FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Larry R. King, 215.348.6413, lrking@buckscounty.org

Jane Edna Mohler of New Britain Township, a writer, counselor and teacher, was recognized by the Bucks County Commissioners last week as the 2020 Bucks County Poet Laureate.

Mohler, the 44^th recipient of the honor, was chosen in November from 75 entrants in an annual competition sponsored by the county commissioners and administered by Bucks County Community College. Begun in 1977, it is the longest-running program of its kind in Pennsylvania. 

At their regular meeting on Dec. 16, the commissioners presented Mohler with a congratulatory proclamation. She thanked the commissioners and read three poems from her recently published book, Broken Umbrella, at the outset of the meeting.

A native of Central Bucks County, Mohler has written poetry since childhood. “I was born just a few blocks over from here, so this is pretty exciting,” she said. “I’m a little bit speechless.”

Mohler resides today in a wooded area near Peace Valley Park, where she finds inspiration in the natural surroundings. “I live over by Lake Galena, and the nature and things in that area have really sunk into my writing,” she told the commissioners.

A past runner-up in the poet laureate competition, Mohler has been published in a number of periodicals and journals, and is the 2016 winner of the Main Street Voices poetry competition in Bucks County. She works as a school counselor through the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, and spent two summers teaching English at Guandong University of Foreign Studies in China. 

Mohler was honored by Bucks County Community College last month with a virtual poetry reading and reception that can be viewed here: https://tinyurl.com/ycyn9oe5

For more information about the college’s poet laureate program, click here: https://www.bucks.edu/academics/department/lang-lit/poet-laureate/

Below is one of the three poems Mohler read at the commissioners’ meeting:

A Widow Weeds

A widow weeds beside the house

that has become her husband.

She’s annoyed he hasn’t shaved.

She walks to the lake

that has become her sister.  

They pour into each other.

She tells the lake about termites

that have eaten the backbone of her house,

another husband in peril.

She tells the lake about her son

who comes to stack wood,

then leaves and leaves again.

She tells the lake that her retriever

didn’t walk today, because

his breath’s become too hard.

She waits for the cool lake to tell her

about geese who shatter the mirrored sky

and its own tiresome filling and emptying.

~ Jane Edna Mohler