes to the cultural heritage of the region. To learn more, visit bucks.edu/poets.

For more information contact Dr. Ethel Rackin, a Professor of Language and Literature at Bucks and the director of the Wordsmiths Reading Series and Poet Laureate Program: Ethel.Rackin@bucks.edu

Searle’s winning poems

Steady

I slide into womanhood

like a glove

trying on different sizes

testing the waters.

Most girls bloom,

are written in poems as flowers,

green metaphors.

I wonder if most of those poems are written by men.

I am the knot of roots beneath the soil.

As time’s waters roll

women are the river stones

shifting but standing firm.

My own mother smells of muscle balm

and quinoa. She sounds like summertime.

Women are strong like wintering trees.

Stop calling their beauty ephemeral like cherry blossoms.

Womanhood is also private

fitting in the crevices between stonework and sheets

fingers tracing Georgia O’Keeffe patterns;

Like cacti in deserts, women hold their own water.

- Rhianna Searle

Sugar Snap Peas

“Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.

Let me call it, a garden.”

-Natalie Diaz, “From the Desire Field”

It’s not that poetry isn’t truth

–it’s a trellis.

I’d like to untie the knots of my fear

like tendons

turned tendrils

reaching towards the light

to transplant myself

to let myself be wild

and patient

I wrap metaphors around my arms like casts

after some time

I can crack them off, peel them off,

I become one

not a comparison or a shadow

but bones

and being.

Anger is red.

Love is peach colored anxiety

No–love is blossoms turned fruit

and even fear is fertile.

What I mean to say is

I love you

not in spite of

but through

My love is never

adjacent

Fear and love

are the same poem

at different stages

of revision,

the same sentence,

rewritten,

translated.

- Rhianna Searle

Springtime Sonnet

“And it’s over!” cry the leaves, as daybreak

Chimes. And still and still…when I am leaning

Here on you: it’s a sweeter kind of ache.

Time is passing away, away, cleaning

And rearranging. My ambitions changed.

In hearts’ safe chambers, recollections sprout

And melt as something soft becomes estranged.

Now April comes around again with doubt

Of Summer, then September. Trees turn green

Again, and I will become old and new.

And oh the tremor! Oh the thrill–eighteen!

And yet…less fear when sitting here with you.

We are young, and caught in April’s arm

And now for just a moment, out of harm.

- Rhianna Searle