Philip Coleman was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania on the same day the 1949 Nash Airflyte Ambassador ($2,195) was released– no coincidence, I’d wager. He has occupied the co-chair of the PSOV Summer Contests since 2019, alongside the wonderous Ann Day. Coleman has lived the better half of his life in Vermont. His experience shaping the love for poetry stems from a fine arts major, free-lance advertising, selling Kålso Earth Shoes, owning a retail shop in Middlebury, and teaching chemistry at university and high school for 17 years.

He was convinced by his amazing wife that he had some ability as a poet, and he’s spent years proselytizing this to journals and reviews. Coleman has been honored to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and workshops led by poets Arthur Sze, Gregory Pardlo, and Joy Harjo. He has self-published three chapbooks and has had published work in The Mountain Troubadour, Eunoia Review, Trouvaille Review, Neologism Review, Quail Bell Magazine, Interpretations (anthologies II-VI), and in six ekphrastic exhibits in Columbia and Kansas City, Missouri.

Coleman most admires A.R. Ammons, W.S. Merwin, Louise Glück, Matsuo Bashō, Kobayashi Issa, and Walt Whitman. His latest hobbies, after singing and marathoning, are developing a strong voice and staying out of trouble. In words from one of his favorite poets: “This chest of letters/holds the heart of all poems/to be discovered.”

Besides writing short third person bios, he has been active in a weekly poetry workshopping group that has been responsible for helping him craft and polish over 100 poems in the last two years. His companions, Teddy the Doodle and Pippa the Crabby Yorkie, are his final readers– which may be responsible in part for his high rejection rates.

Mary Rose Dougherty, (she/her) has been editor of The Mountain Troubadour since 2021. To read more jump to The Mountain Troubadour. 

George Longenecker was born in Salem. MA, about which he's written a poem. No witch jokes please! For 50 years he's lived in Vermont.

George was PSOV president from 2018 through 2021, and now serves on the Executive Council as past president. He was called to PSOV as he loves poetry and was impressed with the longevity of an organization that has been publishing and discussing poetry for 75 years. George likes working with the organization, and with individual poets. His favorite events have been the PoemCity readings, our PSOV summer workshops, and our PSOV readings on Zoom.  

In his professional life, he was a professor in the Department of English, Humanities and Social Sciences at Vermont Tech, teaching comp-lit, history, geography, and several lit courses. 

The land and the outdoors influence his writing. Birds and trees are woven into many of his poems. Historical places and events inspire him, as do people he knows and loves. The list of people who have inspired his writing is long, but he lists Marge Piercy and Wistawa Szymborska.   

George's book Star Route came out in 2018.  His biggest literary accomplishment in 2021 was having his short story “Acquisitions” in the anthology 2021 Best Short Stories from the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. George writes lots of poems, and gets lots of rejections, but has had work in Bryant Literary Review, Evening Street Review, Gyroscope Review, Main Street Rag, Cooweescoowee, and of course our own Mountain Troubadour. He's found that by living long enough, and sending in enough work, he's been able to have quite a lot published. He also writes commentaries and book reviews. 

George lives in Middlesex, on the edge of the woods, with his love and muse Cynthia Martin and their dog Aiko. They have a daughter Julia Martin Longenecker, who lives with her husband Tim in Ross Township, PA. George is the oddball in the family, as both his wife and daughter are left-handed and were born in Vermont. They appear in many of his poems.

Carol Milkuhn, Archivist and member of the Editorial Board, lived in Westchester, New York, until 1997 when she moved to Waitsfield, Vermont.  

Upon learning that Carol was a retired English teacher, Inga Potter, a neighbor and friend, introduced her to the PSOV—and so changed her life. Over the years the PSOV has provided Carol with many opportunities. As Archivist, she has preserved our poetic heritage at the request of the State of Vermont; the Historic Society in Barre now has a complete set of The MountainTroubadour, dating from 1947 to the present—as well as scrapbooks of records, photos, and news clippings. Being on the Editorial Board of The Troubadour has also been rewarding; having the chance to comment on the poems of PSOV members is a privilege. 

But most of all, the PSOV has provided an audience and critical feedback for Carol’s poetry, encouraging her to improve her writing skills.  In addition to the Troubadour, her poetry has appeared in several journals and magazines. Her first poetry chapbook, In The Company of Queens, was published in 2016 by Finishing Line Press; her second chapbook, Modern Tapestries, Medieval Looms, is scheduled for publication by The Orchard Street Press in 2022.

Carol is still teaching—but, instead of high school students, she now teaches adults at The Senior Institute in Middlebury. She also enjoys taking long hikes, knitting, reading and travel.

She lives with her dog, Atticus; a mini schnauzer, he is named after her late husband, a lawyer who practiced in New York. 

Bianca Amira Zanella (she/they), PSOV president, is a cis queer Vermont-based performance poet, artist, and advocate living on traditionally Abenaki land (Rutland, VT). She is the Poet-in-Residence at Phoenix Books Rutland, hosting an international monthly open mic. Her poems have most recently appeared in The Artful Mind, The Rutland Herald, The Mountain Troubadour, and The Reverie. Their poem films, sculptural poems, and poem paintings have also been on exhibit with PoemCity Montpelier, Merwin Gallery, Stone Valley Arts, SPACE: a Pop Up Art Gallery, and Surdam Gallery. Collaborating with visual artists to write ekphrastic pieces brings her much joy and playing with the visual interpretations of poetry is always an act of revelation.

They received the 2018 Corrine Eastman Davis Memorial Award for their poem, "A prayer –before the soup– for the suicidal son". In 2019, Bianca acted as Wellness Coordinator for the Feminine Empowerment Movement Slam (FEMS) tournament based in Cambridge, MA, and founded "Infinite Lit: a night of spoken word poetry," co-producing the series alongside Moth storyteller Michael Kingsbury. 

In 2020, Bianca founded The Paper Poet, offering healing poetic experiences to anyone experiencing suffering and continues to perform around the United States and globally, including reading for the American Club of Brussels and competing at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in Dallas, TX. She attended the inaugural Ruth Stone House 2021 Next Galaxy Poetry Retreat, and as of 2022, Bianca will serve as the President of the Poetry Society of Vermont. Having grown up in southern New Hampshire and moving to Vermont in 2011 to attend Green Mountain College where she first learned about and joined PSOV as a student, Bianca wishes to uplift her community via poetry and is excited to connect with established and new poets across her now-home state.