Nicole Steinberg, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Moore College of Art & Design, is also a poet, curator of poetry events, and passionate promoter of Philly poets. And as of November 2021, she is the new poet laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she lives with her family. Shortly after Steinberg moved to the county with her wife earlier this year, she applied for the poet laureateship—a role that involves providing readings and poetry initiatives benefiting the county’s literary community—and was selected by the final judge, Maggie Smith, author of the viral poem “Good Bones.”
“When I got the news, I texted my wife and said, soooo, guess what? I’m the Bucks County poet laureate now!” she said. "There is a wonderfully active literary community here so it was a surprise and an honor to be selected."
A newcomer to Bucks County taking on this new role, Steinberg has given a reading for the Bucks County Commissioners and will continue to give local readings and attend literary events. In addition, she will judge the 2022 Bucks County High School Poet of the Year competition with Jane Edna Mohler, the 2020 Bucks County poet laureate. Steinberg feels welcomed by the existing literary community in Bucks County—one that she describes as a close-knit group, with former poet laureates still playing active roles. She is interested in utilizing her new role to build partnerships that will aid in disseminating and amplifying the voices of underrepresented people.
“I am thinking about ways in which I can help provide a spotlight for unpublished writers in the county, specifically writers who are LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, younger or older authors, etc., to bring some more diversity to the forefront of the literary community," Steinberg said. "I know that diversity is out there in Bucks, so I’d love to help build pipelines for those folks…and then perhaps they, too, will apply to be poet laureate one day.”
Steinberg's writing practice has always intersected with other areas of her life, including her sense of service and care for literary communities. Before moving to Philadelphia, she ran and curated a reading series called EARSHOT in New York City, which she continued after moving to Philly. She was also an editor of LIT Magazine, a literary journal housed by The New School, where she got her MFA. Since the pandemic began, Steinberg has felt distanced from literary events and opportunities to gather with other poets, and she is feeling a strong pull to get back into community and help others achieve their goals.
Steinberg started pursuing her passion for poetry in college. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to study, but there was something about creative writing classes and the workshop format that really resonated with her: “I felt like the world opened up to me in those [poetry] workshops. And then I became obsessed with the workshop format and took close to 10 workshops in four years—fiction and poetry—I was doing both at the time. And it just went from there….” Since then, she has been writing poems that she describes as "introspective, darkly funny and human." Many of her poems speak to the ways pop culture influences how we see things and interact with each other, and her newer work often reflects upon subjects such as body image, weight, queerness and family. It is important to her that people get her poems—that her poems remain grounded and resonate with readers and listeners. Some poets whose work inspire her include Denise Duhamel, Kimiko Hahn, Morgan Parker, Marie Howe and Harryette Mullen.
Now, as poet laureate, Steinberg has a chance to reach even more people through poetry—both her own and voices not yet published. In addition to the poet laureateship, working her full-time job at Moore and preparing to be a new mother, she is currently working on a collection of poems. Bucks County is lucky to have her and we, at Moore, look forward to seeing what comes and supporting her in this exciting new role.
