The Nick Virgilio Haiku Association’s Midnight Notes at Rutgers University-Camden Writers House

Pauline Monter is a Philadelphia-based poet who writes about the human experience—the moments, thoughts, and feelings that reveal who we are. She has been writing poetry since middle school and performed spoken word in college before focusing on page and prose poetry. Her work has been published twice, and she now shares new poems weekly on Substack (http://orionwrites.substack.com). Self-taught and guided by observation, Pauline’s poetry explores the interior landscapes of existence—the questions we carry, the truths we stumble upon, and the essence that connects us all. She believes that writing about the human condition naturally becomes a spiritual practice, not through grand intention, but through the simple act of paying attention to being.

Patrick Rosal is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers-Camden and the author of five full-length poetry collections including The Last Thing: New and Selected Poems, which was listed among the best books of 2021 by The Boston Globe, in addition to winning the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Book Award. He has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Research Scholar program, as well as residencies from Civitella Ranieri and Lannan. His writing and visual work has been published in The New York Times, The Nation, e-flux, Best American Poetry and many other journals and magazines. He has taught at Bloomfield College, the University of Texas at Austin, Princeton University, as well as in many community workshops around the country through Poets House, Kundiman, the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, and elsewhere. A winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets, he has performed as poet and musician in Europe, Africa, Asia, and throughout the Americas at venues that include Lincoln Center, NJPAC, the Cabrillo housing projects for agricultural workers, and Filipino Community Hall in Delano— comprising a writing and performance career spanning more than twenty years and reaching a myriad of audiences around the world.