Poet & Writer
A lifelong New Englander, Jeff Bernstein watches the seasons slowly turn from a hillside in Central Vermont with an occasional foray into town or even across the border into Canada. The dogs maintain sanity and provide all forms of relief. Poetry is his favorite and earliest art form (he can’t draw a whit or hold a tune).
Latest Collection
“Jeff Bernstein’s The Ancient Ways explores family and memory, a rural life through the seasons, wrought with New England mettle and a subtle sense of longing. Weaving lyric intensity and narrative drive, the poems traverse sandy Vineyard cart-paths and Vermont hills and gardens, skilled in the art of attention. Bernstein is attuned to the natural world in all its beauty and wonder, to the unfurling of fiddleheads, the tenderness of dogs. The Ancient Ways bears witness to grief and loss while holding onto an abiding belief in love—“an improbable / tapestry of light and dark.” I will return again and again to these wise, beautiful, bittersweet poems.”
Awards & Recognitions
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for "The Ancient Ways", Homebound Publications Poetry Prize (2023)
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Nightfall, Full of Light, for the Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award for a full-length collection
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for “A Short Guide to the Proper Treatment of Maryland Blue Crabs, ”Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Contest
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for “Slow Courting,” Volume One
Turning Point Press