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Welcome to the schedule of poetry events happening in Massachusetts! This schedule contains events happening all over the state, as entered by our Poetry Partners and others. It is not limited to Mass Poetry events. To submit an event, click here. If you’d like to be authorized to add events directly to the calendar, email programassistant@masspoetry.org.
Saturday, December 14
 

TBA

Zvi Sesling
Readers/Speakers

Saturday December 14, 2019 TBA
Temple Isaiah

TBA

Poetry in Spanish and Translations INTO ENGLISH AND INTO MUSIC
Pedro Granados, Lima, Perú, Ph.D (Hispanic Language and Literatures), Boston University. Poetry collections: Sin motivo aparente (1978), Juego de manos (1984), Vía expresa (1986), El muro de las memorias (1989), El fuego que no es el sol (1993), El corazón y la escritura (1996), Lo penúltimo (1998), Desde el más allá (2002), Poesía para teatro (2010), Poemas en hucha (2012), Activado (2014), Amerindios/Amerindians (2020), La mirada (2020) y Al filo del reglamento (2020). Currently he is president of “Vallejo sin Fronteras Instituto” (VASINFIN).

Leslie Bary teaches Latin American literature and culture at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, centering on avant-garde poetics and representations of race, and is a prisoners’ rights activist outside class. Her translation of Oswald de Andrade’s “Manifesto antropófago” has become a classic; English versions of César Moro’s La Tortuga ecuestre and Pedro Granados’ Enredadera are forthcoming. Current writing includes “Border Trouble: Anzaldúa’s Margins” and “Field Notes on the Carceral State: From Death Row to ICE Detention in Louisiana.” Amerindios can be bought from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Amerindios-Amerindians-Spanish-Pedro Granados/dp/1940075882/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Amerindios&qid=1607355659&s=books&sr=1-2. La mirada (translated in Amerindios), can be bought from the bookstore Virrey: https://www.elvirrey.com/libro/la-mirada_70125027

Daisy Novoa Vásquez is a Chilean-Ecuadorian writer passionate about education, the arts, and intercultural understanding. She lives in Jamaica Plain and teaches at the Margarita Muñiz Academy. Daisy contributes to the Hispanic newspaper El Planeta and is the author of the poetry collection Fluir en Ausencia. Many of her writings have been published in print and online anthologies and literary magazines. Daisy was a writer in residence for the University of Massachusetts Boston and has participated in various literary festivals in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. To purchase her book, go to https://www.artepoetica.com/book/fluir-en-ausencia/.

Alan Smith Soto, a resident of Jamaica Plain and a member of the Jamaica Pond Poets, was born in San José, Costa Rica. He is the author of three books of poems, Fragmentos de alcancía (Treasure Jar Fragments) (Cambridge: Asaltoalcielo editores, 1998), Libro del lago (Pond poems), (Madrid, Árdora Ediciones, 2014) and Hasta que no haya luna (forthcoming Feb. 2021, Huerga y Fierro Editores, Madrid).His translation of Robert Creeley’s Life and Death (Vida y muerte) was published in 2000 (Madrid: Árdora Ediciones). Libro del lago can be bought here: https://www.amazon.com/Libro-lago-Alan-Smith-Soto/dp/848802052X

Largely unknown today, Juana Borrero (May 17, 1877-March 9, 1896), one of Cuba’s early Modernist poets, delves deep into raw states of imagination, affliction, love, decay, and death, centering the subjective experience of the individual. She died of tuberculosis while in exile in Key West during Cuba’s war for independence at the age of 18.

Stephany Svorinić is a composer and vocalist. Her work has been premiered by the Radius Ensemble and International Contemporary Ensemble, and played on radio stations across the country. She obtained her undergraduate degree from NYU and a Master of Music in vocal performance at New Jersey City University. She graduated from the Longy School of Music in 2019 with a diploma in composition and is currently pursuing a master's in composition at Tufts University. Her Borrero project sets her translations of the poetry of 19th Century Cuban poet, Juana Borrero, to music. Stephany enjoys horror, animals, and all things numinous. If you’d like to tip the artist, please Venmo @stephanysvorinic.

To receive a Zoom invitation with a link to the reading, email your name and email address to SandeeStorey@fastmail.fm before 2 pm on Jan. 7. You will be emailed a Zoom invitation with the link by noon Jan. 8. For security reasons, please do not publicize, post, or broadcast the Zoom link itself. If people you know want to attend, you may send them the link, but please ask them also not to publicize, post, or broadcast the link itself.

For more information, check our website at http://jamaicapondpoets.com or email dorothy.derifield@gmail.com or call 617-325-8388. The next Chapter and Verse Literary Reading on Zoom in the 2020/2021 series will be at 7:30 pm on Friday, February 12, 2021.


Saturday December 14, 2019 TBA

7:30pm EST

Solidarity Salon: poems & stories with music & dance!
The Solidarity Salon gathers together local poets, writers, and other artists to share their creations in community spaces. The series aims to especially amplify the voices of women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ persons. Our event on December 14 will feature seven local writers, joined by musicians In Paik and Ju Hee Kang, plus dancer Liliana Jimenez. Donations collected at this event will go to On the Rise (https://www.ontherise.org/) in support of their Voices Together writing program. For more event info: https://thepoetpianist.com/home-2/music/

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Lisa DeSiro

Lisa DeSiro

Lisa DeSiro is the author of Simple as a Sonnet (Kelsay Books, 2021); Labor (Nixes Mate, 2018); and Grief Dreams (White Knuckle Press, 2017). She is featured in Writers Resist: The Anthology (Running Wild Press, 2018); Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse... Read More →
avatar for Julia Lisella

Julia Lisella

Poet, teacher, scholar
Julia Lisella’s three books of poetry are Our Lively Kingdom (Bordighera Press), Always (WordTech Editions), Terrain (WordTech Editions), and Love Song Hiroshima (Finishing Line Press). Her poems are widely anthologized and are forthcoming or have appeared in The Common, Ploughshares... Read More →


Saturday December 14, 2019 7:30pm - 9:30pm EST
The Lilypad
 
Sunday, December 15
 

2:00pm EST

Brookline Poetry Series: Alan Shapiro and Dorian Kotsiopoulos
December 15, 2019
Featured Reader: Alan Shapiro
Alan Shapiro has published many poetry collections (including Reel to Reel, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Night of the Republic, finalist for both the National Book Award and the International Griffin Prize), four books of prose, including The Last Happy Occasion, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Winner of the Kingsley Tufts Award, LA Times Book Prize, an award in literature from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, he is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recent books include Life Pig (poems), That Self-Forgetful Perfectly Useless Concentration (essays), and his latest, Against Translation (poems), all from University of Chicago press. Shapiro is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor of English at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Opening Reader: Dorian Kotsiopoulos
Dorian Kotsiopoulos has been featured at various poetry venues in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in literary and medical journals, including Poet LoreSalamanderNew England Journal of MedicineJAMAWomen’s Review of BooksThird Wednesday, and Smartish Pace. Dorian loves studying poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.



Sunday December 15, 2019 2:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Hunneman Hall, Brookline Village Library
 
Tuesday, December 17
 

7:00pm EST

Poetry of the Season
The WCPA celebrates the Poetry of the Season on Tuesday, December 17, at 19 Carter in Berlin.  Gary Hoare and Ted Blackler will read two winter classics; Dylan Thomas' "A Child’s Christmas in Wales" and Beatrix Potters' "The Tailor of Gloucester", following a community open reading.  Bring winter-themed writing to share; it can be your work or that of someone else.
 
This event is free and open to the public.

Readers/Speakers


Tuesday December 17, 2019 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
19 Carter

7:00pm EST

Nina McLaughlin Reading
Tue, December 17, 7pm – 9pm
Where: 6 Plympton St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA (map)
Description: Join us for a reading Nina MacLaughlinn reading from Wake Siren


Readers/Speakers

Tuesday December 17, 2019 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Grolier Poetry Bookshop
 
Thursday, December 19
 

7:00pm EST

Translating Korean: Jake Levine and Sekyo Nam Haines in conversation with Janaka Stucky
Hysteria

The Transnational Series welcomes two Korean translators to discuss their work and their most recent translations with Janaka Stucky, the founding editor of Black Ocean.
About the translators:
Jake Levine is an American translator, poet, and scholar. He received his BA and MFA from the University of Arizona and is currently Abd in a PhD program in Comparative Literature at Seoul National University. He works as an assistant professor of creative writing at Keimyung University and as a lecturer at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He is the assistant editor at Acta Koreana, the editor for the Korean poetry series Moon Country at Black Ocean, and a group member of the experimental hip-hop / verse collective Poetic Justice.
Sekyo Nam Haines, born and raised in South Korea, immigrated to U.S. in 1973 as a registered nurse. She studied American literature and writing at the Goddard College ADP and poetry with the late Ottone M. Riccio in Boston, MA. Her poems have appeared in the anthologies Do Not Give Me Things Unbroken, Unlocking The Poem, and Beyond Words; and in the poetry journal Off the Coast. Her translations of Korean poetry has appeared in Harvard Review and The Seventh Quarry Poetry. She lives in Cambridge, MA with her family.

Readers/Speakers
JS

Janaka Stucky

Janaka Stucky is the author of The Truth Is We Are Perfect, the publisher over at Black Ocean Press, and oversees the annual poetry journal, Handsome. He is also the author of two chapbooks: Your Name Is The Only Freedom and The World Will Deny It For You. His poems have appeared... Read More →


Thursday December 19, 2019 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Brookline Booksmith

7:00pm EST

A Window on the World through the Eyes of the Zimbabwean Poet Togara Muzanenhamo
A Window on the World through the Eyes of the Zimbabwean Poet Togara Muzanenhamo


Togara Muzanenhamo reads from his three collections of poetry. Muzanenhamo was born in Lusaka, Zambia and raised on a farm in Zimbabwe. He has studied in the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom. His poems have been widely published in numerous international journals and broadcast on radio and television. His first collection, Spirit Brides (2006), was shortlisted for the Jerwood Alderburg First Collection Prize, his second collection, Gumiguru (2014), was shortlisted for the Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry and his third book, Textures ( 2014 -in collaboration with John Eppel) won the National Arts and Merit Awards for Literature. Muzanenhamo lives with his partner and children in Zimbabwe.
This event is co-sponsored by the New England Poetry Club.


Thursday December 19, 2019 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Cambridge Public Library
 
Sunday, December 29
 

7:00pm EST

Curt Curtin @ Listen! a poetry reading
Curt Curtin will present work from Curt's first full-length book of poetry, titled "For Art's Sake." Due to his low vision, Curt will introduce his poems which will be read by his wife, Dee.)

David Macpherson hosts a poetry open reading to kick off the night.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →

Hosts
DM

David Macpherson

David Macpherson has been published a bunch of times. One was in Aim for the Head: Zombie Poetry from Write Bloody Press. He has been published 20 times by Every Day Fiction, which means he gets the complimentary EDF Golf Cart (still checking the mail for that puppy to show up... Read More →



Sunday December 29, 2019 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Nick's Bar & Restaurant
 
Friday, January 3
 

7:00pm EST

Poetry in the Parlor, curated by the New England Poetry Club
Friday, January 3, 7 pm
Poetry in the Parlor, curated by the New England Poetry Club
Kenneth Lee, Gloria Mindock, and Tontongi
The Old Manse
Concord, MA


Friday January 3, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
The Old Manse

7:00pm EST

Unearthed Song & Poetry Open Mic: Oliver de la Paz
  • January 3, Time 7:00PM - 9:30PM. home.stead bakery & cafeUnearthed Song & Poetry Open Mic  




Readers/Speakers
avatar for Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz is the author of four collections of poetry: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, and Post Subject: A Fable. He also co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member, Oliver serves as the co-chair... Read More →


Friday January 3, 2020 7:00pm - 9:30pm EST
Home.stead Bakery and Cafe
 
Saturday, January 4
 

6:00pm EST

Lesley January Reading Series Presents: Carl Phillips
Poetry reading by Carl Phillips at the Marran Theatre at Lesley University, located at 34 Mellen Street, in Cambridge, MA.


Saturday January 4, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Marran Theater 34 Mellen St, Cambridge, MA 02138
 
Monday, January 6
 

6:00pm EST

Lesley January Reading Series Presents: Sharon Bryan and Rachel Kadish
Poetry reading by Sharon Bryan, and fiction reading by Rachel Kadish, at Lesley University's Marran Theater, located at 34 Mellen Street, in Cambridge, MA.

Readers/Speakers

Monday January 6, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Marran Theater 34 Mellen St, Cambridge, MA 02138
 
Wednesday, January 8
 

7:00pm EST

WCPA Board Meeting
Join the board of the Worcester County Poetry Association for our monthly meeting. This is a working meeting, not a poetry reading. We welcome to the respectful input of the poetry community.

Due to the first Wednesday falling on a holiday our board meeting is being held on January 8th this month. It will be a teleconference meeting. Please e-mail wcpaboard@yahoo.com for the call-in details.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about how the board supports the rich literary history and creative energy of Central Massachusetts.

Readers/Speakers


Wednesday January 8, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
WCPA Office @ the Sprinkler Factory
 
Friday, January 10
 

7:00pm EST

Brookline Booksmith: Five Brookline Poets Reading
Five Brookline Poets share their work with the community that inspired them. »Zvi Sesling is the Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA and a prize winning poet. He has been published widely in print and online nationally and internationally. Sesling is Editor of Muddy River Poetry Review, publishes Muddy River Books and reviews for the Boston Small Press and Poetry Scene.
Jan Schreiber is an American poet, translator, and literary critic who has been part of the renascence of formal poetry that began in the late twentieth century. He is the author of four books of verse, two books of verse translation and one book of literary criticism.
Judith Steinbergh was selected as first Poet Laureate for the town of Brookline, MA for a 3 year term ending on April 1, 2015. She is the author of 4 poetry books and 3 poetry teaching texts. She also teaches and mentors students and teachers for Troubadour, Inc.
Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and professor. Her chapbook, Flower Map, was published by Finishing Line Press (2013). In 2014, her poem “Written on Skin” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on human rights and sustainability. Her poems have been published in SalamanderVoices IsraelPOESYWilderness House ReviewIbbetson Street, and the Muddy River Poetry Review.
Tino Villanueva is the author of seven books of poetry and has taught creative writing at the University of Texas-Austin, the College of William & Mary, and Bowdoin College. His artwork has appeared on the covers and pages of national and international journals such as NexosGreen Mountains ReviewTriQuarterlyParnassus, and MELUS. He teaches in the Department of Romance Studies at Boston University.






Friday January 10, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Brookline Booksmith
 
Saturday, January 11
 

3:00pm EST

Powow River Poets Reading Series: Elizabeth Wolf and Anton Yakovlev
The bimonthly Powow River Poets Readings Series, started in 1992, is free and open to the public, and includes an Open Mic. Poetry enthusiasts are urged to attend. Most readings are held on the second Saturday of the month at 3:00 p.m. at the Newburyport Public Library, 94 State Street in Newburyport, Massachusetts.
Past readers have featured such eminent poets as former NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, X.J. Kennedy, Alicia Stallings, David Ferry, Robert Shaw, and talented newcomers like Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize recipient Rose Kelleher. 
Recent invited poets included New Criterion Award winner Dan Brown, poet and translator Rachel Hadas, magazine editors and award-winning poets David Yezzi and Joseph Bottum. Other Powow readers include Catherine Tufariello, Josh Mehigan, Mimi White, Catherine Chandler, Ernie Hilbert, Rick Mullin, Nick Balbo, Annie Finch, and other fine poets and friends of the formalist tradition.
The Open Mic is limited to ten poets, so come early to the library to sign up. The time limit is one poem or two minutes, whichever is shorter, so please time your reading when you rehearse.   



Saturday January 11, 2020 3:00pm - 4:30pm EST
Newburyport Public Library
 
Sunday, January 12
 

3:00pm EST

 
Thursday, January 16
 

7:00pm EST

Transnational Series: E.J. Koh in conversation with Jennifer Tseng
The Magical Language of Others is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh’s parents return to South Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself abandoned and adrift in a world made strange by her mother’s absence. Her mother writes letters, in Korean, over the years seeking forgiveness and love–letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.
The Magical Language of Others weaves a profound tale of hard-won selfhood and our deep bonds to family, place, and language, introducing–in Eun Ji Koh–a singular, incandescent voice.
E. J. Koh is the author of the poetry collection A Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize (Louisiana State U. Press, 2017). Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston ReviewLos Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She is the recipient of The MacDowell Colony and Kundiman fellowships and a 2017 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship, and was runner-up for the 2018 Prairie Schooner Summer Nonfiction Prize.
Jennifer Tseng’s flash fiction collection, The Passion of Woo & Isolde (Rose Metal Press 2017), was a Firecracker Award finalist and winner of an Eric Hoffer Book Award; and her novel, Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness (Europa Editions 2015), was shortlisted for the PEN American Center’s Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the New England Book Award. She’s also published three award-winning books of poetry, The Man With My Face (AAWW 2005); the bilingual Red Flower, White Flower (Marick Press 2013) featuring Chinese translations by Mengying Han and Aaron Crippen; and Not so dear Jenny (Bateau Press 2017), poems made with her Chinese father’s English letters. Jennifer and her sister, visual artist Amanda Tseng, collaborate on Instagram @tseng.sisters, using the hashtag #sistersreadingsisters. Together, her sister’s images and her micro reviews celebrate books by women of color, queer women and women in translation—past, present, and future.


Readers/Speakers

Thursday January 16, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Brookline Booksmith
 
Friday, January 17
 

6:30pm EST

The Visible Planets by Aly Pierce Release Show
The Visible Planets by Aly Pierce is dropping on 1/17! Come hang out with us

We'll have sets from Aly Pierce, Lip Manegio, Cassandra de Alba, and more!

Michael Malpiedi and Kaleigh O'Keefe are co-hosting!

Makeshift Boston is an amazing community space and we're excited to show you our newest book release!

Space is limited so please register. Admission is free! Come on time and hang out with the whole GOB crew.

The space is wheelchair accessible! This show is alcohol free.

Any questions? Message Game Over Books on Facebook or Instagram.


Friday January 17, 2020 6:30pm - 9:30pm EST
Make Shift Boston
 
Sunday, January 19
 

3:00pm EST

Brookline Poetry Series: Rodney Jones
January 19, 2020
Featured Reader: Rodney Jones
Rodney Jones is the author of eleven books of poems. His honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Harper Lee Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Award, and he has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Griffin International Poetry Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and in nine editions of Best American PoetryVillage Prodigies, his latest book, doubles as a book of poems and an experimental novel. He lives in New Orleans and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Warren Wilson College.
Opening Reader: Mitch Manning
Mitch Manning is the author of city of water (Arrowsmith, 2019). He’s taught poetry in central China and his poems have been read in Basra, southern Iraq as part of the Boston to Basra Project. He teaches in the English and Labor Studies programs at UMass Boston, and is Associate Director at the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences. He’s an Associate Editor for CONSEQUENCE magazine and founder of NO INFINITE, a journal of petry, art, and protest. Poems and interviews published in The DorisBOOG CityLet The Bucket DownCONSEQUENCESundialHollowGAFF and more.


Readers/Speakers

Sunday January 19, 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm EST
Hunneman Hall, Brookline Village Library
 
Monday, January 20
 

9:00pm EST

The Dirty Gerund Poetry Series featuring Adam Stone
Open mic followed by feature from Adam Stone.

21+, free admission, donations accepted.

Readers/Speakers

Monday January 20, 2020 9:00pm - 10:00pm EST
Ralph's Rock Diner
 
Tuesday, January 21
 

7:00pm EST

January U35 Reading | Mass Poetry
U35 is a bi-monthly reading series for poets under 35, held once each January, March, May, July, September, and November. The series seeks to promote and bolster young Massachusetts poets while giving them a venue to share their work and connect with other poets. If you are a poet under the age of 35, sign up to read via Mass Poetry's website! This event is free and open to the public. 

http://www.masspoetry.org/u35

Our January readers are:

Raina K. Puels is a queer, polyamorous human living in Allston. She graduated from Emerson with her MFA in May of 2019. Her collection of essays, Resaturation was long-listed for PANK's book prize. By day, she works as an admin at MIT and by night, she hangs out with her little black cat, Layla Stoner Sparkle Demon. You can read her writing in The Rumpus, GAY Mag, American Literary Review, Yes Poetry, and many other places listed on her website: rainakpuels.com. 

Ananya Panchal is a 20-year-old Boston University student studying Journalism and Criminal Justice. For as long as she can remember, Ananya has loved writing. Journalism is her way of analyzing and entering the dialogue of the world around her, but poetry has always been her way of analyzing herself and her many emotions. Ananya has self-published a book of poetry, performed at open mics and given a Ted Talk in her hometown of Los Altos, California. This is her first Boston performance.

Casey Lynn Roland is a second year graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, pursuing an MFA in Poetry. She lives, works, writes, and makes art on the North Shore of Massachusetts, but spends much of her time on Lake Winnipesaukee; her poetry attempts to reconcile her relationships to those places, the people in them, and how they are always changing. Casey’s current obsessions are folklore, trees, and the idea that all time is simultaneous. She also creates blackout poetry, and you can see some of her work on Instagram at @mscaseycreates and at www.caseylynnroland.com.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Raina K. Puels

Raina K. Puels

Raina K. Puels is a queer, polyamorous human living in Allston. She graduated from Emerson with her MFA in May of 2019. Her collection of essays, Resaturation was long-listed for PANK's book prize. By day, she works as an admin at MIT and by night, she hangs out with her little black... Read More →
avatar for Ananya Panchal

Ananya Panchal

Ananya Panchal is a 20-year-old Boston University student studying Journalism and Criminal Justice. For as long as she can remember, Ananya has loved writing. Journalism is her way of analyzing and entering the dialogue of the world around her, but poetry has always been her way of... Read More →
avatar for Casey Lynn Roland

Casey Lynn Roland

Casey Lynn Roland is a second year graduate student at the University of New Hampshire, pursuing an MFA in Poetry. She lives, works, writes, and makes art on the North Shore of Massachusetts, but spends much of her time on Lake Winnipesaukee; her poetry attempts to reconcile her relationships... Read More →



Tuesday January 21, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Trident Booksellers & Cafe
 
Wednesday, January 22
 

8:00pm EST

Devin Kelly Features at the Boston Poetry Slam
Devin Kelly will be the featured poet at the Boston Poetry Slam on Wednesday, January 22, 2020. 

Devin Kelly is the author of In This Quiet Church of Night, I Say Amen (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and the co-host of the Dead Rabbits Reading Series. He is the winner of a Best of the Net Prize, and his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Guardian, LitHub, Catapult, DIAGRAM, Redivider, and more. He lives and teaches high school in New York City.

An open poetry slam is scheduled for the late-night portion of this show, following the feature. The slam will be speed slam format: eight open sign-ups will be available starting at door time, and poets will slam head-to-head in up to three rounds with time limits of 3, 2, and 1 minute. Winner and runner-up qualify for the 2020 Team Selection series. To volunteer to judge in exchange for free admission to the show, or to ask questions about the slam, email the slam curator at slamseries@bostonpoetryslam.com.

SCHEDULE
7:15pm: doors and sign-ups open
8:00pm: open mic
10:00pm: Devin Kelly features
11:00ish: open poetry slam
More info about the show: http://bostonpoetryslam.com/?p=9666

The show is 18+, $3 and the bar is cash only. Everyone must show a photo ID to enter the Cantab Lounge.


Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Wednesday January 22, 2020 8:00pm - 11:00pm EST
Cantab Lounge 738 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
 
Thursday, January 23
 

7:00pm EST

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Mic
Readers/Speakers
avatar for Timothy Gager

Timothy Gager

Bestselling Author, Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his third novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works... Read More →


Thursday January 23, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Roslindale House

7:00pm EST

8:00pm EST

Countertop Chants: January Poetry Session

Countertop Chants is proud to host Poetry Sessions that celebrate our craft, art of all mediums, community, and local businesses. 
Join us the 4th Thursday every month for a lively open mic at Canopy Room, one of the newest spots for local artists and entrepreneurs in the Boston area! This month’s session will be held Thursday, January 23rd,, from 8 to 10 pm. 

SCHED:
Space opens at 8 pm, reading starts at 8:15pm! Our intermission music starts promptly at 9 pm. We have 10 spots for poetry reading, with music from this month's guest, Sophie London. Each reader will have 5 minutes at the mic, sign ups will be open until we fill the spots. 

ABOUT THE READING: 
This is a place to share your work, meet new artist friends, explore the Boston area, and have fun. Boston has a strong community of artists and writers and they deserve an inclusive space to connect and enjoy their art while still making it a party. We are here to celebrate life, arts, and our community. 

This is not a competition! There will be no winners, and there is no expected format. Tell us your dreams through acrostic poems, give us just a taste of your despair with a haiku. Whatever form you take, we celebrate it. 

We do book our intermission act in advance. If you are interested in playing acoustic music, doing an interpretative dance, or something that compliments the poetic medium, drop us a line at countertopchants@gmail.com 


ABOUT THE SPACE: 
We are hosting our poetry sessions in the event space of Bow Market, Canopy Room. We are teaming up with local businesses to foster our local artists. There is no cover to get in, but there is a cash/credit card bar! So please enjoy libations during the reading and have a little fun with us. 

Bow Market is home to many retail shops, restaurants, brewery and more. Grab food from one of these shops and bring it with you to the reading, or get here early and explore some of the shops before you join us!


Thursday January 23, 2020 8:00pm - 10:00pm EST
Canopy Room
 
Friday, January 24
 

7:30pm EST

Freeverse! Team Slam at Mill City Speaks ft. Febo
Freeverse!
@Mill City Speaks
Wicked Loud Team Qualifier Slam
$100 in prizes

Poets 13 to 19 are eligible to compete
Please contact Untitled Open Mic on Facebook

Hosted by and with a spotlight feature from
ANTHONY FEBO

Friday, January 24
7:30 to 10 pm

@ Coffee & Cotton in Mill No. 5
250 Jackson Street
Lowell, MA

4th Friday of Every Month
Poetry Slam
Open Mic

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Febo

Febo

Anthony Febo is a poet, actor, youth worker, lover and friend. He founded the adult slam poetry scene in the city that birthed and raised him, Lowell, MA. He also co founded FreeVerse! a organization that works with Lowell's youth to better understand themselves through poetry. He... Read More →


Friday January 24, 2020 7:30pm - 10:00pm EST
Coffee and Cotton
 
Saturday, January 25
 

TBA

IAWA in Boston Presents
Readers/Speakers
avatar for Timothy Gager

Timothy Gager

Bestselling Author, Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his third novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works... Read More →


Saturday January 25, 2020 TBA
I Am Books
 
Sunday, January 26
 

1:00pm EST

Curt Curtin @ Tatnuck Bookseller
Curt Curtin will present work from his first full-length book of poetry, titled "For Art's Sake."  Due to his low vision, Curt will introduce his poems which will be read by his wife, Dee.)

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →



Sunday January 26, 2020 1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
Tatnuck Bookseller and Cafe
 
Monday, January 27
 

8:30pm EST

Dirty Gerund Poetry Show ft. Lynne Schmidt
Featured Poet: Lynn(e) Schmidt is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale & Sparrow Press), On Becoming a Role Model ( Thirty West Publishing House, Spring 2020), and Dead Dog Poems (Bottlecap Press, Summer 2020). She is a mental health professional in Maine writing memoir, poetry, and young adult fiction. Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor's Choice Award, Honorable Mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans. 

Bonus Ruckus: The return of the Holy Hot Sauce Sonnet Challenge! We'll bring an absurd hot sauce for you to shoot! Also some sonnets. Survive the dumbness and we'll reward you and stuff! 

The super talented Hal Gaucher is providing the visual arts!

Joy Pond is holding it DOWN on snacks! 

Music by Jacob Leevai and (hopefully) friends! 

21 plus
$2 to $5 suggested donation

Readers/Speakers

Monday January 27, 2020 8:30pm - 11:30pm EST
Ralph's Rock Diner
 
Tuesday, January 28
 

6:00pm EST

Amesbury Public Library Poetry Series
Amesbury Public Library begins its 2020 poetry series, with featured poet, Toni Treadway. Toni has been a member of the Powow River Poets since 2004. Her first poetry book “Late Harvest” came last year from Kelsay Books. Its title poem was a runner up for the 2019 Robert Frost Prize in Lawrence, Mass. She became co-organizer of the Powow Poets reading series at the Newburyport Public Library in 2015. She listens for music in nature and to share old struggles with odd friends. A handful of her poems are online with links on her page at the PowowRiverPoets.com website. She restores old movie film for archives with her partner Bob Brodsky and they sing in the Newburyport Choral Society. Toni is an enthusiastic reader at the Whittier Home's Tapestry of Voices poetry event held each August.
The Amesbury Public Library, 149 Main St. hosts a monthly poetry series with an open mic. Each month there is a featured poet followed by a discussion, an open mic and light refreshments. Ellie O'Leary, Amesbury Poet Laureate, hosts this event. Free and open to the public. For info: amesburypubliclibrary.org or 978-388-9771

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday January 28, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EST
Amesbury Public Library

7:00pm EST

Thirsty Lab Reading Series: Michael Milligan
The Thirsty Lab Reading Series is on 206 Worcester Road in Princeton, MA 01541. The series began in 2013 and happens the fourth and fifth Tuesdays of every month from 7-9 p.m. There is no open. The reader has the full two hours to use as s/he wishes. Some read two sets of 30-45 minutes. Some bring musicians to play behind the words.  Some use part of the time for a workshop session and discussion. There is usually a bottle of wine to share, some home baked treats, great discussion and a poetically intelligent audience.

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday January 28, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
206 Worcester Road

7:00pm EST

The Poetorium at Starlite Reading Series & Open Mic Featuring Richard H. Fox
Please join us on January 28th for our monthly open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium at Starlite hosted by Paul Szlosek and Ron Whittle. It will be a full evening of poetry and spoken word starting with a brief interview on stage with our featured poet Richard H. Fox (Author of Time Bomb, Wandering in Puzzle Boxes, You're My Favorite Horse, and The Complete Uncle Louie Poems), followed by a poetry reading by our feature, a 10-minute tribute to a dead poet by a guest reader, a short intermission, and then the open mic (with 5-minute slots for each reader). Admission is free (but a hat will be passed to pay our features)


Co-Founder / Co-Host
avatar for Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
avatar for Ron Whittle

Ron Whittle

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
Ron Whittle, a lifetime resident of Massachusetts, was born in Worcester in 1947 and raised and educated in his home town of Shrewsbury. Further education came by way of the U.S. Navy, Vietnam, the Apollo 13 recovery team, and 45 years of family living. Ron divides his time between... Read More →

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Richard Fox

Richard Fox

Richard H. Fox dreams three-decker rainbows encircle The Woo. When not writing about rock ’n roll or youthful transgressions, his poems focus on cancer from the patient’s point of view drawing on hope, humor, and unforeseen gifts. He is the author of three poetry collections: Time... Read More →



Tuesday January 28, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EST
Starlite Bar & Gallery 39 Hamilton Street, Southbridge, MA, USA
 
Wednesday, January 29
 

TBA

8:00pm EST

Porsha Olayiwola Features at the Boston Poetry Slam
Porsha Olayiwola will be the featured poet at the Boston Poetry Slam on Wednesday, January 29, 2020. 

Porsha Olayiwola is from the future! Black, poet, queer-dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston. Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator and curator who uses afro-futurism and surrealism to examine historical and current issues in the Black, woman, and queer diasporas. She is an Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and the artistic director at MassLEAP, a literary youth organization. Olayiwola is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College. Porsha Olayiwola is the author of i shimmer sometimes, too forthcoming with Button Poetry and is the current Poet Laureate for the city of Boston.

There will be NO poetry slam competition after the feature tonight; please come celebrate our feature and her new book. 

SCHEDULE
7:15pm: doors and sign-ups open
8:00pm: open mic
10:00pm: Porsha Olayiwola features
More info about the show: http://bostonpoetryslam.com/?p=9694

The show is 18+, $3 and the bar is cash only. Everyone must show a photo ID to enter the Cantab Lounge.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Porsha Olayiwola

Porsha Olayiwola

Porsha Olayiwola is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. She bested more than seventy of the highest ranked slam poets in the world to earn these titles and is now one of the most sought after spoken word artists on the national circuit... Read More →

Hosts

Wednesday January 29, 2020 8:00pm - 11:00pm EST
Cantab Lounge 738 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
 
Thursday, January 30
 

TBA

Deep Curation: an experimentally curated poetry reading
Lee Ann Brown, Sawako Nakayasu, Klara Du Plessis
with audio of Fanny Howe's poetry
in the Front Theater Space


TBA

Poetry & Open Mic Night w/ Amanda Coleman
Poetry & Open Mic Night
Hosted by Amanda Coleman
Read poetry, play music, share comedy and stories! Come be creative with us!

Thursday January 30, 2020 TBA
Cleat and Anchor
 
Friday, January 31
 

7:00pm EST

Author Talk: The Art of the Memoir
Join local writers for the next quarterly Author Talk at FYACS with Memoir writers Calvin Hennick and Mimi Lemay as they talk about writing from a personal place. Moderated by Melrose author and Memoirist Jane Roper. $5 for members/$10 for non-members. Click here for tickets.

Mimi Lemay, a former Melrose resident, became an advocate for transgender and non-binary youth shortly after her son Jacob’s transition in 2014, at the age of four. Published in November 2019, Lemay’s memoir, What We Will Become, has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, Booklist and Library Journal and a ringing endorsement from Congressman Joe Kennedy III who said, “It is a striking call to action for a country where every child is worthy, believed in, and loved.”
Calvin Hennick’s debut memoir, “Once More to the Rodeo,” holds a mirror up to both himself and modern America, as he grapples with what it means to be a white father to a biracial son. In search of answers, Calvin takes his young son on the road, traveling across the country to the annual rodeo in his small Iowa hometown. “Once More to the Rodeo” received the Pushcart Press Editors' Book Award and was named one of the Best 100 Books of the Year by Amazon.
There will be refreshments and books will be sold onsite during the event by Whitelam Books of Reading. Get yours signed by the authors on at the event.

Readers/Speakers

Friday January 31, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Follow Your Art Community Studios
 
Sunday, February 2
 

1:00pm EST

Poetry: The Art Of Words
Readers/Speakers
avatar for John Bonanni

John Bonanni

Editor, Cape Cod Poetry Review
John Bonanni lives on Cape Cod, MA, where he serves as editor for the Cape Cod Poetry Review. He is the recipient of a scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a residency from AS220 in Providence, RI. His work has appeared in CutBank, Assaracus, Verse Daily... Read More →


Sunday February 2, 2020 1:00pm - 3:00pm EST
Plymouth Public Library Otto Fehlow Meeting Room

2:00pm EST

Temple Sinai’s 11th Annual Poetry Festival
This year’s featured poet is Rachel Kann -- a poet, performer, ceremonialist and teaching artist. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Soul-Lit, Tiferet, Eclipse, Permafrost, Coe Review, Sou’wester, GW Review and Quiddity. She is a resident writer for Hevria, where she’s also featured as a performing artist on The Hevria Sessions.  Rachel has performed her poetry in such varied venues as Disney Concert Hall, Royce Hall, the Broad Stage and San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts. She is a 2019 Inquiry Fellow through American Jewish University’s Institute for Jewish Creativity and was a 2017 Asylum Arts Reciprocity Fellow and the 2017 Outstanding Instructor of the Year at UCLA Extension Writers' Program. Her latest poetry collection is How to Bless the New Moon, from Ben Yehuda Press. Her poetry collections include A Prayer on Behalf of the Broken Heart and 10 for Everything. She is also the author of the children’s book, You Sparkle Inside.

Master of Ceremonies: Professor Larry Lowenthal

An open mic will follow!
Readers bring one original poem on themes of family, community, or Jewish life. Sign up to read as you enter.  Questions?  Contact Deborah Leipziger at dleipziger@gmail.com

Readers/Speakers


Sunday February 2, 2020 2:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Temple Sinai

7:00pm EST

Moonlighting Featuring Keely Fae & Justice Ameer
Where: The Democracy Center (45 Mt. Auburn St. Cambridge-- there is a wheelchair accessible entrance on the right hand side of the building if you are facing the front entrance)
 When: January 5th, 2019   
  Doors Open at 7:00pm Open Mic Starts at 7:30pm
 Cost: $5 suggested cover. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. 
 
 What is Moonlighting? 
 
Moonlighting is a queer open mic presented by the Boston Poetry Slam. This reading series is a revival of a Cambridge favorite hosted and produced by Myles Taylor and Ilyus Evander. We aim to build, stew in, and celebrate the queer community and their words and work in Cambridge and the surrounding areas.

Readers/Speakers

 
Tuesday, February 4
 

7:00pm EST

Black History Month Open Mic & Karaoke Night!
Happy new year FEMS, and happy Black History Month! Come celebrate with us ♥ bring yourself, a piece of writing by a Black artist who inspires you (can be yourself!), and your fav karaoke songs by Black artists to sing for the second half of the night!

Doors - 7pm
Open Mic / Readings - 7:30
Karaoke - 8:15 

Can't wait to see you there!!

Make Shift accessibility info:

Make Shift has a wheelchair accessible entrance, seating space, and bathroom. We are not a fragrance free or sober space (though we do not sell alcohol). Makeshift is 0.2 miles away from the Massachusetts Ave T stop on the Orange Line. Please feel free to message us with any accessibility questions or feedback.


Tuesday February 4, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Make Shift Boston
 
Wednesday, February 5
 

TBA

7:00pm EST

WCPA Board Meeting
Join the board of the Worcester County Poetry Association for our monthly meeting. This is a working meeting, not a poetry reading. We welcome to the respectful input of the poetry community.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about how the board supports the rich literary history and creative energy of Central Massachusetts.

If you would like to join the conference call, please e-mail wcpaboard @ yahoo.com for the call-in details.

#poetryofworcestercounty




Wednesday February 5, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
WCPA Office @ the Sprinkler Factory

8:00pm EST

Tatiana M.R. Johnson Features at the Boston Poetry Slam
Tatiana Mary Rebecca Johnson will be the featured poet at the Boston Poetry Slam on Wednesday, February 5, 2020. 

Tatiana M.R. Johnson (she/her/hers) is a writer, artist and educator in the Boston area. She’s an MFA candidate in poetry at Emerson College and works as poetry editor for the literary journal Redivider. She is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and she’s recently been published in Southern Humanities Review as an Honorable Mention selection for the 2019 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, judged by Vievee Francis. Tatiana’s writing is forthcoming in Transition Magazine and Aesthetica Magazine. Her writing explores identity and trauma, especially inherited trauma and what it means to heal.

An early-bird workshop is scheduled for the hour before doors open for the show. For more information, please see our separate workshop event, Tatiana M.R. Johnson Workshop at the Boston Poetry Slam.

Photo of the artist is courtesy Manuel Boria. 

SCHEDULE
7:15pm: doors and sign-ups open
8:00pm: open mic
10:00pm: Tatiana M.R. Johnson features
More info about the show: http://bostonpoetryslam.com/?p=9675

The show is 18+, $3 and the bar is cash only. Everyone must show a photo ID to enter the Cantab Lounge. There is one flight of stairs to access the room.

Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Wednesday February 5, 2020 8:00pm - 11:00pm EST
Cantab Lounge 738 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
 
Thursday, February 6
 

TBA

Barbara Thomas
Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 6, 2020 TBA
Andala Cafe

4:30pm EST

Experience and Experiment: Prose Writing Series
Gwendolyn Edward is hearing impaired, queer, and a member of the Cherokee Nation. Her writing has earned nominations for both the Pushcart and Best American Essays, and her prose and poetry have appeared in AssayCrab Orchard ReviewBrevityFourth RiverBooth, and others. She retains a MA from the University of North Texas, an MFA from Bennington College, and is currently finishing her PhD at the University of Missouri, where she lives with her partner. When she’s not weightlifting, playing video games, or reading all the books she’s amassed, she writes speculative fiction, nontraditional nonfiction, and bends genre. 
The Prose Writing Series is presented by the Department of English.

Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 6, 2020 4:30pm - 6:15pm EST
Shattuck Hall, Cassani Room (102) (Mt. Holyoke)

8:00pm EST

CAConrad + Dawn Lundy Martin
The University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA for Poets and Writers presents a reading by CAConrad and Dawn Lundy Martin on Thursday, February 6, 2020 at 8:00 p.m. in the Old Chapel. The reading will be followed by a book signing and refreshments. 

CAConrad is a 2019 Creative Capital Fellow and the author of 9 books of poetry and essays: their While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017) received the 2018 Lambda Award. A recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, they also received the Believer Magazine Book Award and the Gil Ott Book Award. Their work has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Polish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Danish, French, and German. They teach regularly at Columbia University and at the Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Influenced by Eileen Myles, Audre Lorde, Alice Notley, and Emily Dickinson, Conrad writes poems in which stark images of sex, violence, and defiance build a bridge between fable and confession. They are a visiting faculty member for Spring 2020 at UMass Amherst.
 
Dawn Lundy Martin is a poet, essayist, and conceptual video artist. She is the author of four books of poems: Good Stock Strange Blood; Life in a Box is a Pretty Life; which won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry; DISCIPLINE; A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering; and three limited edition chapbooks. Most recently, she co-edited with Erica Hunt an anthology, Letters to the Future: BLACK WOMEN / Radical WRITING. Her nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Harper’s, n+1, and elsewhere. Martin is a Professor of English in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. She is the recipient of the 2019 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.
 
Celebrating its fifty-sixth year, the nationally renowned Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst presents emerging and established writers of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. The Series is sponsored by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative, and made possible by support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, the English Department, and others. 

All events are free, open to the public, and wheelchair accessible. Find us on Facebook here.

Readers/Speakers


8:00pm EST

Visiting Writers Series: CA Conrad and Dawn Lundy Martin
CAConrad received a 2019 Creative Capital grant to complete their nationwide (Soma)tic poetry ritual titled, "Resurrect Extinct Vibration." They also received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, as well as The Believer Magazine Book Award and The Gil Ott Book Award. The author of 9 books of poetry and essays, While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books) won the 2018 Lambda Book Award. They teach regularly at Columbia University in New York City, and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Spring 2020 they will be teaching at UMass, Amherst. Please view their books and the documentary The Book of Conrad from Delinquent Films online at http://bit.ly/88CAConrad
Dawn Lundy Martin is a poet, essayist, and conceptual video artist. She is the author of four books of poems: Good Stock Strange Blood; Life in a Box is a Pretty Life; which won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry; DISCIPLINE; A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering; and three limited edition chapbooks. Most recently, she co-edited with Erica Hunt an anthology, Letters to the Future: BLACK WOMEN / Radical WRITING. Her nonfiction can be found in The New Yorker, Harper’s, n+1, and elsewhere. Martin is a Professor of English in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh and Director of the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. She is the recipient of the 2019 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.

Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 6, 2020 8:00pm - 10:00pm EST
UMass Amherst, Great Hall
 
Friday, February 7
 

TBA

TBA

TBA

TBA

TBA

7:00pm EST

Bradley Trumpfheller: Reconstructions Book Release
Local poet (and Booksmith staff member!) Bradley Trumpfheller shares their beautiful collection.
“Bradley Trumpfheller has made for us (the ‘unbecame beloved across’) a simply stunning book that begs to be read aloud. I’m reminded here how tender and intelligent, how generous and fierce one must be to play with language, to let it make and be made from one’s body, to construct and to be re-constructed, to say anything one means and know ‘it will never mean again, not even now.”
-TC Tolbert, author of Gephyromania
Bradley Trumpfheller is from Alabama & Virginia. Their work has appeared in PoetryThe NationjubilatIndiana Review, and elsewhere. They co-edit Divedapper & currently live in Massachusetts.


Readers/Speakers

Friday February 7, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Brookline Booksmith

7:00pm EST

First Fridays Youth Open Mic ft. Ariana Brown
Doors open at 7:00, and dinner is served shortly after (vegetarian and vegan options provided!) Open mic begins at 7:30. Bring your friends! Bring your art! You are welcome! $5-$10 suggested donation for all (no one turned away for lack of funds). All ages and talents are welcome on the mic! Open mic slots 3 minutes each. Sign up upon arrival. Hosted and organized by the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain and Kaleigh O'Keefe

FEATURED ARTIST: Ariana Brown

Ariana Brown is a queer Black Mexican American poet from San Antonio, Texas, with a B.A. in African Diaspora Studies and Mexican American Studies. She is the recipient of two Academy of American Poets Prizes and a 2014 collegiate national poetry slam champion. Ariana, who has been dubbed a “part-time curandera,” is primarily interested in using poetry to validate Black girl rage, in all its miraculous forms. Follow her work online at arianabrown.com or on Twitter & Instagram @arianathepoet.

*this venue is wheelchair accessible and has gender neutral restrooms*

Readers/Speakers

Friday February 7, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EST
First Baptist Church

7:00pm EST

Unearthed Song & Poetry Open Mic
Open Mic with poet Tomika Beyer, and Chris and George of Kingsley Flood, and of course, you! Doors and sign up at 7, show starts at 7:30, $5 cover. 

Tamiko Beyer is the author of Last Days (Alice James Books, forthcoming 2021), We Come Elemental (Alice James Books, 2013), and two chapbooks of poems. She publishes a monthly newsletter for living life wide awake and shaping change, Starlight & Strategy. A social justice communications writer and strategist, she spends her days writing truth to power.  Find her at tamikobeyer.com.

Chris Barrett and George Hall are veterans of the Boston music world.

Readers/Speakers

Friday February 7, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EST
home.stead café
 
Saturday, February 8
 

TBA

TBA

2:00pm EST

Curt Curtin @ Annie's Book Stop
Curt Curtin will present work from his first full-length book of poetry, titled "For Art's Sake."  Due to his low vision, Curt will introduce his poems which will be read by his wife, Dee.)

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →



Saturday February 8, 2020 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST
Annie's Book Stop (Worcester)

7:00pm EST

Poetic Recovery
Are you a socially conscious hip-hop artist or poet who is looking to inspire, be inspired and collaborate with other like-minded individuals like yourself? Join us for this monthly Poetic Recovery workshop every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month to share our own work within a supportive community. We will discuss artistic consciousness, different aspects of the cultural work, and the possibilities that potentially await you.
Bring something to write with, something to write on and you.
Suggested donation is $10.00.
--
The workshop host, Maurice Taylor, is an East Coast director of hip-hop congress and has been organizing open mics, poetry slams and hip-hop workshops for over 20 years. Maurice “Soulfighter” Taylor set out in 2006 to create Poetic Recovery as a platform to give voice to artists in recovery. It is a collection of cultural and educational activities that facilitate the nurturing of artists towards higher consciousness. These activities allow artists to reflect and perform for audiences from communities effected by traumatic experiences. These shared energies will help facilitate a cultural healing process between artists and community to recover of our cultural identity appropriated and exploited by the music industry that has resulted in cultural genocide.

Readers/Speakers

Saturday February 8, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EST
Make-It Springfield
 
Sunday, February 9
 

TBA

3:00pm EST

New Poetry and Open Mic
Members read from their new books, followed by an open mic

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary is the author of 'Child ward of the Commonwealth' (2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and ' 2 a.m. with Keats' (Nixes Mate, 2021). In addition, she co-edited the anthology ' Voices Amidst the Virus', the featured text... Read More →

Hosts

Sunday February 9, 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm EST
Center for the Arts at the Armory
 
Tuesday, February 11
 

TBA

TBA

Inaugural Michael True Memorial Poetry Reading
Free and open to the public. Sponsored by Assumption College and the Worcester County Poetry Association.

Readers/Speakers

TBA

6:00pm EST

NOVELIST STEVEN DUNN & POET LORA STRAUB
Authors Steven Dunn & Lora Straub read from their work and answer questions. Please join us for this literary arts event! This is a debut reading in Boston for Steven Dunn.
Steven Dunn is the author of the novels Potted Meat (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2016) and water & power (Tarpaulin Sky 2018). He was born and raised in West Virginia, and after 10 years in the Navy, he earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. Some of his work can be found in Columbia JournalGranta Magazine, and Best Small Fictions 2018.
Lora Straub lives in Lower Allston, MA. She received her BA in Literary Arts from Brown University and was awarded the Judith Lee Stronach Scholarship for Excellence in Poetry by St. Mary’s College of California, where she earned her Poetry MFA. She considers her writing to be hybrid genre and her chapbook, Id Est, was released in October 2017 by SpeCt! Books. Her work can be found in Construction Mag, She Explores, The Fem, The Elephants, Wave Composition, et al.

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday February 11, 2020 6:00pm - 7:15pm EST
MassArt, Kennedy, 406

7:00pm EST

Newton Free Library Poetry Series
Joyce Wilson--- Joyce Wilson, editor of The Poetry Porch, a literary magazine on the Internet since 1997, has taught English at Boston University and Suffolk University. A chapbook of twenty poems inspired by the Fore River Bridge, The Need for a Bridge, was published with Finishing Line Press in March 2019. A full-length manuscript Take and Receive appeared with Kelsay Books in May 2019.

James Najamar --- Lives in Newton. He teaches Victorian literature at Boston College, and edits the scholarly journal Religion and the Arts. His first book of poetry, The Goat Songs. won the Vassar Miller Prize and is being published by the University of North Texas Press this April. A. E. Stallings was the judge.

Ravi Yelamanchili-- His writing has previously been published in the Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, The Somerville Times, Sahitya Akademi's Indian Literature, Muse India, and several other journals.

Curated by Doug Holder


Tuesday February 11, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Newton Free Library
 
Wednesday, February 12
 

7:30pm EST

The Arts and the Experience of Nature
The featured poets and artist for the evening:

David Davis, who was the first Poet in Residence at Joppa Flats and the founder of this series.

Janet MacFadyen (poet) and Stephen Schmidt (photographer), who will present a collaborative reading:

ADRIFT IN THE HOUSE OF ROCKS
a praise song for the earth

Janet will read poetry from their book, set to a slideshow of Steve's photos. “Now more than ever we need to rediscover our roots in the physical earth, and our dependency on the natural world. Join us on a journey to the beautiful, and besieged, national parklands of the desert southwest.”


An open mic will follow the features. For more info contact Lainie Senechal, Poet in Residence at Joppa Flats: emsenechal@gmail.com.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Janet MacFadyen

Janet MacFadyen

Managing Editor, Slate Roof Press
Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Adrift in the House of Rocks (photo-poetry collaboration from New Feral Press 2019) and Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres 2017); with a new collection, State of Grass, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry 2023. Her work... Read More →
DD

David Davis

David Davis is the current Poet In Residence at the Joppa Flats Audubon Center.  He has been a member of the Powow River Poets since 2005.  Davis is a retired high-tech entrepreneur and artificial intelligence consultant whose work has been featured in Newsweek, Scientific American... Read More →


Wednesday February 12, 2020 7:30pm - 8:45pm EST
Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center

7:30pm EST

Poetry/Photo slideshow at Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center
Mass Audubon hosts The Arts and the Experience of Nature with poets Janet MacFadyen and David Davis, and photographer Stephen Schmidt. Slate Roof managing editor Janet MacFadyen and photographer Stephen Schmidt present Adrift in the House of Rock: a Praise Song for the Earth, a reading and slideshow set in the beautiful, besieged desert southwest. Their work is followed by a reading by former Poet-In-Residence at Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats, David Davis.

Bring your writing! The evening concludes with an open mic!

1 Plum Island Turnpike, Newburyport, MA

Janet MacFadyen is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Adrift in the House of Rocks (New Feral Press, 2019). Her work is forthcoming in Scientific American and has appeared in CALYX, Crannóg, Poetry, Q/A Poetry, and Terrain. Stephen Schmidt's photographs have won awards from Sierra and Earth magazines, and have appeared at the Merrill Lynch Corporate Gallery and The Arthur Griffin Center for Photographic Art. David Davis is the former Poet-In-Residence at Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center, and a member of the Powow River Poets. He is author of three poetry books, including The Joy Poems and Joppa Flats (Bard Brook Press, 2017/18).

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Janet MacFadyen

Janet MacFadyen

Managing Editor, Slate Roof Press
Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Adrift in the House of Rocks (photo-poetry collaboration from New Feral Press 2019) and Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres 2017); with a new collection, State of Grass, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry 2023. Her work... Read More →
DD

David Davis

David Davis is the current Poet In Residence at the Joppa Flats Audubon Center.  He has been a member of the Powow River Poets since 2005.  Davis is a retired high-tech entrepreneur and artificial intelligence consultant whose work has been featured in Newsweek, Scientific American... Read More →



Wednesday February 12, 2020 7:30pm - 9:00pm EST
Mass Audubon's Joppa Flats Education Center

8:00pm EST

The Poetry Brothel: Circus of Love
An interactive literary cabaret series that fuses poetry, burly-q, live music, aerials, vaudeville, visual art, magic, mysticism, and private, one-on-one poetry experiences.

Welcome to a unique and immersive poetry event that takes poetry outside classrooms and lecture halls and places it in the lush interiors of a bordello. The Madame presents a rotating cast of poets, each operating within a carefully crafted character, who share their work in public readings, spontaneous eruptions of poetry, and most distinctly, as purveyors of private poetry readings on beds, chaise lounges and in private rooms. For a fee, all of the poets are available for these sequestered readings at any time during the event. Of course, any true bordello need a good cover; ours is an immersive cabaret featuring poetry, burly-q, live music, vaudeville, aerials, visual art, magic, and mysticism, with newly integrated themes, performances and installations at each event.

Doors open at 8pm, and the show begins promptly at 8:30. Masks, costumes, and extravagant dress are encouraged but not required. For more information, please visit thepoetrybrothel.com.

Wednesday February 12, 2020 8:00pm - 11:00pm EST
Sonia
 
Thursday, February 13
 

TBA

 
Friday, February 14
 

TBA

 
Saturday, February 15
 

1:00pm EST

The Brockton Library Poetry Series: Everyone Has a Voice
Featured student poet Lola Bennett is a freshman at New Heights Charter School in Brockton. She loves to write because it makes her feel free. "I can write about something I have never done before or something that doesn't exist, when I am writing no rules apply."

Featured poet Nancy Brady Cunningham is a published poet and author of four books of non-fiction. She also co-edited, with Jack Scully, "The Book Of Arrows" by poet Mike Amado. She has won both the Barbara Bradley and the Gretchen Warren awards from the New England Poetry Club. Thirteen of her poems were included in "Unlocking the Poem" by Ottone M. Riccio and Ellen Beth Siegal. Nancy and drummer Mike Morin formed "the Poetry and Percussion Duo" and perform Southeaster Mass. She is a student of yoga, and has taught yoga and meditation classes for decades.

There will be an open mic & light refreshments will be served.


Saturday February 15, 2020 1:00pm - 2:00pm EST
Driscoll Gallery, Brockton Public Library

3:00pm EST

Savoring Love: Poetry from the Heart: Rich Youmans, Alice Kociemba and an open mic
Rich Youmans’s narrative poetry has appeared in the Cape Cod Times, Cape Cod Poetry Review, and the Paterson Literary Review, among other publications, and his haiku, haibun, and related essays have been published internationally. Currently editor-in-chief of Contemporary Haibun Online, he has published a collection of linked haibun with Margaret Chula, Shadow Lines, which won a Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America, as well as two individual haibun collections, All the Windows Lit (Snapshot Press, 2015) and Head-On (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2018). Bob Lucky, in a review of Head-On, wrote, “There’s not one haibun in this chapbook that couldn’t be used to teach a master class.”

Alice Kociemba is the author of Bourne Bridge (Turning Point, 2016) and the chapbook, Death of Teaticket Hardware, the title poem of which won an International Merit Award from the Atlanta Review. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Alice was Guest Editor of Common Threads, the poetry discussion project of Mass Poetry (2015 & 2016) and for the past ten years has led a poetry discussion group at the Falmouth Public Library. She is the founding director of Calliope: Poetry for Community and hosts “Poetic License,” a monthly open mic at FCTV.

Alice and Rich met through Calliope—and the rest, as they say is history. They now live in North Falmouth and are currently, along with Robin Smith-Johnson, editing an anthology titled From the Farther Shore: Discovering Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry; it will be published later this year by Bass River Press, an imprint of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Alice Kociemba

Alice Kociemba

Founding Director, Calliope—Poetry for Community
Alice Kociemba is a co-editor of From the Farther Shore: Discovering Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry (Bass River Press, forthcoming) along with Robin Smith-Johnson and Rich Youmans. She is founding director of Calliope Poetry and is the author of Bourne Bridge (Turning Point... Read More →
avatar for Rich Youmans

Rich Youmans

Rich Youmans's work has appeared in diverse publications, including Contemporary Haibun Online (where he currently serves as editor in chief), Cape Cod Poetry Review, the Cape Cod Times, and The Best Small Fictions 2020 (Sonder Press). He lives in North Falmouth with his wife, Alice... Read More →

Hosts
avatar for Calliope Poetry Series

Calliope Poetry Series

Calliope Poetry Series
Calliope Poetry Series will launch its 9th season Sunday, September 13, 2015, at the West Falmouth Library with a reading featuring Mark Doty. To see the complete 2015 - 2016 schedule, with three featured poets, a limited open mic and directions to the library, visit Calliope's website... Read More →


Saturday February 15, 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm EST
Woods Hole Public Library

4:00pm EST

Raquel Balboni Book Launch
Readers/Speakers

Saturday February 15, 2020 4:00pm - 6:00pm EST
Outpost 186
 
Sunday, February 16
 

1:00pm EST

Longfellow Days 2020
The town of Brunswick, Maine, and the Curtis Memorial Library host a celebration of  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with The Coursen Readings, four consecutive Sundays in February. Join Slate Roof member Audrey Gidman with poets Jane Costlow and David Sloan for the third event. The readings are part of Brunswick's month-long celebration honoring Longfellow, Maine filmmaker John Ford, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, leading up to Maine's Bicentennial.

For more information: 207-725-5242 or http://www.curtislibrary.com


Sunday February 16, 2020 1:00pm - 3:00pm EST
Curtis Memorial Library

2:00pm EST

 
Monday, February 17
 

TBA

7:00pm EST

Small Press Book Club Discusses: Homie by Danez Smith
Read something off the beaten path! To contact our moderator email smallpress@brooklinebooksmith.com.

Discussing Homie by Danez Smith

Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.

Danez Smith is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert boy], winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. They live in Minneapolis.




Monday February 17, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Brookline Booksmith
 
Tuesday, February 18
 

7:00pm EST

First and Last Word Poetry Series
Readers/Speakers
avatar for Timothy Gager

Timothy Gager

Bestselling Author, Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his third novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works... Read More →


Tuesday February 18, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Arts at the Armory Café

7:30pm EST

Kathleen Graber @ the Poetry Center
Taking its title from Heraclitus’s famous fragment—“You cannot step into the same river twice”—KATHLEEN GRABER’s new collection interweaves philosophy, personal narrative, and the flotsam of contemporary life to explore ideas linked to impermanence, change, language, and community. Poet Linda Gregerson has described Graber as “one of the finest poets working in America today; no one can surpass her for musicianship or moral penetration,” and Tracy K. Smith has praised Graber’s lyric philosophy as “supreme consolation” in this troubled era. In addition to The River Twice (Princeton University Press, 2019), Graber is also the author of The Eternal City (2010), chosen for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets and a finalist for the National Book Award, and Correspondence (2006), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. She teaches creative writing and literature at Virginia Commonwealth University.



All of our main schedule readings are free and open to the public and begin at 7:30 p.m. Books can be purchased onsite and signings follow the readings. More detail can be found on our home page.






Readers/Speakers

Tuesday February 18, 2020 7:30pm - 8:30pm EST
Smith College Campus Center, Carroll Room
 
Wednesday, February 19
 

6:00pm EST

Boston Originals Series
Readers/Speakers
avatar for Andrea Cohen

Andrea Cohen

Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, etc. A new book of poems, The Sorrow Apartments, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Other collections include... Read More →
JS

Janaka Stucky

Janaka Stucky is the author of The Truth Is We Are Perfect, the publisher over at Black Ocean Press, and oversees the annual poetry journal, Handsome. He is also the author of two chapbooks: Your Name Is The Only Freedom and The World Will Deny It For You. His poems have appeared... Read More →
avatar for Amanda Gorman

Amanda Gorman

Called the 'next great figure of poetry in the US', at 19-years-old Amanda Gorman is a published author, the first ever Youth Poet Laureate of the United States of America, and an OZY Genius Grant recipient. Her first poetry book, "The One For Whom Food Is Not Enough", was published... Read More →


Wednesday February 19, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Woodberry Poetry Room Lamont Library, Room 330
 
Thursday, February 20
 

TBA

Cervena Barva Press reading
Readers/Speakers
avatar for Martha Collins

Martha Collins

Martha Collins’ most recent book of poetry is Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016).  She has also published seven earlier volumes of poetry, including Day Unto Day (2014), White Papers (2012), and the book-length poem Blue Front (2006), as well as four collections... Read More →


Thursday February 20, 2020 TBA
Arts at the Armory/Basement B8

4:15pm EST

History Reconsidered: Poetry Reading with Clint Smith
Clint Smith is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and an Emerson Fellow at New America. His writing has been published in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poetry, Counting Descent, published in 2016, won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award. His debut nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed, which explores how different historical sites reckon with—or fail to reckon with—their relationship to the history of slavery, is forthcoming from Little, Brown.
 
The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with Amanda Gorman, 2017 National Youth Poet Laureate.
 
To register, visit www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2020-clint-smith-poetry-reading.
 
This event is part of the Roosevelt Poetry Readings at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. The Roosevelt Poetry Readings are made possible by a donor gift that will help bring poets of recognized stature to the Institute.
 
This event is free. Registration is required. We welcome students (of all levels and institutions) to attend our events.

Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 20, 2020 4:15pm - 5:15pm EST
Knafel Auditorium, Radcliffe Institute

6:00pm EST

Poetic Forms Writing Workshop led by Paul Szlosek
Learn how to write the anagrammatic selfie and its closely related French cousin the beau present in this free hour-long writing workshop for writers of all levels of experience (novice to expert) taught by local poet Paul Szlosek. Please bring a notebook and a pen or pencil to write with (Handouts will be provided). Also a smart phone, tablet, laptop or any device that can access the internet is recommend to take advantage of online resources that will help with writing your poems. About the Instructor - Paul Szlosek is a co-founder and host of both the former long-running Poet’s Parlor poetry venue  and the recently-created open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium at Starlite in Southbridge, MA, is a past recipient of the Jacob Knight Award for Poetry, and have taught poetry workshops in the galleries at the Worcester Art Museum,the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. His poems have appeared in various local publications including the Worcester Review, Worcester Magazine, Sahara, Concrete Wolf, and Diner.He is probably best known in the Worcester area poetry community for his fanatical obsession with obscure poetry forms, and has invented his own including the ziggurat, the streetbeatina, and (most recently) the hodgenelle which he shares on his blog Paul’s Poetry Playground at playground.poetry.blog.




Readers/Speakers
avatar for Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite


Thursday February 20, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EST
Bedlam Book Cafe 138 Greet St, Suite 1, Worcester, MA

6:00pm EST

Salamander Issue #49 Release Party
Please join us to celebrate the release of  Salamander #49, with readings from contributors Moira Linehan, Sonya Larson, and David Moloney!

Light refreshments will be served.


7:00pm EST

Rescue Press Poetry Reading @ Amherst Books
Rescue Press authors, Tessa Micaela, Caren Beilin, Hanna Brooks-Motl, & Melissa Dickey, will read from recent work.   Micaela writes poems & letters, often to inanimate objects.   They are the author of there are boxes and there is wantingCrude Matter, & Where Bells Begin .   Beilin is the author of SpainBlackfishing the IUD, & The University of Pennsylvania.   Brooks-Motl is the author of the poetry collections The New YearsM, & Earth.   Dickey is the author of two books of poems, Dragons & The Lily Will.   Her poetry, nonfiction, & reviews have appeared recently in Bennington Review, the Spectacle, the Laurel Review, & Kenyon Review Online, among other publications


Thursday February 20, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Amherst Books
 
Friday, February 21
 

7:00pm EST

Breakwater Reading Series February Reading
Boston's only inter-MFA reading series second reading of 2020, featuring: Anna Hull, Sofia Marlin, Christopher Stelson Wilson, Anita Ballesteros, Christie Towers, and Andria Warren! Come support these readers!


Friday February 21, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EST
56 Brattle Street Cambridge

7:30pm EST

The Juke: a Blues Bacchae
Join us for this foot-stomping, spirit-shaking concert version of an amazing new musical.From the pen of gifted poet/performer Regie Gibson comes this extraordinary adaptation of Euripides' classic tragedy.
Set in the small town of Crossroads, Mississippi, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae chronicles the fight between D'nysus, the divine son of the God of Blues, and his cousin Pent, defender of the Gospel faith, for the soul of the town.
With ear-popping poetic language and great music from gospel to jazz to funk to blues, this powerful human tale is guaranteed to thrill. Performed with a live band and some of Boston's most celebrated musical stars (including Elliot Norton Award Winner Davron Monroe and National Poetry Slam Winner and author Regie Gibson).

To reserve tickets ($10 general admission, $5 Somerville residents), go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-juke-a-blues-bacchae-tickets-92029000217/

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Regie Gibson

Regie Gibson

Literary Performer Regie Gibson has lectured & performed in the U.S., Cuba and Europe. Representing the U.S., Regie competed for and received the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone, Italy. He’s featured on HBO, 3-TED X events & was nominated for a Boston Emmy. He’s received both... Read More →


Friday February 21, 2020 7:30pm - 9:30pm EST
Arts at the Armory Café
 
Saturday, February 22
 

3:00pm EST

Gloria Mindock
Readers/Speakers

Saturday February 22, 2020 3:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Arts at the Armory/Basement B8

7:00pm EST

Curt Curt @ the Fourth Saturday Open Mic
The Fourth Saturday Open Mic meets at Barnes & Noble on Lincoln Street in Worcester. Open mic at 7 pm, featured poets to follow. This month Curt Curtin will present work from his first full-length book of poetry, titled "For Art's Sake." Due to his low vision, Curt will introduce his poems which will be read by his wife, Dee.

After the featured poets read the gathered poetry lovers adjourn to the in-store coffee shop and chat about whatever comes up until management pushes us out the door at closing -- at about 10 pm. Please join us.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →

Hosts


Saturday February 22, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Barnes & Noble Bookstore (Worcester) 541 Lincoln Street, Worcester, MA

7:30pm EST

The Juke: A Blues Bacchae
Join us for this foot-stomping, spirit-shaking concert version of an amazing new musical.From the pen of gifted poet/performer Regie Gibson comes this extraordinary adaptation of Euripides' classic tragedy.
Set in the small town of Crossroads, Mississippi, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae chronicles the fight between D'nysus, the divine son of the God of Blues, and his cousin Pent, defender of the Gospel faith, for the soul of the town.
With ear-popping poetic language and great music from gospel to jazz to funk to blues, this powerful human tale is guaranteed to thrill. Performed with a live band and some of Boston's most celebrated musical stars (including Elliot Norton Award Winner Davron Monroe and National Poetry Slam Winner and author Regie Gibson).

To reserve tickets ($10 general admission, $5 Somerville residents), go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-juke-a-blues-bacchae-tickets-92029000217/

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Regie Gibson

Regie Gibson

Literary Performer Regie Gibson has lectured & performed in the U.S., Cuba and Europe. Representing the U.S., Regie competed for and received the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone, Italy. He’s featured on HBO, 3-TED X events & was nominated for a Boston Emmy. He’s received both... Read More →


Saturday February 22, 2020 7:30pm - 9:30pm EST
Arts at the Armory Café
 
Sunday, February 23
 

TBA

TBA

Worcester County Poetry Association Annual Meeting
Worcester County Poetry Association Annual Meeting with featured poet Maudelle Driskell, executive director of The Frost Place in NH. Business meeting and refreshments to follow.

Readers/Speakers

Sunday February 23, 2020 TBA
First Unitarian Church, Worcester
 
Monday, February 24
 

TBA

7:00pm EST

Black Box Reading Series (Poetry, Fiction, etc)
Join us for an evening of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and drama at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre as BU's MFA fiction and poetry writers (and several alumni) read from their work. On the menu: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and even a scene from a play. Light snacks and drinks will be served.


Monday February 24, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Boston Playwrights' Theatre 949 Commonwealth Avenue
 
Tuesday, February 25
 

TBA

6:00pm EST

Bill Coyle
Readers/Speakers

Tuesday February 25, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EST
Amesbury Public Library

6:00pm EST

7:00pm EST

Martha Ackman
Join us on Tuesday, February 25 at 7:00pm for a book talk and signing with Martha Ackmann, author of These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson.

About the BookAn engaging, intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson, one of America’s greatest and most-mythologized poets, that sheds new light on her groundbreaking poetry.
On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, “All things are ready” and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely “at home” (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson’s interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was hesitant about publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer.
In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson’s life through ten decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet. Ackmann follows Dickinson through her religious crisis while a student at Mount Holyoke, which prefigured her lifelong ambivalence toward organized religion and her deep, private spirituality. We see the poet through her exhilarating frenzy of composition, through which we come to understand her fiercely self-critical eye and her relationship with sister-in-law and first reader, Susan Dickinson. Contrary to her reputation as a recluse, Dickinson makes the startling decision to ask a famous editor for advice, writes anguished letters to an unidentified “Master,” and keeps up a lifelong friendship with writer Helen Hunt Jackson. At the peak of her literary productivity, she is seized with despair in confronting possible blindness.
Utilizing thousands of archival letters and poems as well as never-before-seen photos, These Fevered Days constructs a remarkable map of Emily Dickinson’s inner life. Together, these ten days provide new insights into her wildly original poetry and render a concise and vivid portrait of American literature’s most enigmatic figure.

About the AuthorMartha Ackmann, author of These Fevered Days, Curveball, and The Mercury 13, writes about women who have changed America. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, Ackmann taught a popular seminar on Dickinson at Mount Holyoke College and lives in western Massachusetts.

This event is free & open to the public.

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday February 25, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
The Odyssey Bookshop

7:00pm EST

The Thirsty Lab Reading Series: John Hodgen
The Thirsty Lab Reading Series on 206 Worcester Road in Princeton, MA 01541. The series began in 2013 and happens the fourth and fifth Tuesdays of every month from 7-9 p.m. There is no open. The reader has the full two hours to use as s/he wishes. Some read two sets of 30-45 minutes. Some bring musicians to play behind the words.  Some use part of the time for a workshop session and discussion. There is usually a bottle of wine to share, some home baked treats, great discussion and a poetically intelligent audience. A list of readers scheduled for 2020 follows:
 
2020
 
January 28                                                     Michael Milligan
February 25                                                  John Hodgen
March 24                                                       Jenith Charpentier
March 31                                                       Jeffrey Levine
April 28                                                          Patrick Donnelly
May 26                                                           Kathleen Fagley
June 23                                                          Sarah St. George
June 30                                                          Susan Roney-O’Brien
July 28                                                           Susan Boucher
August 25                                                      Richard Fox
September 22                                              Elizabeth McKim
September 29                                              Heather McPherson
October 27                                                     Bruce Galli
November 24                                                 David Surette

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday February 25, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
206 Worcester Road

7:00pm EST

The Poetorium at Starlite Reading Series & Open Mic Featuring Ron Whittle
Please join us on February 25th for our monthly open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium at Starlite hosted by Paul Szlosek.. It will be a full evening of poetry and spoken word starting with a brief interview on stage with our featured poet Ron Whittle (Author of Goodbye Again, Postcards From a War Zone, & In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Grandson), followed by a poetry reading by our feature, a 10-minute tribute to a dead poet by a guest reader, a short intermission, and then the open mic (with 5-minute slots for each reader). Admission is free (but a hat will be passed to pay our features)

Co-Founder / Co-Host
avatar for Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Ron Whittle

Ron Whittle

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
Ron Whittle, a lifetime resident of Massachusetts, was born in Worcester in 1947 and raised and educated in his home town of Shrewsbury. Further education came by way of the U.S. Navy, Vietnam, the Apollo 13 recovery team, and 45 years of family living. Ron divides his time between... Read More →



Tuesday February 25, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EST
Starlite Bar & Gallery 39 Hamilton Street, Southbridge, MA, USA
 
Wednesday, February 26
 

7:15pm EST

The Boston Poetry Slam features RLynn
RLynn is a bartender, visual artist, and poet living in Boston. They’re a Pink Door alumnus, with work in Cosmonauts Ave., maps for teeth, and The Shallow Ends. You can follow them on Instagram.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, with one flight of stairs to access the basement room (click for directions and accessibility information). Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday February 26, 2020 7:15pm - 11:00pm EST
Cantab Lounge 738 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
 
Thursday, February 27
 

6:00pm EST

African American History Month: Enzo Surin Poetry Reading & Workshop
Join Mass Poetry in welcoming Enzo Surin for a poetry reading and workshop.
Mr. Surin, a Haitian-born poet, educator, speaker, publisher and social
advocate, is the author of two chapbooks, A Letter of Resignation: An American
Libretto (2017) and Higher Ground. He is the recipient of a Brother Thomas
Fellowship from The Boston Foundation and is a PEN New England
Celebrated New Voice in Poetry. Surin’s work gives voice to experiences that
take place in what he calls “broken spaces”. Visit enzosurinink.org to learn
more.

To register, visit http://tiny.cc/5271iz or call the branch at 617-298-9218


Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 27, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EST
Boston Public Library - Mattapan Branch

6:00pm EST

Getting to the Point with Richard Blanco
Presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco will visit the Institute for a Getting to the Point discussion on the themes he explores in his recent poetry collection, How to Love a Country, and how Americans can find common ground through shared experiences and ideals.

Richard Blanco was the fifth presidential inaugural poet, serving as poet for President Obama’s second inauguration in 2013. He stands as the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. He is the author of four collections of poetry and three memoirs.

Mr. Blanco will perform a poetry reading as part of the program and will also participate in a book signing.

The event is free and attendees can register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/getting-to-the-point-with-richard-blanco-tickets-90788164845

Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 27, 2020 6:00pm - 7:30pm EST
Edward M. Kennedy Institute For the U.S. Senate

6:30pm EST

An Evening with Acclaimed Author Andres Debus III
Come enjoy Tapas appetizers, drinks, and conversation in an intimate setting with novelist and short story writer Andre Dubus III.

Andre’s seven books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His most recent novel, Gone So Long, has received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly and Library Journal and has been named on many “Best Books” lists, including selection for The Boston Globe’s “Twenty Best Books of 2018” and “The Best Books of 2018”, “Top 100”, Amazon.

Mr. Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches full-time at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Fontaine, a modern dancer, and their three children.

Tickets are $50, and all proceeds benefit the Gloucester Writers Center.
See website for details:
https://gloucesterwriters.org/event/an-evening-with-andre-dubus-iii/

Thursday February 27, 2020 6:30pm - 8:00pm EST
Gloucester Writers Center

7:00pm EST

8:00pm EST

Shayla Lawson @ Amherst Books
Shayla Lawson will read as part of the UMass Visiting Writers Series.   Lawson is the poet in residence at Amherst College.   She is author of the poetry collection, I Think I’m Ready to See Frank Ocean & the forthcoming collection of essays, This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, & Being Dope.

Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 27, 2020 8:00pm - 9:00pm EST
Amherst Books

8:00pm EST

Visiting Writers Series: Shayla Lawson
Shayla Lawson is the author of A Speed Education in Human Being, the chapbook PANTONE and I Think I’m Ready to see Frank Ocean—and the forthcoming essay collection THIS IS MAJOR (Harper Perennial, 2020). She is also co-curator of The Tenderness Project with Ross Gay. A MacDowell and Yaddo Artist Colony Fellow, Shayla Lawson is a member of The Affrilachian Poets & currently serves as Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College.

Readers/Speakers

Thursday February 27, 2020 8:00pm - 10:00pm EST
UMass Amherst, Great Hall
 
Friday, February 28
 

7:00pm EST

An Evening With Richard Blanco
Brookline-Quezalguaque Sister City Project is very proud to present “An Evening With Richard Blanco” during which he will read his poetry and share his reflections. The evening will conclude with a book-signing. All proceeds from this event will be used for our Sister City in Nicaragua to fund projects in the areas of health, education, and more. Most currently, and thanks to generous grants from the Rotary in Brookline and Rotary International, we are engaged in an enormous and life-changing clean water initiative. This October will mark Brookline’s 33rd year anniversary of this Sister City relationship with Quezalguaque.

Tickets can be bought in advance for $25 at brooklinesistercity.org or by sending a check to BQSCP, PO Box 114, Brookline, MA 02446. There will be a list of attendees who have paid in advance at the door. Tickets at the door are $30. Sponsors donating $100 or more are invited to a private reception with Richard Blanco from 6 to 6:45 p.m.

Doors will open at 6:15 and on-street parking is available, but plan to arrive early as the event begins promptly at 7.

Readers/Speakers

Friday February 28, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Pierce Hall, First Parish in Brookline

7:00pm EST

Poetry Reading with Paul Szlosek and Eve Rifkah
Join us for this special reading of two local Worcester poets.

Paul Szlosek is a co-founder and host of both the former long-running Poet’s Parlor poetry venue and the recently-created open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium at Starlite in Southbridge, MA, is a past recipient of the Jacob Knight Award for Poetry, and have taught poetry workshops in the galleries at the Worcester Art Museum,the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. His poems have appeared in various local publications including the Worcester Review, Worcester Magazine, Sahara, Concrete Wolf, and Diner.He is probably best known in the Worcester area poetry community for his fanatical obsession with obscure poetry forms, and has invented his own including the ziggurat, the streetbeatina, and (most recently) the hodgenelle which he shares on his blog Paul’s Poetry Playground at playground.poetry.blog.


Eve Rifkah is author of “Dear Suzanne” (WordTech Communications, 2010) and “Outcasts the Penikese Leper Hospital 1905-1921” (Little Pear Press, 2010). Chapbook “Scar Tissue”, (Finishing Line Press, 2017), “At the Leprosarium” 2003 winner of the Revelever Chapbook Contest.




Readers/Speakers
avatar for Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite


Friday February 28, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Bedlam Book Cafe 138 Greet St, Suite 1, Worcester, MA
 
Saturday, February 29
 

2:00pm EST

Open Mic Poetry
Bring original or favorite poetry to share in a round robin style. Free and open to the public. Space is limited. To sign up to read call 508-949-6232 or email deb@bookloversgourmet.com


Saturday February 29, 2020 2:00pm - 4:00pm EST
 
Monday, March 2
 

6:00pm EST

Marie Howe
Readers/Speakers

Monday March 2, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EST
Tufts University

7:00pm EST

Boston Poetry Out Loud Semi-Finals
Poetry Out Loud is a national recitation contest that celebrates the power of the spoken word and a mastery of public speaking skills while cultivating self-confidence and an appreciation of students’ literary heritage as they take poetry from the page to the stage. Celebrating 15 years in 2020, Poetry Out Loud has inspired hundreds of thousands of high school students to discover and appreciate both classic and contemporary poetry.

For more information on Poetry Out Loud, visit the official website at poetryoutloud.org. For information about the Massachusetts contests, please contact Meg O'Brien, Director of Education at poetryoutloud@huntingtontheatre.org.

The Boston Semi-Final will be held at the Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, 527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA.

Poetry Out Loud is a national program run by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation. The Huntington Theatre Company's Education Department, in partnership with the Mass Cultural Council, are proud to facilitate Poetry Out Loud for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 

**All contests are free and open to the public.
**Ending time for event is approximate

Hosts
avatar for Poetry Out Loud

Poetry Out Loud

MA Facilitators of POL, Huntington Theatre Company
The Education Department at the Huntington Theatre Company, in partnership with the Massachusetts Cultural Council, are the Massachusetts facilitators of Poetry Out Loud, the national poetry recitation contest run by the NEA and Poetry Foundation. In year 10, Massachusetts has... Read More →


Monday March 2, 2020 7:00pm - 9:30pm EST
Huntington Theatre Company

7:30pm EST

Monthly Open Mic!
The first Monday of (almost) every month, the Gloucester Writers Center hosts an Open Mic! Come read your written work in what was once the home of Gloucester poet Vincent Ferrini. Now a home – of sorts – to writers everywhere.

Bring your words. Get Heard.

5 minutes each.

Free to attend.

Donations are much appreciated, and help us keep our lights on and our programs running


Monday March 2, 2020 7:30pm - 9:00pm EST
Gloucester Writers Center
 
Wednesday, March 4
 

7:00pm EST

WCPA Board Meeting for March 2020
Join the board of the Worcester County Poetry Association for our monthly meeting. This is a working meeting, not a poetry reading. We welcome to the respectful input of the poetry community.

This is a great opportunity to learn more about how the board supports the rich literary history and creative energy of Central Massachusetts.

#poetryofworcestercounty



Readers/Speakers


Wednesday March 4, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EST
WCPA Office @ the Sprinkler Factory

7:15pm EST

Boston Poetry Slam featuring Susanna Kitrredge
Susanna Kittredge is a schoolteacher and poet from the Boston area. She belongs to the Jamaica Pond Poets, a weekly workshop group that includes several psychologists, a candy-maker, and multiple feisty old ladies. She is also a regular participant at the Brighton Word Factory, a super fun bi-weekly collaborative writing party. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Susanna is thrilled to announce that her first full-length poetry collection, The Future Has a Reputation, was published by CW Books in January, 2020! You can find links to her work at her website.

An open poetry slam is scheduled for the late-night portion of this show, following the feature. The slam will be speed slam format: eight open sign-ups will be available starting at door time, and poets will slam head-to-head in up to three rounds with time limits of 3, 2, and 1 minute. Winner and runner-up qualify for the 2020 Team Selection series. To volunteer to judge in exchange for free admission to the show, or to ask questions about the slam, email the slam curator at slamseries@bostonpoetryslam.com.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, with one flight of stairs to access the basement room (click for directions and accessibility information). Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00, with the poetry slam to follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Wednesday March 4, 2020 7:15pm - 11:30pm EST
Cantab Lounge 738 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
 
Thursday, March 5
 

5:00pm EST

Amherst Arts Night Plus Open Mic and Features
Monthly Amherst Arts Night Plus at the Emily Dickinson Museum celebrates contemporary art and poetry in our historic setting. From 5:00 – 8:00 p.m., view the pop-up, contemporary art exhibition in the Homestead by our monthly featured artist. Poets, writers, and performers of any kind are welcome to share work at our open mic, which begins at 6:00 p.m. Stay after the open mic for the featured reader of the month. Open mic sign-ups are between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. This program is free and open to the public.

Featured Poet: Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield’s book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton, 2019) won the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry and the First Book Award from Zone 3 Press and is a Massachusetts “Must Read” selection. She is the poet laureate for Northampton, Massachusetts, for 2019-2021.

Skolfield is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in poetry from The Missouri Review, the 2015 Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the 2015 Arts & Humanities Award from New England Public Radio. She’s received fellowships and awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Split This Rock, Ucross Foundation, Hedgebrook, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she earned her Master of Fine Arts.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield’s book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry, and she is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors... Read More →


Thursday March 5, 2020 5:00pm - 8:00pm EST
The Emily Dickinson Museum

5:30pm EST

 
Friday, March 6
 

7:00pm EST

Poetry at the Y Series ft. Timothy Gager and Sarah Snyder
Readers/Speakers
Hosts
avatar for Timothy Gager

Timothy Gager

Bestselling Author, Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his third novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over 1000 works... Read More →


Friday March 6, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
West Suburban YMCA

7:00pm EST

Deep Thoughts Poetry Open Mic (first Friday of every month)
Join us the first Friday of every month for an open mic poetry reading. Arrive at 6:30 to sign up for a 5-minute slot, and grab something to drink or snack on at the cafe. Reading starts promptly at 7.




Friday March 6, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Bedlam Book Cafe 138 Greet St, Suite 1, Worcester, MA
 
Saturday, March 7
 

4:30pm EST

 
Tuesday, March 10
 

7:00pm EDT

Poetry Reading and Open Mike
This year’s Poetry Series continues with readings by Wyn Cooper, Nausheen Eusuf and Michael Steffen. An open mike will follow with a limit of one poem per person. Come early to sign up for the open mike; limited slots are available, time permitting. The series is facilitated by Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press. Info contact: Doug at dougholder@post.harvard.edu.



Tuesday March 10, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Newton Free Library

7:30pm EDT

Jericho Brown @ the Poetry Center
In his third and most recent collection, The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), JERICHO BROWN focuses his attention on the black queer body, bringing both terror and beauty to the fore in his formally inventive poems. Maya Phillips writes, “In Brown’s poems, the body at risk — the infected body, the abused body, the black body, the body in eros — is most vulnerable to the cruelty of the world.” The Tradition (a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award) is preceded by The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014) and Please (New Issues Press, 2008). Brown’s poems have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry. He is a recipient of a Whiting Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown is an associate professor and director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University.
 Co-Sponsored by the Smith College Lecture Committee, the Department of Africana Studies, the Department of English Language and Literature, and the Program for the Study of Women and Gender.
All of our main schedule readings are free and open to the public and begin at 7:30 p.m. Books can be purchased onsite and signings follow the readings.




Readers/Speakers

Tuesday March 10, 2020 7:30pm - 8:30pm EDT
Weinstein Auditorium, Smith College
 
Wednesday, March 11
 

1:00pm EDT

A Reading and Q&A with Martín Espada, a World Poetry series event
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest collection of poems from Norton is called Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age Trump (2019). His many honors include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Robert Creeley Award, the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award, an American Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His book of poems, The Republic of Poetry, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s Latinx community, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.


Readers/Speakers

Wednesday March 11, 2020 1:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Massasoit Community College

6:00pm EDT

Curt Curtin and Judy Ferrara
Worcester poets Judy Ferrara and Curt Curtin will read their work.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →

Hosts

Wednesday March 11, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Bedlam Book Cafe 138 Greet St, Suite 1, Worcester, MA

7:00pm EDT

Poetry Reading with Curt Curtin and Judy Ferrara
Join us for an evening of poetry with two local Worcester poets, Curt Curtin and Judith Ferrara.

Curt Curtin will be reading from his newly published book "For Art's Sake." Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place in the annual contest of the Connecticut Poetry Society, and two other poems were selected for publication in an Irish anthology, Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets, released in October 2019 by Dedalus Press. Curt has been a featured reader in many poetry venues in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and once in Limerick, Ireland. He also taught college English and creative writing at Westfield State University for 20 years. For Art’s Sake is his first full-length collection.

Writer and visual artist Judith Ferrara lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. In 2003, she received
a Creative Arts Fellowship from the Worcester Cultural Commission/Massachusetts Cultural
Council to work on her artist’s book, RECIPROCITY: POEMS AND PAINTINGS. Her poetry and
essays have been published in three collections: GESTURES OF TREES (2000), A BRUSH WITH
WORDS (2013) and THE LITTLE O, THE EARTH: TRAVEL JOURNALS, ART & POEMS (2015), and in journals such as the black fly review, The Comstock Review, The Portland Review Literary
Journal, GSU Review and The Worcester Review. In 2009, she began a study of poet Stanley
Kunitz and continues to do research on his life and poems. In 2018, Ferrara received the Stanley
Kunitz Medal for her lifelong contributions to poetry. Since 1998, Ferrara’s art has been shown
in group and solo exhibitions. Please visit www.PaletteAndPen.com to see more of her artwork
and read the complete collection of Judy’s Journals, a monthly blog about the creative process,
which she has written since 2004.




Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →


Wednesday March 11, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Bedlam Book Cafe 138 Greet St, Suite 1, Worcester, MA

7:15pm EDT

Boston Poetry Slam featuring Adam Falkner
Dr. Adam Falkner is a poet, educator and arts & culture strategist. He is the author of Adoption (winner of the 2017 Diode Editions Chapbook Award) and The Willies (Button Poetry, 2020), and his work has appeared in a range of print and media spaces including on programming for HBO, NBC, NPR, BET, in the New York Times, and elsewhere. A former high school English teacher in New York City’s public schools, Adam is the Founder and Executive Director of the pioneering diversity consulting initiative, the Dialogue Arts Project, in which capacity he develops and facilitates trainings for schools, companies and cultural institutions across the nation. Adam has toured the United States as a guest artist, lecturer and consultant for thousands of students, educators and corporate employees, and was the featured performer at President Obama’s Grassroots Ball at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. He holds a Ph.D. in English and Education from Columbia University.

An open poetry slam is scheduled for the late-night portion of this show, following the feature. The slam will be speed slam format: eight open sign-ups will be available starting at door time, and poets will slam head-to-head in up to three rounds with time limits of 3, 2, and 1 minute. Winner and runner-up qualify for the 2020 Team Selection series. To volunteer to judge in exchange for free admission to the show, or to ask questions about the slam, email the slam curator at slamseries@bostonpoetryslam.com.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, with one flight of stairs to access the basement room (click for directions and accessibility information). Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00, with the poetry slam to follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Wednesday March 11, 2020 7:15pm - 11:30pm EDT
Cantab Lounge 738 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139

7:30pm EDT

A Reading from spoKe six
A reading from spoKe six including David Rich reading from his essay on Gerrit Lansing, James Cook reading from his essay on Sam Cornish, poems by John Mulrooney, Jim Dunn and Amanda Cook. Hosted by Karina Van Berkum and Kevin Gallagher.

David Rich worked as the poet Gerrit Lansing’s archivist from 2017 to 2018, and as archivist for Lansing’s estate from 2018 to 2019. He co-edited and wrote the postscript for Arcana: A Stephen Jonas Reader (City Lights, 2019) and edited Charles Olson: Letters Home, 1949 – 1969 (Cape Ann Museum, 2010). He studied archaeology at Boston University and theology at Harvard Divinity School. Rich’s poems and essays have appeared in literary magazines such as The Doris, Kadar Koli, Let the Bucket Down, No Infinite, Rain Taxi and Polis.


Amanda Cook lives in Gloucester with her husband, James, and children Abigail and Samuel. She sees writing as an integral part of life. She knits, spins yarn, plays fiddle, feeds people and dances when she pleases. She teaches and works at the Gloucester Writers Center. Her book, Ironstone Whirlygig, was published by Bootstrap Press in 2017.


James Cook signifies and represents in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He fathers-forth but presents change. He husbands. He has worked in high school education for more than twenty years. He has been the co-editor of the literary magazine Polis, and his work has appeared in Wards of the Wards, Let the Bucket Down, Jacket2, Process, Gaff, and Underutilized Species


Jim Dunn is a poet and author of Soft Launch (Bootstrap, 2008), Convenient Hole (Pressed Wafer, 2004), and Insects In Sex (Falling Angel Press, 1995). His work has appeared in several publications, including spoKe, Polis, Bright Pink Mosquito, The Process, eoagh, Gerry Mulligan, Cafe Review, and The Battersea Review. He edited the poet John Wieners’ journal, A New Book From Rome, with Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher of Bootstrap Press.


John Mulrooney is a poet, filmmaker and musician living in Cambridge, MA. He is author of If You See Something, Say Something from the Anchorite Press and co-producer of the documentary The Peacemaker, from Central Square Films. He serves as poetry editor for Boog City. He records and performs regularly with a number of musical groups in the greater Boston area. He is Associate Professor in the English department at Bridgewater State University. His work has appeared in Fulcrum, Pressed Wafer fold’em zine, Solstice, the Battersea Review, Poetry Northeast, spoKe, Let the Bucket Down and others.
 


Wednesday March 11, 2020 7:30pm - 9:30pm EDT
Gloucester Writers Center

8:00pm EDT

Fatimah Asghar and Franny Choi: Poetry and Conversation
The poets Fatimah Asghar and Franny Choi will read from their work and talk about poetry on Wednesday, March 11th, at 8 p.m. at Amherst Books (8 Main Street). The event, sponsored by the Amherst College Creative Writing Center, is free and open to the public and will be followed by refreshments. 

Asghar is poet, filmmaker, educator and performer, as well as the creator of the Emmy-nominated Web series Brown Girls. She is the author of the poetry collection If They Come For Us and the co-editor of Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology celebrating Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender nonconforming and/or trans. Choi is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science, which Monica Youn called “raw and radiant” and Floating, Brilliant, Gone. She edits for Hyphen Magazine and co-hosts the podcast VS alongside fellow Dark Noise Collective member Danez Smith.

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday March 11, 2020 8:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Amherst Books
 
Friday, March 13
 

7:00pm EDT

7:00pm EDT

Adam Falkner reading, "The Willies"
Dr. Adam Falkner is a poet, educator and arts & culture strategist. He is the author of "Adoption" (Winner of the 2017 Diode Editions Chapbook Award) and "The Willies" (forthcoming from Button Poetry, 2020), and his work has appeared in a range of print and media spaces including on programming for HBO, NBC, NPR, BET, in the New York Times, and elsewhere.

A former high school English teacher in New York City’s public schools, Adam is the Founder and Executive Director of the pioneering diversity consulting initiative, the Dialogue Arts Project, and Special Projects Director for Urban Word NYC, in which capacity he oversees the New York City Youth Poet Laureate program, and the organization’s partnerships with corporate and cultural institutions across the country. Adam has toured the United States as a guest artist, lecturer and trainer for thousands of students, educators and culture workers, and was the featured performer at President Obama’s Grassroots Ball at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. He holds a Ph.D. in English and Education from Columbia University.

Readers/Speakers

Friday March 13, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Porter Square Books

7:30pm EDT

CANCELED - Chapter and Verse Literary Reading Series
hapter and Verse is a free literary reading series sponsored by the Jamaica Pond Poets, usually on the second Friday of the month, from October through May. The events take place at the Loring Greenough House in Jamaica Plain at 7:30 PM. The operating committee members are  Dorothy Derifield, Sandra Storey, Susanna Kittridge, Jennifer Markell, and Alan Smith Soto
There are three readers followed by free refreshments. Open to all. Please join us. A $5.00 donation is requested but not required.For more information, contact dorothy.derifield@gmail.com

Readers/Speakers
avatar for J.D. Scrimgeour

J.D. Scrimgeour

A long-time professor at Salem State, J.D. Scrimgeour lives in Salem and has written extensively about sports, especially baseball and basketball. His five books include the basketball memoir, Spin Moves. He also appears in the anthology Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Markell

Jennifer Markell

Jennifer Markell's first poetry collection, Samsara, (Turning Point, 2014) was named a “Must-Read Book” by the Massachusetts Book Awards in 2015 and was a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Markell received the Barbara Bradley and Firman Houghton awards from the... Read More →

Hosts
avatar for J.D. Scrimgeour

J.D. Scrimgeour

A long-time professor at Salem State, J.D. Scrimgeour lives in Salem and has written extensively about sports, especially baseball and basketball. His five books include the basketball memoir, Spin Moves. He also appears in the anthology Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art... Read More →
avatar for Jennifer Markell

Jennifer Markell

Jennifer Markell's first poetry collection, Samsara, (Turning Point, 2014) was named a “Must-Read Book” by the Massachusetts Book Awards in 2015 and was a Finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Markell received the Barbara Bradley and Firman Houghton awards from the... Read More →


Friday March 13, 2020 7:30pm - 8:30pm EDT
Loring-Greenough House
 
Saturday, March 14
 

7:00pm EDT

LGBTQ+ Lowell Open Mic
 Come on down to the cafe for a night celebrating local LGBTQ+ talent. Whether you're an amateur or a seasoned professional we want to hear your songs, stories, and poems, see your dance routines, and laugh til our sides hurt at your stand up bits. Emcee Resi Ibañez is a Filipinx genderqueer poet, writer, and community storyteller, who believes in storytelling as a way of building community. They have been published in bklyn boihood’s Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, LOAM magazine, and will soon be published in Blue Oak Press’s upcoming anthology They Rise Like a Wave: an Anthology of Asian American Woman Poets, as well as Loom Press’s Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell. More info at https://www.facebook.com/events/1770488649764214/ .


Saturday March 14, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Coffee and Cotton

7:00pm EDT

Poetic Recovery
Are you a socially conscious hip-hop artist or poet who is looking to inspire, be inspired and collaborate with other like-minded individuals like yourself? Join us for this monthly Poetic Recovery workshop every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month to share our own work within a supportive community. We will discuss artistic consciousness, different aspects of the cultural work, and the possibilities that potentially await you.
Bring something to write with, something to write on and you.
Suggested donation is $10.00.
--
The workshop host, Maurice Taylor, is an East Coast director of hip-hop congress and has been organizing open mics, poetry slams and hip-hop workshops for over 20 years. Maurice “Soulfighter” Taylor set out in 2006 to create Poetic Recovery as a platform to give voice to artists in recovery. It is a collection of cultural and educational activities that facilitate the nurturing of artists towards higher consciousness. These activities allow artists to reflect and perform for audiences from communities effected by traumatic experiences. These shared energies will help facilitate a cultural healing process between artists and community to recover of our cultural identity appropriated and exploited by the music industry that has resulted in cultural genocide.

Readers/Speakers

Saturday March 14, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Make-It Springfield
 
Tuesday, March 17
 

7:00pm EDT

7:00pm EDT

Poets & Plants
Tuesday March 17, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Pemberton Farms

7:00pm EDT

March U35 Reading Series
U35 is a bi-monthly reading series for poets under 35, held once each January, March, May, July, September, and November. The series seeks to promote and bolster young Massachusetts poets while giving them a venue to share their work and connect with other poets. If you are a poet under the age of 35, sign up to read via Mass Poetry's website! This event is free and open to the public. 

http://www.masspoetry.org/u35

Our March readers are:

Emily Duggan is interested in work — and play! — at the intersection of the performing/expressive arts and individual and community healing. To that end, they create and perform poetry, experimental theater, and improv, sketch, and stand-up comedy. In the recent past, they have: acted and written with various performance troupes in Roslindale; appeared as a featured poet for the Boston Poetry Slam; enjoyed a stint as an ensemble member at Chicago's Green Mill; and haunted graveyards as a ghost-tour guide. Lately, they partner with Writers Without Margins, bringing writing beyond conventional spaces, and they served as Mass Poetry's Development Intern last spring.

Egan Millard has worked as a journalist in Alaska, Maine and New York City, where he grew up. His poetry has appeared in The Worcester Review, Cirque, The Aurorean (featured poet, Spring/Summer 2019), and “Building Fires in the Snow” (University of Alaska Press, 2016), the first-ever anthology of LGBTQ Alaskan writers, and is forthcoming in "From the Farther Shore: Discovering Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry" (Bass River Press, 2020). His chapbook "Interstate" is available from Harvard Book Store. He now lives in Boston, where he works as a reporter and editor.

Sarah O'Brien loves dark chocolate and light wordplay. Sarah is the author of the poetry book Shapeshifter and she is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Boston Accent Lit, a literary journal and press. She earned her MFA in Poetry at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Sarah has been published in places such as Allegro Poetry Magazine, Elbow Room, Helen Literary Magazine, Homology Lit, and The Flat Water Stirs: An Anthology of Emerging Nebraska Poets. She was runner-up for the 2018 Helen W. Kenefick Academy of American Poets prize with her poem "School of Love." Sarah is active in the writing community; she often reads work at The Bebop or Cantab Lounge and she volunteers at Grub Street's Muse & the Marketplace and Mass Poetry's annual Poetry Festival. Learn more at www.sarahobrien.org

Georgia Park is a contributing editor of Sudden Denouement, founder of Whisper and the Roar, and author of Quit Your Job and Become a Poet (Out of Spite). She dropped out of high school in 2004 and earned her Master’s degree with an emphasis on creative writing in 2019. She is currently teaching English and ESL at the college level. She has been published in several literary magazines, most recently, The Offbeat and Soundings East. Her work has also been featured in several books, including We Will Not Be Silenced, All the Lonely People, Smitten, and Anthology Volume l: Writings from the Sudden Denouement Literary Collective. Georgia has been asked to speak about her poetry at several educational institutions, including Boston University. Georgia's current book, titled Softly Glowing Exit Signs, is an autobiography written in poetry that covers her time in Korea and her journey from dysfunctional childhood to semi-functional adulthood.


Tuesday March 17, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Trident Booksellers & Cafe
 
Wednesday, March 18
 

7:15pm EDT

Boston Poetry Slam featuring Lip Manegio
Lip Manegio (they/them) is a Pushcart nominated writer, organizer, & cryptid who is learning to be unapologetically in love with life. They are currently pursuing a BFA in creative writing with a minor in art history at Emerson College, where they also serve as co-president of the Emerson Poetry Project.

They represented Emerson at CUPSI 2018 & 2019, have appeared on finals stages at FEMS & Capturing Fire, and were on the winning team at Vox Pop 2018. Their work has appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Puerto del Sol, tenderness lit, Gordon Square Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. Their debut chapbook, We’ve All Seen Helena, a collection of poems about queerness, survival, & My Chemical Romance, is available now from Game Over Books.

An open poetry slam is scheduled for the late-night portion of this show, following the feature. The slam will be speed slam format: eight open sign-ups will be available starting at door time, and poets will slam head-to-head in up to three rounds with time limits of 3, 2, and 1 minute. Winner and runner-up qualify for the 2020 Team Selection series. To volunteer to judge in exchange for free admission to the show, or to ask questions about the slam, email the slam curator at slamseries@bostonpoetryslam.com.

This show in our weekly Wednesday series takes place at the Cantab Lounge, 738 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, with one flight of stairs to access the basement room (click for directions and accessibility information). Doors for the show open at 7:15. The open mic begins at 8:00 and the feature performs at approximately 10:00, with the poetry slam to follow. The show is 18+ (ID required) and the cover charge is $3.

Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Wednesday March 18, 2020 7:15pm - 11:30pm EDT
Cantab Lounge 738 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139
 
Thursday, March 19
 

5:30pm EDT

CANCELLED - Poetry Night
A Timilty Middle School event, in partnership with Roxbury Heritage State Park and MassPoetry. 

Please join us for a night of Community and Poetry at the Dillaway-Thomas House.

Dinner 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm
Poetry Reading  6:30 pm - 8:30pm

Featured poets include: Charles Coe, Ashley-Rose, Imani Powell, and Boston Youth Poet Laureate Finalist Norah Brady. Musical entertainment by Savoir Faire.

Free food & childcare provided. All students must attend with a parent or guardian. Tickets available at Eventbrite starting March 2.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Charles Coe

Charles Coe

Poet and writer Charles Coe is author of two books of poetry: All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents and Picnic on the Moon, both published by Leapfrog Press. His poetry and prose has appeared in a number of literary reviews and anthologies. He is author of Spin Cycles, a short novel... Read More →


Thursday March 19, 2020 5:30pm - 8:30pm EDT
Roxbury Heritage State Park
 
Saturday, March 21
 

10:00am EDT

Community Poetry Experience! Round 3
Calling All Poets … and everyone interested in poetry and the spoken word … EXPRESS YOURSELF!

Welcome to the Westfield Community Poetry Experience, a series of monthly open mic poetry events and experiences leading up to the celebration of National Poetry Month in April. 

These events are FREE and open to all. This event is the third open mic event in this series and is also part of our Art In Unusual Places series launched in December 2019.

One theme of this event is welcoming the Vernal Equinox ... springtime and all the signs of renewal it brings!

Write, read or just stop by and listen! Watch for writing prompts for each session on Facebook, inspired and motivated by art work by local and regional artists to stimulate written works and discussion. 

Write. Read. Share. Listen. You’re invited …

Saturday March 21, 2020 10:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Olver Transit Pavillion

7:00pm EDT

Solidarity Salon
The Solidarity Salon features a variety of creative artists who are women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ and/or differently-abled. Admission is free but donations are accepted. The donations recipient for our March 21 event will be Abilities Dance Boston.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Lisa DeSiro

Lisa DeSiro

Lisa DeSiro is the author of Simple as a Sonnet (Kelsay Books, 2021); Labor (Nixes Mate, 2018); and Grief Dreams (White Knuckle Press, 2017). She is featured in Writers Resist: The Anthology (Running Wild Press, 2018); Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse... Read More →


Saturday March 21, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
The Community Church of Boston
 
Sunday, March 22
 

3:00pm EDT

 
Monday, March 23
 

6:00pm EDT

Poetry Reading by Mary Szybist
Mary Szybist is the author of Incarnadine (Graywolf Press, 2013), winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Poetry, and Granted (Alice James Books, 2003), winner of the 2003 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books and the 2004 Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. She is also the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, and the Witter Bynner Foundation. She teaches at Lewis & Clark College and lives in Portland, Oregon.


Readers/Speakers

Monday March 23, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
Katzenberg Center, 3rd floor, CGS 871 Commonwealth Avenue

7:00pm EDT

Nixes Mate Poetry Reading/Book Launch
Nixes Mate is a navigational hazard in Boston Harbor. 42° 19' 47.9" North · 70° 56' 43.9" West
They want to challenge the preconceived notions of reading on the web by using off-the-shelf technology to build a best-in-breed literary magazine. More than a magazine, it's a website. They feature small-batch artisanal literature, created by writers who've been honing their craft the time-honored way: one line at a time.
About the Authors
David P. Miller’s chapbook, The Afterimages, was published by Červená Barva Press. He received degrees in theater at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and Emerson College, and librarianship from Simmons College. For twenty-five years, he was a member of the Mobius Artists Group of Boston, creating his own performance art pieces and collaborating on performances of original experimental work, as well as pieces by John Cage, Gertrude Stein, and Jackson Mac Low. In 2018, he retired from Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, where he was a librarian for twenty-six years. A resident of Boston since 1978, he lives in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood with his wife, the visual artist Jane Wiley.
Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of a collection of poetry and flash fiction, Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015, http://pinkx-ray.com and Amazon.com.) His two new books of poems, Momentary Turbulence and WordinEdgeWise, are forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press. Brad is also the author of five chapbooks of poetry and flash fiction, Democracy of Secrets, Coyotes Circle the Party Store, Dancing School Nerves, An Evil Twin is Always in Good Companyand Away with Words. Three times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and once nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, Brad’s poetry and micro fiction have appeared in, The American Journal of Poetry, The Los Angeles Times, Folio, decomP, Lunch Ticket, The Baltimore ReviewPositOff the Coast, Clockhouse, and other publications.


Event date:
Monday, March 23, 2020 - 7:00pm


Event address:
338 Newbury Street
Boston, MA 02115

Readers/Speakers

Monday March 23, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Trident Bookstore
 
Tuesday, March 24
 

6:00pm EDT

Amesbury Monthly Poetry Reading
Our next Monthly Poetry Reading will feature Eve Linn on Tuesday, March 24 at 6 p.m.. We will be meeting, for the first time at the Amesbury Senior Center at 68 Elm St.
Eve F.W. Linn received her B.A. cum laude from Smith College in Fine Art and her M.F.A. in Poetry from the Low Residency Program at Lesley University. She has attended the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, the Frost Place Conference on Poetry, and the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference. She is a published poet and book reviewer. Her first chapbook, Model Home (July 2019) is available from River Glass Books. Her favorite color is blue. She collects antique baby shoes, vintage textiles, and art pottery. She lives west of Boston with her family and one demanding feline.

Our featured reading is followed by a brief question and answer period and then an open mic.

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday March 24, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Amesbury Senior Center 68 Elm St. Amesbury, MA

7:00pm EDT

The Thirsty Lab Reading Series: Jenith Charpentier
The Thirsty Lab Reading Series on 206 Worcester Road in Princeton, MA 01541. The series began in 2013 and happens the fourth and fifth Tuesdays of every month from 7-9 p.m. There is no open. The reader has the full two hours to use as s/he wishes. Some read two sets of 30-45 minutes. Some bring musicians to play behind the words.  Some use part of the time for a workshop session and discussion. There is usually a bottle of wine to share, some home baked treats, great discussion and a poetically intelligent audience. A list of readers scheduled for 2020 follows:
 
2020
 
January 28                                                     Michael Milligan
February 25                                                  John Hodgen
March 24                                                       Jenith Charpentier
March 31                                                       Jeffrey Levine
April 28                                                          Patrick Donnelly
May 26                                                           Kathleen Fagley
June 23                                                          Sarah St. George
June 30                                                          Susan Roney-O’Brien
July 28                               Susan Boucher
August 25                                                      Richard Fox
September 22                                              Elizabeth McKim
September 29                                              Heather McPherson
October 27                                                     Bruce Galli
November 24                             David Surette

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Jenith Charpentier

Jenith Charpentier

Jenith Charpentier is the author of three chapbooks, Bending the Water Between Us (2011), Bad at Gravity (2013), and 5 Poems by Jenith Charpentier (Damfino Press, 2015). She represented Worcester's Poets Asylum at the 2012 Individual World Poetry Slam and as a member of the 2013 National... Read More →


Tuesday March 24, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
206 Worcester Road
 
Wednesday, March 25
 

7:00pm EDT

Poetry Reading with Jason Tandon
Join us for Jason Tandon's reading of his new book of poetry, The Actual World. Born in Hartford, CT in 1975, Jason Tandon is the author of four books of poetry, including The Actual World, Quality of Life, and Give over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt, winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award from Black Lawrence Press. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, AGNI Online, Barrow Street, and Esquire, among others. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Middlebury College, and his M.F.A. from the University of New Hampshire, where he studied with Charles Simic. Since 2008, he has taught in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University.

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday March 25, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Bedlam Book Cafe 138 Greet St, Suite 1, Worcester, MA
 
Thursday, March 26
 

5:00pm EDT

Author Talks: Cameron Awkward-Rich
Cameron Awkward-Rich is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of two poetry collections – Sympathetic Little Monster (2016), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and Dispatch (2019), winner of the 2019 Lexi Rudnitsky Editor's Choice Award. A Cave Canem fellow, his poetry has been published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, the Academy of American Poet's Poem A Day series, and elsewhere, and his critical writing can be found in Signs, Science Fiction Studies, American Quarterly, Transgender Studies Quarterly. 

Directions:http://www.library.umass.edu/locations/

Readers/Speakers

Thursday March 26, 2020 5:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
Library, W.E.B. Du Bois Room: 2601 UMass Amherst Campus

7:00pm EDT

Evening of Inspired Leaders 2020
Evening of Inspired Leaders–a fundraiser to benefit Mass Poetry–highlights the power of poetry to inspire and delight while showcasing an all-star field of leaders. Inspired by Robert Pinsky’s Favorite Poem Project, this event brings exemplary leaders in diverse fields together to read a poem that is meaningful to them and discuss its influence on their life and work.

You can support Mass Poetry by purchasing a VIP package (by March 1st) to join us at the dessert reception in Huntington Theatre's Studio 210 following the event! Become a sponsor here: 
http://www.masspoetry.org/inspiredleaderssponsor

Ticketing will open shortly! Check back for the link and more info. 

Speakers for Evening of Inspired Leaders 2020 include: 
- Mohamad Ali, CEO of International Data Group Inc.
- Andrew Bacevich, Writer & President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
- Meghna Chakrabarti, Host of WBUR's OnPoint
- Vikiana Petit-Homme, Regional Organizer, March for Our Lives
- Darrell Jones, Strongest Link Community Activist 
- Dr. Anne Klibanski, President and CEO of Mass General Brigham
- Julia Mejia, Boston City Councilor 
- Rachael Rollins, Suffolk County District Attorney 
- Yusufi Vali, Director, Mayor's Office for Immigrant Advancement
- Bina Venkataraman, Boston Globe Editorial Page Editor 
- David Waters, CEO of Community Servings

Thursday March 26, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Huntington Theatre Company

7:00pm EDT

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Mic
 Kathleen McCann lives in Weymouth, Massachusetts, by the sea. She has two chapbooks: The Small Hours, and The Sea’s Rosary in print and two full-length collections: A Roof Gone To Sky, and Barn Sour. New poems are forthcoming in Poetry Ireland and New American Writing. One of her poems, Lone Egret, was selected by Ted Kooser for his syndicated newspaper column: American Life in Poetry.
David P. Miller’s collection, Sprawled Asleep, was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. Poems have recently appeared in Meat for Tea, Hawaii Pacific Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Clementine Unbound, Constellations, J Journal, The Lily Poetry Review, Unlost, Ibbetson Street, and What Rough Beast. His poem “Add One Father to Earth” was awarded an Honorable Mention by Robert Pinsky for the New England Poetry Club's 2019 Samuel Washington Allen Prize competition


Thursday March 26, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Roslindale House
 
Saturday, March 28
 

4:00pm EDT

4:00pm EDT

The Liminal Reading Series
Alysia Abbott reads Steve Abbott and Jim Cory reads Karl Tierney

Readers/Speakers

Saturday March 28, 2020 4:00pm - 6:00pm EDT
MIT Press Bookstore

6:00pm EDT

IAWA Open Mic and Featured Reading
Readers/Speakers

Saturday March 28, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
I Am Books
 
Sunday, March 29
 

6:00pm EDT

He Dreams of Giants
The GWC is a community Partner with Salem Film Festival again this year...

The Guardian says, “…a moody plunge into the anguish of the artistic process…By the end of this movie you’ll realize
that Gilliam’s struggles are humanity’s struggles.”

In 2000, when he Terry Gilliam first attempted a screen adaptation of Cervantes’ masterpiece, Don Quixote de la Mancha, the film director already had a Quixotic reputation: a filmmaker whose stories of visionary dreamers raging against gigantic forces mirrored his own battles with the Hollywood machine. HE DREAMS OF GIANTS picks up Gilliam’s story 17 years later as he mounts the production again. He struggles with budget constraints and heightened expectations compounded by doubt, the toll of aging, and the nagging existential question: What is left for an artist when he completes this career defining quest? Immersive verité footage of Gilliam’s production combined with interviews and archival footage reveals a character study of this late-career artist, and a meditation on the value of creativity in the face of mortality.


Sunday March 29, 2020 6:00pm - 7:30pm EDT
The Historic Cabot Theatre
 
Monday, March 30
 

6:00pm EDT

Irish Voices: Poetry Reading by Alan Gillis and David Wheatley
Alan Gillis teaches creative writing as well as modern and contemporary poetry at the University of Edinburgh. Alan Gillis's books of poetry include Somebody, Somewhere (2004), Hawks and Doves (2007), which was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and Scapegoat (2014), all published by The Gallery Press. As a critic, he is author of Irish Poetry of the 1930s (Oxford University Press, 2005). Gillis co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (OUP, 2011) with Fran Brearton. He was the editor of Edinburgh Review from 2010 to 2015.

David Wheatley was born in Dublin and is the author of five poetry collections with The Gallery Press, including A Nest on the Waves (2010) and The President of Planet Earth (2017), which was shortlisted for The Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and the critical study Contemporary British Poetry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). He has edited the work of James Clarence Mangan for The Gallery Press, Samuel Beckett’s Selected Poems 1930–1989 for Faber and Faber, and The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Vol. IV (WFU Press, 2017). His writing has won various prizes, including the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the Vincent Buckley Prize, and the Friends Provident (Irish) National Irish Poetry Competition. He lives in rural Aberdeenshire, Scotland.


Monday March 30, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
Katzenberg Center, 3rd floor, CGS 871 Commonwealth Avenue
 
Tuesday, March 31
 

6:00pm EDT

A Student Poetry Reading
Student-poets from Taunton High School and The Taunton Alternative High School read their work.

Tuesday March 31, 2020 6:00pm - 7:30pm EDT
The District Center for the Arts

7:00pm EDT

The Thirsty Lab Reading Series: Jeffrey Levine
The Thirsty Lab Reading Series on 206 Worcester Road in Princeton, MA 01541. The series began in 2013 and happens the fourth and fifth Tuesdays of every month from 7-9 p.m. There is no open. The reader has the full two hours to use as s/he wishes. Some read two sets of 30-45 minutes. Some bring musicians to play behind the words.  Some use part of the time for a workshop session and discussion. There is usually a bottle of wine to share, some home baked treats, great discussion and a poetically intelligent audience. A list of readers scheduled for 2020 follows:
 
2020
 
January 28                                                     Michael Milligan
February 25                                                  John Hodgen
March 24                                                       Jenith Charpentier
March 31                                                       Jeffrey Levine
April 28                                                          Patrick Donnelly
May 26                                                           Kathleen Fagley
June 23                                                          Sarah St. George
June 30                                                          Susan Roney-O’Brien
July 28                               Susan Boucher
August 25                                                      Richard Fox
September 22                                              Elizabeth McKim
September 29                                              Heather McPherson
October 27                                                     Bruce Galli
November 24                             David Surette

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday March 31, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
206 Worcester Road

7:00pm EDT

CANCELED: The Poetorium at Starlite Reading Series & Open Mic Featuring Jonathan Andersen
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO THE ONGOING HEALTH CONCERNS!
However our previously announced feature Jonathan Andersen has been rescheduled for October 27th.

For more information, please contact us at poetorium@protonmail.com

Co-Founder / Co-Host
avatar for Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
avatar for Ron Whittle

Ron Whittle

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
Ron Whittle, a lifetime resident of Massachusetts, was born in Worcester in 1947 and raised and educated in his home town of Shrewsbury. Further education came by way of the U.S. Navy, Vietnam, the Apollo 13 recovery team, and 45 years of family living. Ron divides his time between... Read More →

Readers/Speakers


Tuesday March 31, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Starlite Bar & Gallery 39 Hamilton Street, Southbridge, MA, USA
 
Wednesday, April 1
 

5:15pm EDT

POSTPONED - Harvard Divinity School Ingersoll Lecture with Anne Carson
We are delighted to invite you to this year's Harvard Divinity School Ingersoll Lecture on the Immortality of Man, “A Lecture on the History of Skywriting,” by poet, essayist, translator, and Professor of Classics Anne Carson.  Organized and sponsored jointly by the Center for the Study of World Religions and Harvard Divinity School as well as the Woodberry Poetry Room at Harvard University, this special event will take place on Wednesday, April 1, 2020, from 5:15 to 6:30 pm at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the Norton’s Woods Conference Center (136 Irving Street, Cambridge).  Books will be sold at the event by The Coop.
 
Kindly note that seating is on a first-come, first-served basis.  

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday April 1, 2020 5:15pm - 6:30pm EDT
Norton's Woods Conference Center

7:00pm EDT

Brandon Melendez & Courtney LeBlanc @ Porter Square Books
Join Write Bloody poet Brandon Melendez and Vegetarian Alcoholic Press poet Courtney LeBlanc as they kick off National Poetry Month with a reading from their newest books featuring poems about love, loss, home, violence, grief, family, and hope.




Wednesday April 1, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Porter Square Books
 
Saturday, April 4
 

1:00pm EDT

Everything Begins Somewhere Book Launch & Reading
Y'all: Amanda Lou Doster's chapbook, Everything Begins Somewhere, is FINALLY almost done for real this time! Come celebrate! 

Reading/Book-Selling/Book-Signing/Snack-Eating, exact schedule TBD later. 

The poetry isn't super kid-friendly, but Amanda's kiddo is coming & other kids are welcome & not expected to sit quietly listening to poetry. More details later!

Readers/Speakers

Saturday April 4, 2020 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Federal Street Books
 
Tuesday, April 7
 

6:00pm EDT

Poetry Reading by City of Worcester Poets Laureate Juan Matos and Amina Mohammed
Newly named Poet Laureate Juan Matos and Youth Poet Laureate Amina Mohammed will join us to share their poetry through the lens of life in Worcester. Q & A to follow.
Juan Matos, a retired Worcester Public Schools teacher of 32 years, has written and published 12 poetry books and anthologies, taken part in local and international literary festivals, and founded several literary groups and workshops. Matos has a long record of actively advocating for poetry and the arts.
Youth Poet Laureate Amina Mohammed grew up in Worcester’s Main South neighborhood and has been writing since the eighth grade. She is currently a senior at Holy Name High School.

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday April 7, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
Worcester Public Library Saxe Room
 
Wednesday, April 8
 

11:00am EDT

3 Poets, 3 Languages: A World Poetry 2020 Event
Readings by 3 poets, in 3 languages, featuring:
Marguerite Guzman Bouvard (Italian)
Marguerite was born in Trieste Italy. She is a former professor of Political Science and poetry workshops, and the author of 20 books in the fields of politics, women's rights, human rights, grief, illness, and spirituality. She has also written 8 books of poetry, her first won the Quarterly Review of Literature prize and her seventh "The Unpredictability of Light," won the MassBook Award for poetry. Her latest book was "The Invisible Wounds of War; Coming Home from Iraq and Afghanistan." She is a Resident Scholar at the Women Studies Research Center, Brandeis University.

Mirlande Butler (Haitian-Creole)
A native of Haiti, Mirlande Butler has performed a mix of Jazz, Pop and Gospel genres in the States, France, Brazil, and China. She links singing with the foundation she co-founded to promote education and a renewed Haiti. She often says that education, especially that of children, should be a human right matter, not a privilege. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Administration from Walden University and a Master's degree in Social Work from Boston University. The lyricist and guitarist John Elder says of her: 'Mirlande sings beautifully and with emotional power in four languages, French, Spanish, English and Haitian Creole. Her style is the human heart.'

Messou Youvina Fofana (French)
Born in the United States and raised in Guinea-Conakry, Messou is a Brockton High School student introduced to poetry writing from her English and poetry classes. Early on, she realized the impact of her voice and invested more into writing when she became aware of its range limit. She also realized that with her words she had a new way of expressing herself, more trustworthy than she sometimes could with her voice. Messou thus believed she could transcend time and better convey her emotions and thoughts to future generations. Her poems are often the results of her childhood memories and her sudden inspirations on themes of all kinds, ranging from love to her family, to her life as a sixteen-year-old, experiencing both African and American societies.


Wednesday April 8, 2020 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Massasoit Community College

12:00pm EDT

3 Poets, 3 Languages: A World Poetry 2020 Event
Readings by 3 poets, in 3 languages, featuring:

Ines Figueroa (Spanish)
Ines came to the United States in 1956 from Puerto Rico where she settled with her family in Newark New Jersey. In the early sixties, she married and had four daughters unfortunately during that period in her life she suffered from spousal abuse. At that, time there was nowhere to escape her surroundings and she suffered in silence. She finally summoned the courage to leave her husband and in 1984 found her way to Brockton with her daughters. Since then Ines has dedicated all her time educating the community about domestic violence and sexual assault. Ines graduated from Massasoit College in Human Service and from Boston University for Social Work. Ines has received numerous awards and in 1997, was named woman of the year for her contribution to the Hispanic Community.

Philip Hasouris (Greek)
A proud Brockton Poet and author of three books of poetry, Philip is the poetry coordinator and host of the Brockton Library Poetry Series, “Everyone Has a Voice.” He is also the poetry coordinator for the art/poetry exhibit "Soar without Limits, Healing through the Arts," bringing together, artists with disabilities and poets who, inspired by their artwork, create poetry, validating the artist. He is a facilitator of expressive healing workshops throughout the state for support groups coping with medical crisis and bereavement.
Zvi A. Sesling (Yiddish)
Poet Laureate of Brookline, MA. Zvi has published poetry in numerous magazines both in print and online in many countries. He has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize and was awarded First Prize in the Reuben Rose International Poetry Competition. He was the 2019 Feature Reader at the 10th Brookline Jewish Poetry Festival. His poetry book The Lynching of Leo Frank was nominated for the National Jewish Book Award. He is also the author of War Zones, Fire Tongue, King of the Jungle and three chapbooks, Simple Game, Poems From Hell and Across Stones of Bad Dream. Zvi has taught at Boston University , Emerson College and Suffolk University.


Wednesday April 8, 2020 12:00pm - 1:00pm EDT
Massasoit Community College

6:00pm EDT

Cathy Park Hong
Readers/Speakers

Wednesday April 8, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
Forum Room, Lamont Library
 
Thursday, April 9
 

6:00pm EDT

6:30pm EDT

Nick Flynn--Stay
Join artist Daniel Heyman for a conversation with Nick Flynn about collaboration. With his new book Stay, acclaimed poet, artist, and bestselling memoirist Nick Flynn presents a self-portrait via a constellation of topics that have circled his work. Ranging from the impact of suicide and homelessness to addiction, political engagement, and the vital power of artistic friendships, Stay is a mixed-media retrospective that shows nothing is created in isolation. Mirroring Flynn’s life, this work of visual and literary memoir is populated by examples of his collaborations since the 1980s with such luminaries as the photographers Amy Arbus and Catherine Opie, composer Guy Barash, actor Robert De Niro, cartoonist Josh Neufeld, author Sarah Sentilles, filmmaker Paul Weitz, and artists John Baldessari, Marilyn Minter, and Bill Shuck. In Flynn’s refusal to conform to narrative or the safety of his own perspective, Stay grasps for an essential truth, an answer to what art, in the end, can and cannot reflect.

The event will also feature performances by tK (Thalia Zedek, Heather Kapplow, and Phil Milstein), as well as a reading by City of Boston Youth Poet Laureate Alondra Bobadilla.


Thursday April 9, 2020 6:30pm - 8:00pm EDT
Boston Public Library's Main Branch
 
Saturday, April 11
 

7:00pm EDT

LGBTQ+ Lowell Open Mic
Come on down to the cafe for a night celebrating local LGBTQ+ talent. Whether you're an amateur or a seasoned professional we want to hear your songs, stories, and poems, see your dance routines, and laugh til our sides hurt at your stand up bits. Emcee Resi Ibañez is a Filipinx genderqueer poet, writer, and community storyteller, who believes in storytelling as a way of building community. They have been published in bklyn boihood’s Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, LOAM magazine, and will soon be published in Blue Oak Press’s upcoming anthology They Rise Like a Wave: an Anthology of Asian American Woman Poets, as well as Loom Press’s Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell. More info at https://www.facebook.com/events/1770488649764214/ .


Saturday April 11, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Coffee and Cotton

7:00pm EDT

Poetic Recovery
Are you a socially conscious hip-hop artist or poet who is looking to inspire, be inspired and collaborate with other like-minded individuals like yourself? Join us for this monthly Poetic Recovery workshop every 2nd and 4th Saturday of the month to share our own work within a supportive community. We will discuss artistic consciousness, different aspects of the cultural work, and the possibilities that potentially await you.
Bring something to write with, something to write on and you.
Suggested donation is $10.00.
--
The workshop host, Maurice Taylor, is an East Coast director of hip-hop congress and has been organizing open mics, poetry slams and hip-hop workshops for over 20 years. Maurice “Soulfighter” Taylor set out in 2006 to create Poetic Recovery as a platform to give voice to artists in recovery. It is a collection of cultural and educational activities that facilitate the nurturing of artists towards higher consciousness. These activities allow artists to reflect and perform for audiences from communities effected by traumatic experiences. These shared energies will help facilitate a cultural healing process between artists and community to recover of our cultural identity appropriated and exploited by the music industry that has resulted in cultural genocide.

Readers/Speakers

Saturday April 11, 2020 7:00pm - 11:00pm EDT
Make-It Springfield
 
Sunday, April 12
 

7:00pm EDT

The Power of Poetry
April is National Poetry Month and what better way to celebrate than with a panel discussion with Porsha OlayiwolaDanielle Legros GeorgesChen Chen, and Dara Wier, moderated by the host of PBS' "Poetry in America," Elisa New. They will discuss diversity in contemporary poetry and how poets use their art form to respond to the world around them.

Join WGBH and Mass Poetry, on April 12th, 2021, at 7 PM EDT for this live, interactive conversation with our panel of local poets. A general admission ticket ($25) includes access to the Zoom webinar discussion and a special digital collection of curated poems from the panel. If poetry is your passion and you want to support WGBH, please consider the Poetry Bundle ticket ($100) that also includes the printed collections of each poet featured at the event.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Porsha Olayiwola

Porsha Olayiwola

Porsha Olayiwola is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. She bested more than seventy of the highest ranked slam poets in the world to earn these titles and is now one of the most sought after spoken word artists on the national circuit... Read More →


Sunday April 12, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Online
 
Tuesday, April 14
 

7:30pm EDT

 
Wednesday, April 15
 

7:00pm EDT

Lynne Viti, Reading
Author of two poetry chapbooks and a forthcoming full-length poetry collection and a short fiction collection, Lynne Viti will read from her newest works, both poetry and flash fiction. Q & A and book signing to follow.
BIO:Lynne Viti, lecturer emerita in the Writing Program, Wellesley College, is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Baltimore Girls (2017), and The Glamorganshire Bible (2018), and three micro-chapbooks: Punting, (2017), Dreaming Must be Done in the Daytime (2018), and In Louisburgh, County Mayo, Thinking of Dublin (2019), from Origami Poems Project. She received Honorable Mentions in the Glimmer Train Short Fiction Contest, the WOMR/Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest, and Grey Borders Wanted Works. Her first full-length poetry collection, Dancing at Lake Montebello, will be published in November 2020 by Apprentice House Press. Her debut hort story collection, Going Too Fast, will be published in March 2020 by Finishing Line Press. She blogs at stillinschool.wordpress.com.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Lynne Viti

Lynne Viti

lecturer emerita, The Writing Program, Wellesley College
Lynne Viti,  Poet Laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts and a lecturer emerita at Wellesley College, is the author of The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022)  Dancing at Lake Montebello: Poems  (Apprentice House), and two poetry chapbooks: Baltimore Girls (2017) and The Glamorganshire... Read More →


Wednesday April 15, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Westwood Public Library, Islington Branch

8:00pm EDT

Visiting Writers Series: Mary Ruefle
Mary Ruefle is the author of many books, including Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), My Private Property (Wave Books, 2016), Trances of the Blast (Wave Books, 2013), Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures (Wave Books, 2012), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Selected Poems (Wave Books, 2010), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She has also published a comic book, Go Home and Go to Bed! (Pilot Books/Orange Table Comics, 2007), and is an erasure artist, whose treatments of nineteenth century texts have been exhibited in museums and galleries and published in A Little White Shadow (Wave Books, 2006). Ruefle is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Robert Creeley Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Award. Her most recent book, Dunce (Wave Books, 2019), was long listed for the National Book Award in poetry. She lives in Bennington, Vermont.

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday April 15, 2020 8:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Bernie Dallas Room, UMass Amherst
 
Thursday, April 16
 

7:00pm EDT

National Poetry Month with Martha Collins and Jason Tandon
Martha Collins is the author of Night Unto Night (Milkweed, 2018), Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016), Day Unto Day (Milkweed, 2014), White Papers (Pitt Poetry Series, 2012), and Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006), a book-length poem based on a lynching her father witnessed when he was five years old. Collins has also published four earlier collections of poems, three books of co-translations from the Vietnamese, and two chapbooks.


Jason Tandon is the author of four books of poetry including THE ACTUAL WORLD (Black Lawrence Press, 2019), QUALITY OF LIFE (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), GIVE OVER THE HECKLER AND EVERYONE GETS HURT (Black Lawrence Press, 2009), winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award, and WEE HOUR MARTYRDOM (sunnyoutside, 2008). His poems have appeared in many journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, AGNI Online, Barrow Street, and Esquire. Since 2008, he has taught in the Arts & Sciences Writing Program at Boston University.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Martha Collins

Martha Collins

Martha Collins’ most recent book of poetry is Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016).  She has also published seven earlier volumes of poetry, including Day Unto Day (2014), White Papers (2012), and the book-length poem Blue Front (2006), as well as four collections... Read More →


Thursday April 16, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Wellesley Books

7:00pm EDT

Queer + Trans Poetry and Prose Reading and Open Mic
Read and listen to queer and trans writing - your own or others! Come early to sign up for the open mic and bring a friend.
Hosted by creative writing faculty Samuel Ace and Andrea Lawlor. Co-sponsored by the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and the MHC Department of English.

Thursday April 16, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Art Building, Hinchcliff Reception Hall (Mt. Holyoke)
 
Saturday, April 18
 

10:00am EDT

Community Poetry Experience!
Calling All Poets … and everyone interested in poetry and the spoken word … EXPRESS YOURSELF!

Welcome to the Westfield Community Poetry Experience! This is the final event in the series of monthly open mic poetry events and experiences culminating in a celebration of National Poetry Month.

We celebrate National Poetry Month at this event with light refreshments, open mic poetry readings and recognition of some of the poetry written and read during the Community Poetry Experience series run from January through April.

This event is FREE and open to all, marking the series finale!

Write, read or just stop by and listen! Watch for writing prompts for each session on Facebook, inspired and motivated by art work by local and regional artists to stimulate written works and discussion. 

Write. Read. Share. Listen. You’re invited … 


Saturday April 18, 2020 10:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Blue Umbrella Books

4:00pm EDT

 
Wednesday, April 22
 

7:00pm EDT

Omar Sakr, George Abraham, Chen Chen, and moira j
n The Lost Arabs, Award-winning Arab Australian poet Omar Sakr presents a pulsating collection of poetry that interrogates the bonds and borders of family, faith, queerness, and nationality.

George Abraham’s highly anticipated debut Birthright constructs a dialogue in which “every pronoun is a Free Palestine.” Through poems of immense emotion, and the use of alluring form, Abraham crafts work that examines what we come to own by existing.

Chen Chen’s award-winning debut, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, interrogates the fragile, inherited ways of approaching love and family from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives.

Bury Me in Thunder, the full-length debut by moira j., is an eviscerating collection, suffused with nature, ceremony, and pain. Delivering an unflinching look into the consumption of Indigenous people, this collection sheds new light on the colonization of North America and how trauma is carried through intergenerational memory.

Omar Sakr is a bisexual Muslim poet born and raised in Western Sydney to Lebanese and Turkish migrants. His debut collection These Wild Houses (2017) was shortlisted for the Judith Wright Calanthe Award and the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry. Omar’s poems have been published in English, Arabic, and Spanish, featuring or forthcoming in the American Academy of Poets Poem-A-Day series, Prairie Schooner, The Margins, Tinderbox, Wildness, Peril, Circulo de Poesía, Overland, Meanjin, and Antic, among others. Anthologized in Best Australian Poems 2016 and in Contemporary Australian Poetry, he is the 2019 recipient of the Edward Stanley Award for Poetry.

George Abraham is a Palestinian American poet from Jacksonville, Florida. They are the author of Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020), and the chapbooks: the specimen’s apology (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019) and al youm (TAR, 2017). He is a Kundiman and Watering Hole fellow, and recipient of the College Union Poetry Slam International’s Best Poet title. Their work has been published with the Paris Review, American Poetry Review, LitHub, Poem-A-Day, and Bettering American Poetry. He is currently based in Massachusetts, where he is a PhD candidate in Bioengineering at Harvard University.

Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. The recipient of the 2016 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, he has been awarded fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, Lambda Literary, and in 2015, he was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. He earned his BA at Hampshire College and his MFA at Syracuse University. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his partner, Jeff Gilbert, and their pug dog, Rupert Giles.

moira j. is an agender writer of Dził Łigai Si’an N’dee descent. They are the winner of the 2018 Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and are Frontier Poetry’s 2019 Frontier New Voices Fellow. moira j.’s writing examines narratives of indigeneity, queerness, gender, sex, kinship, and illness. Their work has been featured with many publications, including The Shallow Ends, WILDNESS, and PRISM International. They currently live with their partner in the occupied Massachusett homelands of Nutohkemminnit (Greater Boston, Massachusetts).

https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/events/2020-04/omar-sakr-george-abraham-ad-chen-chen/


Wednesday April 22, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Brookline Booksmith
 
Thursday, April 23
 

7:00pm EDT

7:00pm EDT

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Microphone
Free event. After featured readers, a break for refreshments followed by open mic. On-street parking and in unnumbered spaces, as well as at rear of building,.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Martha Collins

Martha Collins

Martha Collins’ most recent book of poetry is Admit One: An American Scrapbook (Pittsburgh, 2016).  She has also published seven earlier volumes of poetry, including Day Unto Day (2014), White Papers (2012), and the book-length poem Blue Front (2006), as well as four collections... Read More →


Thursday April 23, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Roslindale House

7:00pm EDT

Lynne Viti Heather Corbally Bryant/Tavi Gonzalez/Pamela Taylor celebrate the Bard's Birthday with Poetry
Four poets read from their new works, in celebration of William Shakespeare's 456th birthday.

Lynne Viti, is the author of Baltimore Girls (2017),and The Glamorganshire Bible (2018), and three micro-chapbooks: Punting, (2017), Dreaming Must be Done in the Daytime (2018), and In Louisburgh, County Mayo, Thinking of Dublin (2019. Her debut short story collection is entitled Going Too Fast, (2020) and her full-length poetry collection, Dancing at Lake Montebello, is forthcoming in November 2020.

Heather Corbally Bryant is the author of nine poetry collections. The most recent are
Leaving Santorini (2019, and Practicing Yoga in a Former Shoe Factory (2020)

Octavio (Tavi) Gonzalez is the author of The Book of Ours (2009), from University of Notre Dame, Momotombo Press and poems in the anthology Retrato íntimo de poetas dominicanos: Antología poética de la diáspora

Pamela Taylor, a Cave Canem Fellow (2012-2014). 's chapbook is entitled My Mother’s Child,(Hyacinth Girl Press, June 2015). Her blog, www.poetsdoublelife.com, is geared toward poets with non-literary careers.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Pamela Taylor

Pamela Taylor

Pamela L. Taylor lives and works in the Boston area, chronicling her experiences as a poet with a non-literary career on her blog (www.poetsdoublelife.com). Pam’s recent work has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Atlas+Alice, and JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association... Read More →
avatar for Lynne Viti

Lynne Viti

lecturer emerita, The Writing Program, Wellesley College
Lynne Viti,  Poet Laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts and a lecturer emerita at Wellesley College, is the author of The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022)  Dancing at Lake Montebello: Poems  (Apprentice House), and two poetry chapbooks: Baltimore Girls (2017) and The Glamorganshire... Read More →
avatar for Heather Corbally Bryant

Heather Corbally Bryant

Lecturer, Wellesley College
Heather Corbally Bryant teaches in the Writing Program at Wellesley College; previously she taught at Penn State University and Harvard College where she won awards for her teaching. She received her AB from Harvard and her PhD from the University of Michigan. Her first book, How... Read More →


Thursday April 23, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Wellesley Books
 
Friday, April 24
 

6:30pm EDT

Beals Prize for Poetry
Ten Finalists will read their work. The top three will receive prize money of $100 for first, $50 for second and $25 for third.

THE BEALS PRIZE FOR POETRY
CALL FOR ENTRIES
Submission deadline: March 31, 2020
Go to bealslibrary.org for more information

Friday April 24, 2020 6:30pm - 8:00pm EDT
Beals Memorial Library
 
Saturday, April 25
 

6:00pm EDT

Christine Casson and Rita Ciresi
Readers/Speakers

Saturday April 25, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
I Am Books
 
Tuesday, April 28
 

7:00pm EDT

The Thirsty Lab Reading Series: Patrick Donnelly
The Thirsty Lab Reading Series on 206 Worcester Road in Princeton, MA 01541. The series began in 2013 and happens the fourth and fifth Tuesdays of every month from 7-9 p.m. There is no open. The reader has the full two hours to use as s/he wishes. Some read two sets of 30-45 minutes. Some bring musicians to play behind the words.  Some use part of the time for a workshop session and discussion. There is usually a bottle of wine to share, some home baked treats, great discussion and a poetically intelligent audience. A list of readers scheduled for 2020 follows:

2020

January 28 Michael Milligan
February 25 John Hodgen
March 24 Jenith Charpentier
March 31 Jeffrey Levine
April 28 Patrick Donnelly
May 26 Kathleen Fagley
June 23 Sarah St. George
June 30 Susan Roney-O’Brien
July 28 Susan Boucher
August 25 Richard Fox
September 22 Elizabeth McKim
September 29 Heather McPherson
October 27 Bruce Galli
November 24 David Surette


Readers/Speakers

Tuesday April 28, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
206 Worcester Road

7:00pm EDT

CANCELED: The Poetorium at Starlite Reading Series & Open Mic Featuring Eileen Cleary
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO THE ONGOING PUBLIC HEALTH CONCERNS!
However, our previously announced feature Eileen Cleary for this night has been rescheduled to read at the Poetorium at Starlite on November 24th. Hope to see you then!

Please join us on April 28th for our monthly open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium at Starlite hosted by Paul Szlosek and Ron Whittle. It will be a full evening of poetry and spoken word starting with a brief interview on stage with our featured poet Eileen Cleary (Author of Child Ward of the Commonwealth), followed by a poetry reading by our feature, a 10-minute tribute to a dead poet by a guest reader, a short intermission, and then the open mic (with 5-minute slots for each reader). Admission is free (but a hat will be passed to pay our features)

For more information, please email us at poetorium@protonmail.com

Co-Founder / Co-Host
avatar for Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
avatar for Ron Whittle

Ron Whittle

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
Ron Whittle, a lifetime resident of Massachusetts, was born in Worcester in 1947 and raised and educated in his home town of Shrewsbury. Further education came by way of the U.S. Navy, Vietnam, the Apollo 13 recovery team, and 45 years of family living. Ron divides his time between... Read More →

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary is the author of 'Child ward of the Commonwealth' (2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and ' 2 a.m. with Keats' (Nixes Mate, 2021). In addition, she co-edited the anthology ' Voices Amidst the Virus', the featured text... Read More →



Tuesday April 28, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Starlite Bar & Gallery 39 Hamilton Street, Southbridge, MA, USA
 
Wednesday, April 29
 

6:00pm EDT

 
Thursday, April 30
 

6:00pm EDT

HERE ALL NIGHT: POETRY & COCKTAILS
Registration is requested

Members $20 and Non-members $30
Here All Night: Poetry & Cocktailswith Jill McDonough

Join acclaimed poet Jill McDonough for a night of poetry and themed cocktails. Her latest collection is a fiercely unapologetic, transforming mundane moments into witty and provocative insights that closely examine the flaws in our quick-moving society. Using dark humor, the poems address the impermanence of life and how we should always find reasons to re-evaluate ourselves as empathetic beings over our selfish tendencies.
Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), Reaper (Alice James, 2017), and Here All Night (Alice James, 2019). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years.  Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry.  She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston and offers College Reading and Writing at a Boston jail. Her website is jillmcdonough.com.

Readers/Speakers

Thursday April 30, 2020 6:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
Boston Athenæum
 
Saturday, May 9
 

1:00pm EDT

Florence Poetry Carnival
The Florence Poetry Carnival is a community art event that takes place in the middle of town. This is the second year the carnival is part of ArtWeekMass. This public art project presents poetry as an inclusive and accessible expressive art through playful interactivity and by programming poetry as a multi and interdisciplinary art form. In the afternoon, strolling performers, poetry on demand and custom poetry carnival games are part of lawn activities. The day will close with a shared reading by local poets laureate: Springfield's Magdalena Gomez, Hadley's Wanda Cook and Maria Jose Gimenez, Easthampton's 2019 poet laureate. Please come join us! Stay up to date : https://www.facebook.com/florencepoetrycarnival



Saturday May 9, 2020 1:00pm - 6:00pm EDT
90 Park Street, Florence, Massachusetts

7:00pm EDT

LGBTQ+ Lowell Open Mic
Come on down to the cafe for a night celebrating local LGBTQ+ talent. Whether you're an amateur or a seasoned professional we want to hear your songs, stories, and poems, see your dance routines, and laugh til our sides hurt at your stand up bits. Emcee Resi Ibañez is a Filipinx genderqueer poet, writer, and community storyteller, who believes in storytelling as a way of building community. They have been published in bklyn boihood’s Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, LOAM magazine, and will soon be published in Blue Oak Press’s upcoming anthology They Rise Like a Wave: an Anthology of Asian American Woman Poets, as well as Loom Press’s Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell. More info at https://www.facebook.com/events/1770488649764214/ .




Saturday May 9, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Coffee and Cotton
 
Sunday, May 17
 

3:00pm EDT

Arrowsmith Press: Spring 2020 Book Launch
Our writers will be reading from Arrowsmith's Spring 2020 publications:


Peter Balakian is the author of 8 books of poems, 4 books of prose, 3 collaborative translations and several edited books. “No Sign,” is the title poem of Balakian’s forthcoming book of poems. Ozone Journal won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Black Dog of Fate, a memoir won the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Prize for the Art of the Memoir; The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response won the 2005 Raphael Lemkin Prize. His collaborative translations include two books by Grigoris Balakian: Armenian Golgotha: A Memoir of the Armenian Genocide and The Ruins of Ani. Among his other books of prose is Vice and Shadow: Essays on the Lyric Imagination, Poetry, Art, and Culture. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Balakian is the recipient of many awards and prizes and civic citations including the Presidential Medal from the Republic of Armenia, Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, The Spendlove Prize for Social Justice, Tolerance, and Diplomacy, and The Emily Clark Balch Prize for poetry from the Virginia Quarterly Review. He is Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities in the department of English and Director of Creative Writing at Colgate University.

Scott Harney (1955-2019) was a practicing poet who, aside from a few early publications in the Somerville Community News, did not publish during his lifetime, leaving a significant body of work to be discovered by readers after his death. He grew up in and around Boston, graduating from Charlestown High School and Harvard College. His literary influences include Robert Lowell and Jane Shore, with whom he studied at Harvard in the 1970s, as well as Richard Hugo and Philip Levine.

Megan Marshall is the winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for Margaret Fuller. She is also the author of The Peabody Sisters, which won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2006, and 2017's Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast. She is the Charles Wesley Emerson College Professor and teaches narrative nonfiction and the art of archival research in the MFA program at Emerson College.

Kythe Heller is a poet, essayist, multimedia artist, and scholar who received an MDiv at Harvard Divinity School and is currently completing a doctorate at Harvard University in Comparative Religion and Arts and Media Practice. She is also a practitioner of Sufism and a student of M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. Her published work includes two poetry chapbooks, Immolation (Monk Honey) and Thunder (Wick: Harvard Divinity School), the philosophical monograph “An Ethnography of Spirituality” (Cambridge UP), an essay in the anthology Quo Anima: spirituality and innovation in contemporary women’s poetry (Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics), and poems and essays published in American Poetry Review, Tricycle, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by grants and fellowships from Harvard University, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, The Mellon Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. While completing an MFA at Sarah Lawrence College, she created a literacy and creative arts program at the Coachman Family Homeless Shelter in White Plains, New York; she has also worked and taught through the Bard Prison Initiative, Janus Youth Shelters, Bradley-Angle Women’s Shelter, and Yellow Brick Road Street Outreach; currently she is a teaching fellow at Harvard University and on the faculty of the Language and Thinking Program at Bard College. In 2017, she founded VISION LAB, a collective of creatives working across spirituality, the arts, social and environmental justice, and technology.

Winner of Arrowsmith's Ramaswamy Prize, Oksana Zabuzhko is one of Ukraine’s best known and most important public intellectuals. Her controversial novel, Field Work in Ukrainian Sex, is widely regarded as a contemporary classic and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her most recent novel, Museum of Abandoned Secrets, explores the untold stories of Soviet life in the second half of the twentieth century. Zabuzhko has been a Fulbright scholar, and has taught Ukrainian literature at Penn State, Pittsburgh University, and Harvard. Her book Notre-dame d’Ukraine is a cultural study focused on the work of the fin-de-siecle writer Lesia Ukrainka. Founding editor of Komora Publishers, she works at the Hryhori Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine.


Sunday May 17, 2020 3:00pm - 5:00pm EDT
First Parish Church

3:30pm EDT

Janet MacFadyen with photographer Stephen Schmidt: Poetry Reading & Slideshow
Local poet Janet MacFayden will be reading from her book of poetry, and her husband Stephen Schmidt will be showing slides of the American Southwest.
We will meet in the upstairs reading room.
The Arms is accessible via the lower level entrance.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Janet MacFadyen

Janet MacFadyen

Managing Editor, Slate Roof Press
Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Adrift in the House of Rocks (photo-poetry collaboration from New Feral Press 2019) and Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres 2017); with a new collection, State of Grass, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry 2023. Her work... Read More →


Sunday May 17, 2020 3:30pm - 5:00pm EDT
Arms Library
 
Tuesday, May 19
 

6:00pm EDT

U35
Tuesday May 19, 2020 6:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Trident Booksellers & Cafe
 
Thursday, May 28
 

7:00pm EDT

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Mic
Zoom reading with open microphone

For Zoom link, Zoom contact hguran@aol.com


Thursday May 28, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Zoom
 
Saturday, June 6
 

11:00am EDT

Northfield Authors & Artists Festival
Designed to be an annual event, Authors and Artists, had been planned as a destination festival
for Northfield, MA on June 13. When the pandemic struck, we adapted and moved online. The
festival is still free, and open to all, but now accessible to a wider audience. Spreading the
festival out over all 4 Saturdays in June, from 11am to 2pm avoids concurrent programming, and
allows people to register for one or more weeks. The festival will still include opportunities for
local authors and artists to participate with an online art show, nature poetry coordinated with
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, and readings each week.

Headline speakers include the Vermont mystery writer Archer Mayor; National Poet Beat
Laureate Paul Richmond; writer of African-American history Dr. Gretchen Holbrook-Gerzina;
women's rights activist and memoire author Dr. Lise Weil; peace activist-poet JuPong Lin; art
educator Dr. Simone Alter-Muri; and Abenaki author Cheryl Savageau. Children's programming
includes authors Deanna Cook (kids cooking) and Christina Uss (bikes, books, and persistence).
For a full schedule of events including ways to join in see our website:
authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com

Registration is open on the website or using this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DUj_BdkcTmGZld6mBHWfOQ

Funded in part by Massachusetts Local Cultural Council money from Northfield, Gill,
Bernardston, and Warwick; Greenfield-Northampton Cooperative Bank; Kiwanis Club of
Northfield, MA; Greenfield Savings Bank; Deerfield Valley Art Association; Dickinson
Memorial Library; and the Northfield Historical Commission.
Press contact: Lisa McLoughlin 413-475-0650; Lisa@hemlockhouse.net

Saturday June 6, 2020 11:00am - 2:00pm EDT
Zoom
 
Saturday, June 13
 

11:00am EDT

Northfield Authors & Artists Festival
Designed to be an annual event, Authors and Artists, had been planned as a destination festival
for Northfield, MA on June 13. When the pandemic struck, we adapted and moved online. The
festival is still free, and open to all, but now accessible to a wider audience. Spreading the
festival out over all 4 Saturdays in June, from 11am to 2pm avoids concurrent programming, and
allows people to register for one or more weeks. The festival will still include opportunities for
local authors and artists to participate with an online art show, nature poetry coordinated with
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, and readings each week.

Headline speakers include the Vermont mystery writer Archer Mayor; National Poet Beat
Laureate Paul Richmond; writer of African-American history Dr. Gretchen Holbrook-Gerzina;
women's rights activist and memoire author Dr. Lise Weil; peace activist-poet JuPong Lin; art
educator Dr. Simone Alter-Muri; and Abenaki author Cheryl Savageau. Children's programming
includes authors Deanna Cook (kids cooking) and Christina Uss (bikes, books, and persistence).

For a full schedule of events including ways to join in see our website:
authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com
Registration is open on the website or using this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DUj_BdkcTmGZld6mBHWfOQ

Funded in part by Massachusetts Local Cultural Council money from Northfield, Gill,
Bernardston, and Warwick; Greenfield-Northampton Cooperative Bank; Kiwanis Club of
Northfield, MA; Greenfield Savings Bank; Deerfield Valley Art Association; Dickinson
Memorial Library; and the Northfield Historical Commission.
Press contact: Lisa McLoughlin 413-475-0650; Lisa@hemlockhouse.net

Saturday June 13, 2020 11:00am - 2:00pm EDT
Zoom

7:00pm EDT

LGBTQ+ Lowell Open Mic
Come on down to the cafe for a night celebrating local LGBTQ+ talent. Whether you're an amateur or a seasoned professional we want to hear your songs, stories, and poems, see your dance routines, and laugh til our sides hurt at your stand up bits. Emcee Resi Ibañez is a Filipinx genderqueer poet, writer, and community storyteller, who believes in storytelling as a way of building community. They have been published in bklyn boihood’s Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, LOAM magazine, and will soon be published in Blue Oak Press’s upcoming anthology They Rise Like a Wave: an Anthology of Asian American Woman Poets, as well as Loom Press’s Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell. More info at https://www.facebook.com/events/1770488649764214/ .




Saturday June 13, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Coffee and Cotton
 
Saturday, June 20
 

11:00am EDT

Northfield Authors & Artists Festival
Designed to be an annual event, Authors and Artists, had been planned as a destination festival
for Northfield, MA on June 13. When the pandemic struck, we adapted and moved online. The
festival is still free, and open to all, but now accessible to a wider audience. Spreading the
festival out over all 4 Saturdays in June, from 11am to 2pm avoids concurrent programming, and
allows people to register for one or more weeks. The festival will still include opportunities for
local authors and artists to participate with an online art show, nature poetry coordinated with
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, and readings each week.

Headline speakers include the Vermont mystery writer Archer Mayor; National Poet Beat
Laureate Paul Richmond; writer of African-American history Dr. Gretchen Holbrook-Gerzina;
women's rights activist and memoire author Dr. Lise Weil; peace activist-poet JuPong Lin; art
educator Dr. Simone Alter-Muri; and Abenaki author Cheryl Savageau. Children's programming
includes authors Deanna Cook (kids cooking) and Christina Uss (bikes, books, and persistence).

For a full schedule of events including ways to join in see our website:
authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com
Registration is open on the website or using this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DUj_BdkcTmGZld6mBHWfOQ

Funded in part by Massachusetts Local Cultural Council money from Northfield, Gill,
Bernardston, and Warwick; Greenfield-Northampton Cooperative Bank; Kiwanis Club of
Northfield, MA; Greenfield Savings Bank; Deerfield Valley Art Association; Dickinson
Memorial Library; and the Northfield Historical Commission.
Press contact: Lisa McLoughlin 413-475-0650; Lisa@hemlockhouse.net

Saturday June 20, 2020 11:00am - 2:00pm EDT
Zoom
 
Saturday, June 27
 

11:00am EDT

Northfield Authors & Artists Festival
Designed to be an annual event, Authors and Artists, had been planned as a destination festival
for Northfield, MA on June 13. When the pandemic struck, we adapted and moved online. The
festival is still free, and open to all, but now accessible to a wider audience. Spreading the
festival out over all 4 Saturdays in June, from 11am to 2pm avoids concurrent programming, and
allows people to register for one or more weeks. The festival will still include opportunities for
local authors and artists to participate with an online art show, nature poetry coordinated with
Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust, and readings each week.

Headline speakers include the Vermont mystery writer Archer Mayor; National Poet Beat
Laureate Paul Richmond; writer of African-American history Dr. Gretchen Holbrook-Gerzina;
women's rights activist and memoire author Dr. Lise Weil; peace activist-poet JuPong Lin; art
educator Dr. Simone Alter-Muri; and Abenaki author Cheryl Savageau. Children's programming
includes authors Deanna Cook (kids cooking) and Christina Uss (bikes, books, and persistence).

For a full schedule of events including ways to join in see our website:
authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com
Registration is open on the website or using this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_DUj_BdkcTmGZld6mBHWfOQ

Funded in part by Massachusetts Local Cultural Council money from Northfield, Gill,
Bernardston, and Warwick; Greenfield-Northampton Cooperative Bank; Kiwanis Club of
Northfield, MA; Greenfield Savings Bank; Deerfield Valley Art Association; Dickinson
Memorial Library; and the Northfield Historical Commission.
Press contact: Lisa McLoughlin 413-475-0650; Lisa@hemlockhouse.net

Saturday June 27, 2020 11:00am - 2:00pm EDT
Zoom
 
Friday, July 10
 

12:30pm EDT

Shelter in Place: Writing Where We Are (7 week poetry workshop)
Since the onset of the pandemic, many of us have been struggling with anxiety and fear. In more recent weeks, many of us have been struggling with rage and hope as social justice and violence sweep across America. In this poetry workshop, we will take the term “Shelter-In-Place” as a directive to "Take Solace in Place," investigating how to more deeply see the places we live and how we live in them.

By engaging specifically with Place through poetry, this workshop is an opportunity to become re-centered during this time of uncertainty, clarify our process, and to deepen meaning in our day-to-day lives. We will engage newly with what is outside of our windows at present. What does it mean to be here, now, and what before this particular moment in time might we have overlooked?

Each class includes the following, related to the idea of Place:

A short group meditation
Reading and discussion of the craft in poems by authors such as Terrance Hayes, Natalie Diaz, Marilyn Nelson, and Ted Kooser
In-class writing prompts and sharing new work (sharing work is totally optional!)
Free-writing in response to recorded poems by authors such as Natasha Trethewey and Walt Whitman
And more !!

Space is limited to 15 participants, in order to foster a warm and safe space for connectivity and community. No writing experience is necessary, and this class is open to anyone ages 14 and up. Participants should attempt to be as close to a favorite window as possible during class, as you may want, from time to time, to gaze outwards…! Come prepared with a writing utensil and a notebook. Readings and audio will be screen-shared, as well as being searchable online or distributed to participants via email.

Class Schedule: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/shelter-in-place-writing-where-we-are-7-week-poetry-workshop-tickets-106439708032

July 10 from 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm PST
July 17 from 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm PST
July 24 from 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm PST
July 31 from 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm PST
August 7 from 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm PST
August 14 from 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm PST
August 21 from 12:30 pm - 1:45 pm PST
Registration for the full seven weeks is open now! If space allows, registration for individual classes will open on June 5.

About your instructor: Sophie Klahr

Sophie Klahr is a poet and educator who prefers to be outdoors, and finds herself writing mostly about spirituality, animals, land, gender, and desire. She is the author of Meet Me Here at Dawn (YesYes Books) and her poems can be found in publications such as The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Poetry London, Ploughshares, Poetry Ireland Review, and elsewhere. The 2019-2020 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Sophie is the recipient of fellowships and residencies from the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts. She is a recurrent long-term artist-in-residence at Art Farm, a residency in rural Nebraska, where her favorite bedroom is the highest point for miles and miles and miles.

Readers/Speakers

Friday July 10, 2020 12:30pm - 1:45pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, July 11
 

7:00pm EDT

LGBTQ+ Lowell Open Mic
Come on down to the cafe for a night celebrating local LGBTQ+ talent. Whether you're an amateur or a seasoned professional we want to hear your songs, stories, and poems, see your dance routines, and laugh til our sides hurt at your stand up bits. Emcee Resi Ibañez is a Filipinx genderqueer poet, writer, and community storyteller, who believes in storytelling as a way of building community. They have been published in bklyn boihood’s Outside the XY: Queer Black and Brown Masculinity, LOAM magazine, and will soon be published in Blue Oak Press’s upcoming anthology They Rise Like a Wave: an Anthology of Asian American Woman Poets, as well as Loom Press’s Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell. More info at https://www.facebook.com/events/1770488649764214/ .




Saturday July 11, 2020 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Coffee and Cotton
 
Sunday, July 12
 

3:00pm EDT

Rosebud Ben-Oni: Poet Wrestling in the Land of a Thousand Dances
The New England Poetry Club, Friends of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, and Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site are pleased to announce the 2020 Virtual Summer Poetry Festival. This year’s festival will take place live online and connect poetry lovers across the country with remarkable poets who will read and discuss their work. This year, which marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, the festival places special emphasis on women poets.

The featured poet for July 12 is Rosebud Ben-Oni.

Events are free and open to all, but require advance registration at https://bit.ly/rosebud-ben-omi

Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Sunday July 12, 2020 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Online
 
Friday, July 24
 

12:00am EDT

Slate Roof Press Chapbook Contest/Elyse Wolf Prize
Slate Roof Press announces its Annual Poetry Chapbook Contest. The winner receives publication, $500, and will become an active member of the press. Slate Roof’s award-winning bookmaker produces beautiful books with letterpress covers and high-quality papers. DEADLINE JULY 31, 2020.

Based in Greenfield, MA, Slate Roof is a member-run, not-for-profit collaborative, which has published the best new voices in poetry in art-quality chapbooks since 2004.


Friday July 24, 2020 12:00am - 11:30pm EDT
Slate Roof Press http://slateroofpresscontest.submittable.com/submit
 
Sunday, July 26
 

11:00am EDT

Cross-Border Poetry Open Mic
The border is closed to people but open to poetry! Open mic for poets from anywhere in the world, with an emphasis on building community between US and Canadian poets. Free/by donation.

Readers/Speakers
CS

Cheryl Savageau

Of Abenaki and French Canadian heritage, Cheryl Savageau was born in central Massachusetts. She graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied writing at the People’s Poets and Writers Workshop in Worcester. She is the author of the poetry collections Home... Read More →



Sunday July 26, 2020 11:00am - 12:30pm EDT
Online

3:00pm EDT

Afaa Michael Weaver: Spirit Boxing
The New England Poetry Club, Friends of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, and Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site are pleased to announce the 2020 Virtual Summer Poetry Festival. This year’s festival will take place live online and connect poetry lovers across the country with remarkable poets who will read and discuss their work.

The featured poet for July 26 is Afaa Michael Weaver.

Events are free and open to all, but require advance registration at https://bit.ly/afaa-michael-weaver


Sunday July 26, 2020 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Online
 
Wednesday, July 29
 

7:00pm EDT

An evening of poetry with four poets
Register at the following site: https://www.libraryinsight.com/eventdetails.asp?jx=gxp&lmx=%CF%60b%27%A9%ACw&v=3

Once you register, a Zoom link will be sent to you shortly before the reading. Thank you!

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Cammy Thomas

Cammy Thomas

Cammy Thomas’ first book of poems, Cathedral of Wish, received the 2006 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Both it and her second book, Inscriptions, are published by Four Way Books. A fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation helped her complete Inscriptions... Read More →


Wednesday July 29, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Cary Memorial Library
 
Sunday, August 9
 

3:00pm EDT

María Luisa Arroyo & Peter Covino: Poetry in Translation
The New England Poetry Club, Friends of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, and Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site are pleased to announce the 2020 Virtual Summer Poetry Festival. This year’s festival will take place live online and connect poetry lovers across the country with remarkable poets who will read and discuss their work. This year, which marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment, the festival places special emphasis on women poets.

The featured poets for August 9 are María Luisa Arroyo & Peter Covino.

This event is free and open to all, but requires advance registration at https://bit.ly/poetry-in-translation.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for María Luisa Arroyo

María Luisa Arroyo

multilingual Boricua poet & educator
Multilingual Boricua poet and educator María Luisa Arroyo was educated at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA) and Harvard (ABD) in German, her third language. Her poetry collections include Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (2008) and Destierro Means More than Exile (2018). For 20+ years... Read More →

Hosts
avatar for María Luisa Arroyo

María Luisa Arroyo

multilingual Boricua poet & educator
Multilingual Boricua poet and educator María Luisa Arroyo was educated at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA) and Harvard (ABD) in German, her third language. Her poetry collections include Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (2008) and Destierro Means More than Exile (2018). For 20+ years... Read More →


Sunday August 9, 2020 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Online
 
Monday, August 17
 

7:00pm EDT

Danez Smith presents Homie
Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent out prior to the event.

Danez Smith (they/them) is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of Don’t Call Us Dead (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Danez’s third collection, Homie, was published by Graywolf in January 2020.

Homie is Danez Smith’s magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith’s close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family—blood and chosen—arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez’s friends and for you and for yours.

Readers/Speakers

Monday August 17, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Cambridge Public Library
 
Thursday, September 17
 

7:00pm EDT

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Mic
Deana Tavares is a creatively fluid artist, poet, songwriter activist, and actor. Growing up on the south coast of Massachusetts, many of life's hurdles only further strengthened her drive toward the arts. Her deep connection to the natural world and humanity is regularly reflected through her visual artwork, poetry, and songwriting. An avid visual artist, writer and maker, her work can be found on saveprouty.comengagingpeace.com., jummyjeenz.com, and Art On The Trails - Marking Territory 2019 chapbook.

Ed Meek writes poetry, fiction, articles and book reviews. His new book of poems, High Tide, has just come out. He has been published in The Sun, The Paris Review, Plume, The North American Review. He lives in Somerville with his wife Elizabeth and his dog Mookie, whom he will never trade.

Email Holly Guran at hguran@aol.com to register and receive the Zoom link. 


Thursday September 17, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Online
 
Tuesday, September 22
 

6:30pm EDT

Amesbury Monthly Poetry Reading
Therese Broderick is a community poet with an MFA in writing degree (2006) from Spalding University, retired from full-time employment. She has been active in the local writing community as an open mic reader, teacher, contest judge, critique group member, classroom guest, blogger, Board member, volunteer for Hudson Valley Writers Guild, Poet Laureate of a local tavern, and administrator for a MeetUp.com local poetry group. Some of her poems have won prizes both locally and beyond and her full-length collection of poetry, Breath Debt, was released in 2018. In addition, she has self-published several chapbooks, including Green-Weak, published online by Red Wolf Editions of Red Wolf Journal. Her current project is Terzanelle Tuesdays. https://theresebroderick.wordpress.com/writing-aterzanelle/

Please email Ellie O'Leary for Zoom link: ellieoleary@gmail.com


Tuesday September 22, 2020 6:30pm - 8:30pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, October 3
 

7:00pm EDT

Solidarity Salon/ Virtual Version
Slate Roof poet Anna M. Warrock reads with Allison Adair, Jennifer Barber, Eileen Cleary, Karen Friedland, Jenna Le, Julia Lisella, Jennifer Martelli, Kevin McLellan, Deborah Schwartz, Enzo Silon Surin, and Cindy Veach.

The Solidarity Salon hosted by Lisa DiSero and Gloria Mindock gathers together local artists of various genres to share their creations in community spaces. The series aims to especially amplify the voices of women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ persons.

Anna M. Warrock’s latest book, From the Other Room, won the Slate Roof Press Chapbook Award. Besides appearing in The Sun, The Madison Review, Harvard Review, and elsewhere, her work is anthologized in Kiss Me Goodnight, women writing on childhood mother-loss, a Minnesota Book Award Finalist. Her poems have been choreographed, set to music, and inscribed in a Boston area subway station. www.AnnaMWarrock.com

Live streamed via Facebook and YouTube. For more details see:
https://www.facebook.com/events/336928854412232

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Cindy Veach

Cindy Veach

Cindy Veach is the author of Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the 2022 Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press), a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts Center for the Book ‘Must Read,’ Her poems have appeared in the... Read More →
avatar for Julia Lisella

Julia Lisella

Poet, teacher, scholar
Julia Lisella’s three books of poetry are Our Lively Kingdom (Bordighera Press), Always (WordTech Editions), Terrain (WordTech Editions), and Love Song Hiroshima (Finishing Line Press). Her poems are widely anthologized and are forthcoming or have appeared in The Common, Ploughshares... Read More →
avatar for Enzo Silon Surin

Enzo Silon Surin

Editor/Publisher, Central Square Press
Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born poet, publisher, advocate and author of the chapbook Higher Ground (Finishing Line Press). He was recognized in 2015 by PEN New England (New England’s chapter of PEN American Center) as a Celebrated New Voice in Poetry. His work has appeared in... Read More →
avatar for Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary is the author of 'Child ward of the Commonwealth' (2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and ' 2 a.m. with Keats' (Nixes Mate, 2021). In addition, she co-edited the anthology ' Voices Amidst the Virus', the featured text... Read More →


Saturday October 3, 2020 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
Online
 
Wednesday, October 7
 

7:00pm EDT

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Mic
Sponsored by Friends of the Roslindale Library

Yves Mary Jean is a poet, novelist, political activist and former Boston City Council candidate. His work has been published in French and in Haitian-Creole. His first novel, Tout Chen Pa Chen Nan Pòtoprens(Edisyon Lank Zetwal), has just been published. Yves headlined “The Politics of Translation,” at Bridgewater State University for their first annual Latin American Caribbean Studies Carnival Week.

Eileen Cleary, author of Child Ward of the Commonweath, is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books. She holds two MFA's in poetry. Recent work is published in The Sugar House Review, JAMA, West Texas Literary Review and Solstice: A Magazine for Diverse Voices, among others. 
To sign up for this Zoom reading, contact hguran@aol.com


Readers/Speakers
avatar for Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary is the author of 'Child ward of the Commonwealth' (2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and ' 2 a.m. with Keats' (Nixes Mate, 2021). In addition, she co-edited the anthology ' Voices Amidst the Virus', the featured text... Read More →


Wednesday October 7, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Online
 
Thursday, October 8
 

7:00pm EDT

Virtual Special Event: Bobby LeFebre Shares His Social Justice Poetry
Please join us for this very special event with Colorado Poet Laureate, Bobby LeFebre! His poetry spans all of the social justice issues of our time - from George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, gun violence, politics, gentrification, and so much more. His words will make you think, his poetry will give you chills, and his persona will make the learning accessible.

Bobby LeFebre is an award-winning writer, performer, and cultural worker fusing a non-traditional multi-hyphenated professional identity to imagine new realities, empower communities, advance arts and culture, and serve as an agent of provocation, transformation, equity and social change. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Guardian, American Theater Magazine, NPR, and Poets.Org.

In 2019, LeFebre was named Colorado's 8 th Poet Laureate, making him the youngest and first person of color to be appointed to the position in its 100 year history. LeFebre holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from the Metropolitan University of Denver and a master's degree in Arts and Culture from the University of Denver. Learn more about Bobby on his website.

Please register for this meeting and you will receive the program link in the confirmation and reminder notices - please check your spam folder for the emails and scroll to the bottom for the link. This program will be recorded with permission and we will upload it to our YouTube channel.

Contact us at caryprograms@minlib.net with any questions.

Sponsored by the Cary Library Foundation.

Readers/Speakers

Thursday October 8, 2020 7:00pm - 8:15pm EDT
Online
 
Wednesday, October 14
 

5:00pm EDT

Note on a Blue Note in The Gospel of Barbecue--Lecture & Reading with Fred Moten
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Please register here: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_bgi_ZDqRQnuC6CAlOl2USA

Fred Moten will discuss a poem called "On Listening to the Two-Headed Lady Blow Her Horn," which is from Honorée Fanonne Jeffers's extraordinary collection, The Gospel of Barbecue. He will try to talk - in the wake and under the influence of Manolo Callahan, J. Kameron Carter, Ruby Sales and Frank Stewart - about how the disruption of the metaphysics of sovereignty which the physics of the barbecue undertakes is held, and held open, and released in Jeffers's rich musicality. After failing properly to analyze a musicality that defies analysis, he will ask you to join him in trying to join Jeffers in the incalculable rhythm she lays down, which blurs the line between blur and blue, intoned time and pitch, in the interest of a general, insovereign insurgency.

Fred Moten teaches in the Department of Performance Studies in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. His fields are black studies, poetics and critical theory and his special concern is the entanglement of social movement and aesthetic experiment. His latest book, written with Stefano Harney, is All Incomplete (Minor Compositions / Autonomedia, 2020).

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday October 14, 2020 5:00pm - 6:00pm EDT
Online
 
Thursday, October 15
 

7:30pm EDT

Robert Lowell Memorial Lecture Series featuring Poets Natasha Trethewey and Meg Fernandes
Poets Natasha Trethewey and Meg Fernandes are “coming” to BU! This Zoom Webinar is free and open to the public.

The reading followed by a Q&A will be Thursday, October 15th from 7:30pm - 9:00pm. More information can be found here: http://www.bu.edu/creativewriting/calendar/robert-lowell-memorial-lectures/. The Zoom link is: https://bostonu.zoom.us/j/93316819395?pwd=bVBIT0xzSi9VSXRQdmRlRTZYbWlpQT09. Attendees do not need to pre-register, but they will need to input their name and email address to join.



Thursday October 15, 2020 7:30pm - 9:00pm EDT
Online
 
Wednesday, October 21
 

1:00pm EDT

Online Poetry: Medicine for the Soul
Jessica Fisher is the author of Frail-Craft, which won the 2006 Yale Younger Poets Prize, and Inmost, which was awarded the 2011 Nightboat Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in such journals as The American Poetry Review, The Believer, The Bennington Review, The Colorado Review, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Threepenny Review, Tin House, and TriQuarterly, and her translations have been published in The New York Review of Books and The Paris Review. She is co-editor, with Robert Hass, of The Addison Street Anthology. Her honors include the 2012 Rome Prize, a Holloway Postdoctoral Fellowship in Poetry, and a research grant from the Hellman Foundation. She holds a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley and is currently an associate professor at Williams College.

Contact Name: Wendy Pearson
Email Address: wpearson@cwmars.org

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday October 21, 2020 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, October 24
 

1:00pm EDT

Listening to Nature: Workshop with Christian McEwen, author of World Enough and Time
One of life’s great joys is finding time to listen -- whether to the scattered wonders of conversation or to the many voices of the non-human world: birdsong, wild wind, river’s sweep. In this bright fall workshop we will identify sources for the listener’s delight, and share ways to grow them into poems, songs and stories.

$25, needs-based scholarship available.

https://authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com/associated-programming/#ListeningToNature

Readers/Speakers

Saturday October 24, 2020 1:00pm - 3:00pm EDT
Online
 
Tuesday, October 27
 

7:00pm EDT

OF CONSEQUENCE: AVOIDING DISASTER PORN.
Phil Klay, author of the recently released Missionaries, and Tom Sleigh, author of The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees and House of Fact, House of Ruin, in a conversation about Klay’s book, Missionaries: "Avoiding Disaster Porn."

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday October 27, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Online
 
Monday, November 2
 

7:15pm EST

Blacksmith House Poetry Series: Jeffrey Harrison and Nathalie Handal
Jeffrey Harrison reads from a new collection, Between Lakes, with Nathalie Handal, author of Life in a Country Album.

The Zoom link, meeting ID, and password for this reading will be included in your confirmation email after you register. If you do not receive the confirmation email, please contact our registration office at 617-547-6789 ext. 1.


Monday November 2, 2020 7:15pm - 8:15pm EST
Online
 
Thursday, November 5
 

7:00pm EST

Cary Library Poetry Series: Steven Cramer, Jeffrey Harrison, Joyce Peseroff
Join us for a virtual poetry reading from three published poets: Jeffrey Harrison, Joyce Peseroff, and Steven Cramer. Please register to get the Zoom link and password; they will be sent in a confirmation email when you register and a reminder message the day before the event - please check your spam folder for the emails and scroll to the bottom for the link. Email caryprograms@minlib.net with any questions.

Steven Cramer is the author of five previous collections, most recently Clangings (2012) and Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), which won the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and was named an Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Recipient of two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he founded and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University.

Petition is Joyce Peseroff’s sixth book of poems. She is the editor of Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake, The Ploughshares Poetry Reader, and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. Her fifth collection, Know Thyself, was designated a 'must read' by the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems and reviews appear in Consequence, On the Seawall, Massachusetts Review, and Plume. She directed and taught in UMass Boston's MFA Program in its first four years. Currently she blogs for her website, joycepeseroff.com, and writes the poetry column for Arrowsmith Press.

Jeffrey Harrison is the author of six full-length books of poetry, most recently Between Lakes, published by Four Way Books in September 2020. His previous book, Into Daylight, won the Dorset Prize and was published by Tupelo Press in 2014. His first book, The Singing Underneath, was selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series in 1987. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bogliasco Foundation, among other honors. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals, as well as in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize volumesand other anthologies, and been featured regularly on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, and other online or media venues.


Thursday November 5, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Online
 
Sunday, November 8
 

3:00pm EST

Virtual Poetry At the Concord Free Library: Jeffrey Harrison and Matthew Lippman
Concord Poetry at the Library presents Jeffrey Harrison & Matthew Lippman: 

Please register here for the Zoom link!

Jeffrey Harrison reads from his sixth full-length book of poetry, Between Lakes (Four Way Books, September, 2020), where the death of the speaker’s father places him in the ever-shifting zone between the living and the dead while also sending him back into his journey to manhood. Old arguments are reimagined: What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a participant in one’s life as well as a witness and recorder of the lives of others? The exploration of these questions leads to new discoveries, including the way time reshapes the vision of one’s life and alters relationships, remaking a shared history. Harrison’s other collections include The Singing Underneath (1988), selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series, Signs of Arrival (1996), Feeding the Fire (2001), winner of the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club, Incomplete Knowledge (2006), runner-up for the Poets’ Prize, and Into Daylight, published in 2014 by Tupelo Press as the winner of the Dorset Prize and selected by the Massachusetts Center for the Book as a Must-Read Book. View Harrison’s website for interviews in which he talks about the poet’s craft and samples
of his widely-published poetry. He lives in Massachusetts.

Matthew Lippman reads from Mesmerizingly Sadly Beautiful (Four Way Books, 2020), which won the 2018 Levis Prize in Poetry – a collection that “takes on issues of sex, politics, race, religion, and poetry, all subjects our mothers warned us not to bring up at a dinner party. At times dreamily or nightmarishly surreal, at others so realistic we laugh or cringe in recognition. It's outrageously American, crass, funny, fast talking, unbound, and yes, sadly beautiful.” – notes Levis poetry judge Dorianne Laux. Lippman is the author of five additional collections: A LITTLE GUT MAGIC (2018), SALAMI JEW (2014), AMERICAN CHEW (2013), winner of the Burnside Review Book Prize, MONKEY BARS (2010), and THE NEW YEAR OF YELLOW (2007) winner of The Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2008 Patterson Poetry Prize. Lippman is the Editor and Founder of the web-based project Love’s Executive Order (www.lovesexecutiveorder.com) and calls its weekly poems by different poets a chronicle of poetic protest during the current political time. Lippman holds an MFA with a concentration in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in Massachusetts.


Sunday November 8, 2020 3:00pm - 4:15pm EST
Online
 
Friday, November 13
 

7:30pm EST

Chapter & Verse Literary Reading Series
Allison Adair’s debut collection, The Clearing, was selected by Henri Cole for Milkweed’s Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and named a New York Times “New and Noteworthy” book. Allison’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Waxwing, and ZYZZYVA. They have been honored with the Pushcart Prize, the Florida Review Editors’ Award, and the Orlando Prize. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Allison now lives with her family in the Boston area, where she teaches at Boston College and Grub Street. The Clearing is available at local bookstores or through bookshop.org.

Robbie Gamble’s poems and essays have appeared in Cutthroat, RHINO, Rust + Moth, Scoundrel Time, and Tahoma Literary Review. He was the winner of the 2017 Carve Poetry prize, and was a 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Summer Writers Workshop. He serves as associate poetry editor for Solstice: a Magazine of Diverse Voices. After working for many years as a nurse practitioner with the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, he now divides his time between Boston and Vermont.

Susanna Kittredge’s poems have appeared in publications such as Barrow Street, 14 Hills, The Columbia Review and Salamander as well as the anthologies Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006) and Shadowed: Unheard Voices (The Press at California State University, Fresno 2014). She has an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her first full-length collection, The Future Has a Reputation, was published by CW Books in January, 2020. She lives in the Boston area and is a member of The Jamaica Pond Poets workshop and the Brighton Word Factory, a bi-weekly open writing group. By day she teaches middle schoolers. The Future Has a Reputation can be purchased directly from the author by contacting her at https://susannakittredge.wixsite.com/mysite/contact. It is also available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

To receive a Zoom invitation with a link to the reading, email your name and email address to SandeeStorey@fastmail.fm before 10 am on Nov. 12.

You will be emailed a Zoom invitation with the link by noon Nov. 13. For security reasons, please do not publicize, post or broadcast the Zoom link itself. If people you know want to attend, you may send them the link, but please ask them also not to publicize, post, or broadcast the link itself.

For more information, check our website at http://jamaicapondpoets.com or email dorothy.derifield@gmail.com or call 617-325-8388. The next Chapter and Verse Literary Reading on Zoom in the 2020/2021 Series will be at 7:30 pm on Friday, December 11, 2020.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Robbie Gamble

Robbie Gamble

Robbie Gamble (he/him) received an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. His poems and essays have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Poet Lore, RHINO, Rust + Moth, Salamander, The Sun, and Tahoma Literary Review. His chapbook A Can of Pinto Beans was published by Lily Poetry Review... Read More →


Friday November 13, 2020 7:30pm - 9:30pm EST
Online
 
Saturday, November 14
 

3:00pm EST

Blogging: a panel of experienced bloggers answer your questions
Dr. Leo Hwang and associates will offer a workshop on blogging. This panel of experienced bloggers will answer your questions about how to get your voice out there. $5 to benefit A&A festival

https://authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com/associated-programming/#Blogging


Saturday November 14, 2020 3:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Online
 
Tuesday, November 17
 

7:00pm EST

Cervena Barva Press Zoom Reading Series
Cervena Barva Press Zoom Reading Series featuring Dayna Leslie Hodges, Frannie Lindsay, & John L. Stanizzi. 

To RSVP and receive the Zoom link contact editor@cervenabarvapress.com


Tuesday November 17, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Online
 
Thursday, November 19
 

7:00pm EST

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Microphone
Sandra Lim is the author of the poetry collections Loveliest Grotesque and The Wilderness. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. Her honors include a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Levis Reading Prize, and grants from MacDowell and The Vermont Studio Center. She is an Associate Professor at UMass Lowell.

Connie Nelson has published work in Bright Ideas, Field Notes, Portals, and Persimmon Tree. She holds Ed.M and Ed.D degrees in Community Education and Lifelong Learning from Harvard University and has written poetry all her life. She is a member of the Never Too Late to Be a Poet group, started by poet laureate Danielle Legros Georges and led by Sandee Storey, enabling her to share her work and explore a variety of poets, forms and themes.

To obtain a link, contact hguran@aol.com

Readers/Speakers

Thursday November 19, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Online
 
Tuesday, November 24
 

7:00pm EST

A Virtual Thirsty Lab Poetry Reading with David Surette
Hosted by Worcester County Poetry Association

The WCPA is happy to help the Thirsty Lab poetry reading go virtual for their 4th (and occasional 5th) Tuesday reading. The next reading will be on Tuesday, November 24, 2020 when David Surette will be the feature.
Visit this link to register for the reading and Zoom will send you an e-mail with the meeting details and link.

David R. Surette’s new book of poetry is Malden, selected and new poems that feature his hometown Malden, Massachusetts. He is the author of five other collections: Wicked Hard, The Immaculate Conception Mothers’ Club, Young Gentlemen’s School, Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In and Stable which was named an Honor Book at the 2005 Massachusetts Book Awards. He lives on Cape Cod

Readers/Speakers
avatar for David R. Surette

David R. Surette

David R. Surette’s new book of poetry is Stable, selected and new poems that feature the animals who have blessed his life. He is the author of four other collections: Wicked Hard, The Immaculate Conception Mothers‘ Club, Young Gentlemen’s School and Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep... Read More →


Tuesday November 24, 2020 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
 
Wednesday, December 2
 

5:00pm EST

White Whales, White Males, Whitehead with Lisa Jarnot
Host Organization: Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Register here: https://harvard.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__tZF8PfxT_CQCnSOK05ZQw

This lecture, which is part of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry, explores the doctrine of discovery that haunts American poetry. Lisa Jarnot engages in an autobiographical interrogation of what it means to be a woman in a male-centered experimental tradition, and what it means to have white privilege and write poetry. Several questions arise: What do we keep and what do we reject as we acknowledge the systemic racism and American exceptionalism that pervade even the most benign of bohemian writing communities? Is there something transcendent and healing in the poet’s love of making, knowing, and of forging human connections? How can social reckoning and personal romance co-exist in exploring (and having been influenced by) the writers of the Black Mountain School, the New York School, and the Beat Generation?

The Bagley Wright Lecture Series on Poetry supports contemporary poets as they explore in-depth their own thinking on poetry and poetics, and give a series of lectures resulting from these investigations. Lectures are delivered publicly in partnership with institutions nationwide. Find out more about past, present, and future lecturers, and explore the archive at www.bagleywrightlectures.org.

Lisa Jarnot was born in Buffalo, NY and educated at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including Some Other Kind of Mission (1996), Ring of Fire (2001), Black Dog Songs (2003), Night Scenes (2008), Joie De Vivre: Selected Poems 1992-2012 (2013) and A Princess Magic Presto Spell (2019). She co-edited An Anthology of New (American) Poets (1997), and her biography of San Francisco poet Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus, was published by the University of California Press in 2012. She has been a visiting professor at Naropa University, Brooklyn College, and the University of Colorado, Boulder. She lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, is a Masters of Divinity candidate at New York Theological Seminary and is a minister at Safe Haven United Church of Christ.

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday December 2, 2020 5:00pm - 6:30pm EST
Online
 
Sunday, December 6
 

12:30pm EST

Enchanting the Season
Dr. Patrick Curry is a writer and scholar living in London, England. He has a PhD from the University of London and has been a Lecturer at the universities of Kent and Bath Spa. He is the author of Enchantment: Wonder in Modern Life(2019), Ecological Ethics: An Introduction, rev. ed. (2017), and Deep Roots in a Time of Frost: Essays on Tolkien (2014), among other books. For more information as well as articles and papers, see http://www.patrickcurry.co.uk

A conversation about Enchantment: We will discuss Enchantment. A more in-depth and personal discussion than his presentation in the festival, together we will find individual sources of enchantment in our lives, and seek ways to keep them alive during this season of glitz and glamour. Free.

https://authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com/associated-programming/#Enchant

Readers/Speakers

Sunday December 6, 2020 12:30pm - 1:45pm EST
Online
 
Thursday, December 10
 

7:00pm EST

Cervena Barva Press Book Launch
Cervena Barva Press Book Launch featuring Karen Friedland and Corey Mesler


TimeDec 10, 2020 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)


Meeting ID848 0912 3757


Passcode 320003


Invite Link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84809123757?pwd=eXdIZCtRYzY5VlNYTzRnVndpNlE1Zz09





Readers/Speakers

Thursday December 10, 2020 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Online
 
Friday, December 11
 

7:30pm EST

Chapter & Verse Literary Reading Series
Joshua Coben’s second collection, Night Chaser (David Robert Books, 2020), was a finalist for the Vassar Miller Prize, the New American Poetry Prize, and the Donald Justice Poetry Prize. His first book, Maker of Shadows (Texas Review Press, 2010), won the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, College English, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, Salamander, and elsewhere. A St. Louis native, he is an elementary school teacher and librarian. He and his family live in Dedham. Visit him online at joshuacoben.com. His books can be purchased from Bookshop.org at the following links: Night Chaser, Maker of Shadows.

Steven Cramer’s sixth poetry collection is Listen (MadHat Press, 2020). His previous collections are The Eye That Desires to Look Upward,  The World Book, Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand, Goodbye to the Orchard, and Clangings. Goodbye to the Orchard won the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and was named an Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Recipient of two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he founded and now teaches in the Low-Residency Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. Porter Square Books (https://www.portersquarebooks.com/product/listen-steven-cramer) has been selling Listen.

Petition is Joyce Peseroff’s sixth book of poems. She is the editor of Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake, The Ploughshares Poetry Reader, and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. Her fifth collection, Know Thyself, was designated a “must read” by the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems and reviews appear in Consequence, On the Seawall, Massachusetts Review, and Plume. She directed and taught in UMass Boston's MFA Program in its first four years. Currently she blogs for her website So I Gave You Quartz at joycepeseroff.com and writes the poetry column for Arrowsmith Press. To order Petition, go to: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo68082264.html

To receive a Zoom invitation with a link to the reading, email your name and email address to SandeeStorey@fastmail.fm before 2 pm on Dec. 10.

You will be emailed a Zoom invitation with the link by noon Dec. 11. For security reasons, please do not publicize, post or broadcast the Zoom link itself. If people you know want to attend, you may send them the link, but please ask them also not to publicize, post, or broadcast the link itself.

For more information, check our website at http://jamaicapondpoets.com or email dorothy.derifield@gmail.com or call 617-325-8388. The next Chapter and Verse Literary Reading on Zoom in the 2020/2021 series will be at 7:30 pm on Friday, January 8, 2021.


Friday December 11, 2020 7:30pm - 8:30pm EST
Online
 
Sunday, December 13
 

3:00pm EST

Concord Poetry at the Library Series: Steven Cramer and Joyce Peseroff
Join Steven Cramer and Joyce Peseroff who will read from their newest collections and talk about their practice and the influences of their small writing group of almost two decades on the elements of their craft.

Steven Cramer's sixth book Listen (MadHat Press, 2020), is a collection of lucid, smart portrayals of the “darker corners” of despair through scores of illuminating juxtapositions. Experimenting with many verse forms to give shape to the mind’s restless shifts and associations — absurdly funny, bracingly honest, and always sharp in thought and craft—the lyric testimony of Listen reaffirms the indispensable, if fragile, consolations of art. Cramer’s previous books of poetry are The Eye that Desires to Look Upward (1987), The World Book (1992), Dialogue for the Left and Right Hand (1997), Goodbye to the Orchard ( 2004)—winner of the 2005 Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and named a 2005 Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book—and Clangings (2012). His poems and criticism have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Atlantic Monthly, Field, Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry, as well as in several poetry anthologies. He has taught at Bennington College, Boston University, M.I.T., and Tufts University; and he founded and now teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University.

Joyce Peseroff reads from her sixth collection, Petition (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020). From privilege at a gas station to fraud in a memorial grove, Peseroff follows the faults of indifference and division that crack our impulses toward mercy and love. She nests fragmented tales of the overheard and overlooked—lonely widowers, a lost hiker, predatory trees, an angry jury—in poems that bring a formal restlessness to common speech. With wit and compassion, Petition renders the tense joys and vivid griefs of mortal and moral experience in the luminous moment when the ordinary becomes singular. Peseroff edited Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake, The Ploughshares Poetry Reader, and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. Her fifth book of poems, Know Thyself, was designated a “must read” by the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems and reviews appear in American Journal of Poetry, Consequence, On the Seawall, Massachusetts Review, Plume, Salamander, and on the website The Woven Tale Press. She directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program in its first four years. Currently she blogs on writing and literature at her website and writes a poetry column for Arrowsmith Press.

Readers/Speakers

Sunday December 13, 2020 3:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Online
 
Saturday, January 23
 

10:30am EST

Movement Language Nature Art workshop
Movement Language Nature Art explores the inherently aesthetic organization of human first perception—movement-sound. Organized in utero as one perception movement-sound constitutes primary language—the kinship language we humans share with the many intelligences of the Natural World. Through guided imagery mediation, movement-sound explorations, and art-making through perceptual sequencing, participants follow an experiential pathway discovering the inner processes of primary language. This gives experience for participants to independently direct their own Nature immersion primary languaging session. From this experience participants make art—poetry, prose, and/or visual—through the immediacy of primary languaging processes.

Rebecca R Burrill is an ecocentric dancer, artistic director, and movement-based child developmentalist-educator. Her work focuses on the aesthetics of first perceptions—movement-sound—as primary language, the language of human kinship with Nature. She engages people of all ages in the experience of these deep psycho-biological processes, culminating in community ceremonial site-specific dance performance. $25

Readers/Speakers

Saturday January 23, 2021 10:30am - 12:30pm EST
Online
 
Sunday, January 24
 

5:00pm EST

Free Playful Poetry Workshop
instructor - Danny Balel
takeaway - a few poems you’re welcome to present at our poetry reading on the 31st
requirements - something to write on. a phone or computer with Zoom.
time - Sunday Jan. 24th @ 5:00 - 6:30 EST

We’re hosting a free drop-in to help our community find their smiles and write something new. The theme for our upcoming poetry reading is “reflection | regeneration | renewal.” To get ready, we’re hosting a free drop-in to help our community find their smiles and maybe write something new to come and read. We hope to see you there!

Sunday January 24, 2021 5:00pm - 6:30pm EST
Online
 
Monday, January 25
 

7:00pm EST

Martín Espada with Luke Salisbury, Floaters
Join Porter Square Books for a virtual reading from award-winning poet Martín Espada's latest collection Floaters!  The reading will be followed by a discussion with Luke Salisbury. This event is free and open to all, hosted on Crowdcast.

From the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize come masterfully crafted narratives of protest, grief and love.
Martín Espada is a poet who "stirs in us an undeniable social consciousness," says Richard Blanco. Floaters offers exuberant odes and defiant elegies, songs of protest and songs of love from one of the essential voices in American poetry.

Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the "I’m 10-15" Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love—even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise.

The collection ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball that drops from the sky and smacks Espada in the eye as he contemplates a girl’s gently racist question.

Whether celebrating the visionaries—the fallen dreamers, rebels and poets—or condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his father’s Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.

Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator, including Vivas to Those Who Have Failed and Pulitzer finalist The Republic of Poetry. His many honors include the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Born in Brooklyn, he now lives in western Massachusetts.

Luke Salisbury is an award winning author and Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston. His interests range from Shakespeare to baseball, with the latter including a book The Answer is Baseball, and time spent as both vice president and national secretary for the Society of Baseball Research (SABR). No Common War, published in 2019, is his latest work. Mr. Salisbury attended The Hun School, New College, and received an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. He once taught third grade in the Bronx, and now lives with his wife Barbara in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Register here to join the event on Crowdcast: www.crowdcast.io/e/floaters


Monday January 25, 2021 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
 
Wednesday, January 27
 

7:00pm EST

Poetry Readings: Cheryl Savageau, David Surette, Ellen LaFlèche and Steven Riel
You are invited to a Zoom meeting.
When: Jan 27, 2021 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://maine.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIlf-2upzkoE9H4Dv3L7KaQdI3N0JDHF5C9

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.



Readers/Speakers
avatar for Steven Riel

Steven Riel

I am the author of one full-length book of poetry (Fellow Odd Fellow, published by Trio House Press) as well as three chapbooks, with the most recent, Postcard from P-town, selected as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize and published by Seven Kitchens Press. My... Read More →
CS

Cheryl Savageau

Of Abenaki and French Canadian heritage, Cheryl Savageau was born in central Massachusetts. She graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied writing at the People’s Poets and Writers Workshop in Worcester. She is the author of the poetry collections Home... Read More →
avatar for David Surette

David Surette

David Surette, the featured poet, is the author of five collections: Wicked Hard, The Immaculate Conception Mothers’ Club, Young Gentlemen’s School, Easy to Keep, Hard to Keep In and Stable which was named an Honor Book at the 2005 Massachusetts Book Awards. His poems... Read More →


Wednesday January 27, 2021 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
 
Sunday, January 31
 

5:00pm EST

reflection | regeneration | renewal Poetry Reading
As we enter this turbulent new year, let’s take an hour to reflect.

Students of our playful poetry course will be joined by members of the 3weeks community to read some original works, connect, and enjoy our mutual company.

Register to read at the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfMxBEuvKXqALbRVW6L3m8lXDw4L7CCojS94zoMFp1SfUbN1Q/viewform
View the stream here: twitch.tv/2mbstudios

Sunday January 31, 2021 5:00pm - 6:00pm EST
Online
 
Friday, February 5
 

7:00pm EST

Poetry at the Y Reading Series (Virtually via Zoom) - POETRY READING & Open Mic
Join us for a poetry reading with Wendy Drexler and Richard Waring, friends of the PoemWorks community, followed by an Open Mic (sign up by emailing host Richard Waring at rwaring@nejm.org).
Wendy Drexler’s third poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Sugar House, The Atlanta Review, The Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and in numerous anthologies. She’s been the poet-in-residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, since 2018, and is programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club. Her website is www.wendydrexlerpoetry.com
 
Richard Waring is the author of the poetry collection, What Love Tells Me (Word Poetry, 2016)and a chapbook, Listening to Stones (Pudding House Publications, 1999). His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Sanctuary, Ars Medica, Comstock Review, JAMA, and the American Journal of Nursing. “Monarchs Passing Through New England” and “Night” have been set to music by composer Leander Frank. He hosts this monthly reading series and is senior layout artist for the New England Journal of Medicine.

*Contact host Richard Waring at rwaring@nejm.org for Zoom invitation.

Readers/Speakers
RW

Richard Waring

Richard Waring’s poems have appeared in the Comstock Review, Chest, Sanctuary, Contact II, Dark Horse, the American Journal of Nursing,Mothering, Inward Springs, the Journal of the American Medical Association,and other publications. Richard has a B.A. in English Literature... Read More →


Friday February 5, 2021 7:00pm - 8:00pm EST
Online
 
Saturday, February 6
 

11:00am EST

Poetry Writing 101 with Susan Roney-O’Brien: In Form, Conform, Reform
Traditional or “received” forms give poets the opportunity to practice technique, to work within an established scaffolding. We tune our ears to meter and rhythmic patterns that, once set up, are expected. So many forms to explore! We’ll start simply, define and try, limericks, acrostics, abcderians, haikus, tankas and move on to read sonnets, sestinas and villanelles. Perhaps once we know the pattern, we can learn to break the form like Robert Frost did in “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening”.

Readers/Speakers

Saturday February 6, 2021 11:00am - 12:00pm EST
Online
 
Sunday, February 7
 

2:00pm EST

Temple Sinai’s Twelfth Annual Poetry Festival Featuring Marge Piercy
This year’s featured poet, Marge Piercy, is an American poet, novelist and social activist. She has published 20 books of poems and 17 novels including Women on the Edge of TimeHe, She, and It, which won the 1993 Arthur C Clarke Award, and Gone to Soldiers, a New York Times Best Seller, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II. Her book, The Art of Blessing the Day, focuses on poems with a Jewish theme. Born in Detroit, she is the recipient of four honorary doctorates. Marge Piercy is an active force in antiwar, feminist and environmental causes.

Readers/Speakers

Sunday February 7, 2021 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST
 
Tuesday, February 9
 

6:30pm EST

Memoir Incubator Open House & Info Session - Remote!
Interested in taking your memoir to the next level? Join us for an informal Q&A session on our Memoir Incubator program. Instructor Alysia Abbott and alumni of the program will be there to answer any questions you have about the Memoir Incubator program. We'll give you all the information you need to know about the application process, what the program entails, the schedule, the philosophy behind our approach, and anything else on your mind. To find out more about the program, click here.

Covid-19 Update
GrubStreet is planning to hold all of its classes using Zoom video conferencing until it becomes safe to meet in person in Boston. We are monitoring the public health situation closely, and while we expect this program will be able to meet in person in Boston eventually, all applicants should be prepared to participate via Zoom for as long as necessary.

Prospective applicants should either be local to Massachusetts/Boston area, or able to relocate in the event that the class can at some point meet in person. GrubStreet will be following the lead of health experts and the city of Boston, and working alongside other arts organizations in our decision-making regarding in-person classes. In the event that it’s absolutely safe to meet again, the opportunity will be provided to our intensive programs to gather in person. We will of course offer the possibility to participate remotely if a student is unable to attend in person for health reasons, but as with previous years, local community building is an integral aspect of these programs.

This info session will be hosted using Zoom! You will be able to participate in the event via Zoom video conference from wherever you’re most comfortable. All you’ll need is a laptop or a phone! About 15 minutes before this event is scheduled to begin, everyone who has registered for the event will receive an email with a link to join the event via Zoom – no need to download anything or sign up for Zoom in advance! If you have questions about remote learning, please feel free to reach out to programs@grubstreet.org for more information.

Readers/Speakers

Tuesday February 9, 2021 6:30pm - 7:30pm EST
 
Thursday, February 11
 

7:00pm EST

Shelter: The Art of Caring -- Virtual Poetry & Prose Reading
Free event featuring Lowell writers & poets: Stephan Anstey, Diamond Asaneh, Suzanne Beebe, Douglas Bishop, MJ Bujold, Charles Gargiulo, Nancy Jasper, S.C. Thibodeau, and PJ Wamala. Their writings on the subject of “Shelter” were selected for inclusion in the community exhibit at the Arts League of Lowell, which this month (Feb 3rd-28th) is featuring an art show and sale with all proceeds to benefit the Lowell Transitional Living Center (LTLC). Hosted by Lowell poet Emily Ferrara, with special guest Alexis Ivy, homeless advocate and author of “Taking the Homeless Census.” Ivy will read poems from her book, followed by a Q&A on discussion topics on homeless advocacy, and what community members can do to better understand and make a positive impact for our fellow residents.


Thursday February 11, 2021 7:00pm - 8:15pm EST
 
Friday, February 12
 

7:30pm EST

CHAPTER AND VERSE LITERARY READING SERIES
Now on Zoom! RSVP as below to attend.

Susan Buttenwieser is the author of the short story collection We Were Lucky with the Rain (Four Way Books). Her writing has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in numerous literary publications and received fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She contributes news features regularly to Women’s Media Center and teaches creative writing in New York City public schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, with incarcerated women and older adults. To purchase We Were Lucky with the Rain go to https://fourwaybooks.com/site/we-were-lucky-with-the-rain-by-susan-buttenwieser/.

Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her chapbook, After Bird, was the winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. In the Year of Ferraro was recently published by Nixes Mate. Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest), On the Seawall, The Sycamore Review, and Poetry. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review. You can order My Tarantella by going to www.bordigherapress.org. In the Year of Ferraro can be ordered from Nixes Mate Publishing https://nixesmate.pub/product/in-the-year-of-ferraro-·-jennifer-martelli/.

Scott Withiam’s latest book of poems, Doors Out of the Underworld, was published by MadHat Press in October 2019. Withiam has been a recipient of the Ploughshares Cohen Award, and the Two Rivers Review Chapbook and Drunken Boat Pan-Literary prizes. His first book, Arson & Prophets, came out with Ashland Poetry Press. Poems have been published by AGNI, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, Diagram, Indiana Review, Ploughshares, Plume, The Sun and elsewhere. He formerly taught college English Literature and writing and now works for a non-profit in the Boston area. Doors Out of the Underworld can be purchased online by going to https://madhat-press.com. Either or both books can be purchased by emailing the author at scwithiam@gmail.com.

To receive a Zoom invitation with a link to the reading, email your name and email address to SandeeStorey@fastmail.fm before 2 pm on Feb. 11. You will be emailed a Zoom invitation with the link by noon Feb. 12. For security reasons, please do not publicize, post or broadcast the Zoom link itself. If people you know want to attend, you may send them the link, but please ask them also not to publicize, post, or broadcast the link itself.

For more information, check our website at http://jamaicapondpoets.com or email dorothy.derifield@gmail.com or call 617-325-8388. The next Chapter and Verse Literary Reading on Zoom in the 2020/2021 series will be at 7:30 pm on Friday, March 12, 2021.


Friday February 12, 2021 7:30pm - 7:45pm EST
Online
 
Saturday, February 20
 

11:00am EST

Virtual Panel Discussion Featuring New England Poets
The Worcester Public Library is pleased to present a panel of poets who are in New England. Panelists Meg Kearney of New Hampshire, Tim Mayo of Vermont, and J.D. Scrimgeour of Massachusetts will read aloud some of their work, discuss what drew them to writing poetry, the struggles they’ve faced, and advice for aspiring poets.
In June 2021, The Word Works Press will publish Meg Kearney’s All Morning the Crows, winner of the 2020 Washington Prize for poetry. Meg is also author of An Unkindness of Ravens and Home By Now, winner of the PEN New England L.L. Winship Award; a heroic crown, The Ice Storm, published as chapbook in 2020; and three verse novels for teens. Her award-winning picture book, Trouper, is illustrated by E.B. Lewis. Meg’s poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac” and Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” series, and included in the 2017 Best American Poetry anthology (Natasah Tretheway, guest editor). She lives in New Hampshire and directs the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program in Massachusetts. Visit www.megkearney.com.

Tim Mayo has published two full length collections of poetry, The Kingdom of Possibilities (Mayapple Press, 2008), a finalist for the May Swenson Award and Thesaurus of Separation (Phoenicia Publishing, 2016) which among other awards was a finalist for both the 2017 Montaigne Medal and the 2017 Eric Hoffer Book Award. His two chapbooks are The Loneliness of Dogs (Pudding House Publications, 2007) and Notes to the Mental Hospital Timekeeper (Kelsay Books, 2019), which won Honorable Mention in the chapbook category of the 2020 Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Nominated for seven Pushcart Prizes, his poems and reviews have appeared in numerous literary magazines, among them, The American Journal of Poetry, Barrow Street, Narrative Magazine, ONE (Jacar Press), Poetry International, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac. He lives in Brattleboro Vermont where he was a founding member of the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and where he continues to teach and work in a mental hospital. Visit www.tim-mayo.net.

J.D. Scrimgeour is the author of four poetry collections The Last Miles, Territories, Lifting the Turtle, and, most recently, Festival. He won the AWP Award for Nonfiction for his second book of nonfiction, Themes for English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class. With musician Philip Swanson he released Ogunquit & Other Works, a CD blending music and poetry. A longtime resident of Salem, he’s written in many genres about the city. Mary Towne Eastey, an ancestor in his direct line, was put to death during the Salem Witch Trials. Another ancestor, Thomas Perkins, sat on the jury that found her guilty.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for J.D. Scrimgeour

J.D. Scrimgeour

A long-time professor at Salem State, J.D. Scrimgeour lives in Salem and has written extensively about sports, especially baseball and basketball. His five books include the basketball memoir, Spin Moves. He also appears in the anthology Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art... Read More →

Hosts
avatar for J.D. Scrimgeour

J.D. Scrimgeour

A long-time professor at Salem State, J.D. Scrimgeour lives in Salem and has written extensively about sports, especially baseball and basketball. His five books include the basketball memoir, Spin Moves. He also appears in the anthology Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art... Read More →


Saturday February 20, 2021 11:00am - 12:00pm EST
Online

2:00pm EST

Into the Mystery: The BodyPoem
Speak a poem with your body! Come join Slate Roof poets Audrey Gidman and Anna M. Warrock in the physical experience of language. What parts of the poem warrant motion? Does one image evoke the wrists, another the hips? Sign language? Shadowplay? Stillness? In this perfection-free zone, we’ll speak bodypoems, using short writing prompts to launch us into movement, invitation, physical questioning, and possible arrival. For poets and non-poets, adults and high-schoolers. $15

https://authorsandartistsfestival.wordpress.com/associated-programming/#SlateRoof


Saturday February 20, 2021 2:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Online
 
Wednesday, February 24
 

7:00pm EST

Martín Espada — Author of Floaters at the Odyssey Bookshop
Join us on Wednesday, February 24th, 7 pm on Crowdcast for a poetry reading by Martín Espada from his new book, Floaters. Espada will also be in conversation with Paul Mariani, former University Professor of Poetry at Boston College.

Questions about joining an online event? Email events@odysseybks.com for more info.

About the Book
From the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize come masterfully crafted narratives of protest, grief and love.
Martín Espada is a poet who "stirs in us an undeniable social consciousness," says Richard Blanco. Floaters offers exuberant odes and defiant elegies, songs of protest and songs of love from one of the essential voices in American poetry.

Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the "I’m 10-15" Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love—even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise.
The collection ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball that drops from the sky and smacks Espada in the eye as he contemplates a girl’s gently racist question.
Whether celebrating the visionaries—the fallen dreamers, rebels and poets—or condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his father’s Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.

About the Panelists
Martín Espada has published more than twenty books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His new book of poems from Norton is called Floaters. Other books of poems include Vivas to Those Who Have Failed(2016), The Trouble Ball (2011), The Republic of Poetry (2006) and Alabanza(2003). He is the editor of What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump (2019). He has received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His book of essays and poems, Zapata’s Disciple (1998), was banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona, and reissued by Northwestern. A former tenant lawyer, Espada is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. http://www.martinespada.net/

From 1968 until 2000, PAUL MARIANI taught poetry at the University of Massachusetts/ Amherst and was the University Professor of Poetry at Boston College from 2000 until his retirement in 2016. He has published over 250 essays as well as 20 books, among them six biographies, including William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Gerard Manley Hopkins and Wallace Stevens, and eight volumes of poetry, most recentlyOrdinary Time: Poems (2020). He earned fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA and the NEH, and was awarded the John Ciardi Lifetime Achievement Award and the Flannery O’Connor Lifetime Achievement Award. For over two decades he taught poetry workshops at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and the Glen Workshops in Colorado and Santa Fe. His most recent book of essays is The Mystery of It All: The Vocation of Poetry in the Twilight of Modernity (2020).

Get Your Copy
Get your copy of Floaters here. To get a signed copy, visit our signed book order page.

Readers/Speakers


Wednesday February 24, 2021 7:00pm - 8:30pm EST
Online
 
Saturday, February 27
 

11:00am EST

Authors and Artists Festival - Day 1
The 2021 Authors and Artists Festival is themed "Honoring Nature." Last year's 2020 online fest involved 61 adult and children authors and artists; ultimately reaching over 800 audience members.

This year all programming will also be online, and will feature headline speakers, poets, and new Associated Programming in the months leading up to the festival. Designed to extend the festival experience with hands-on workshops (stipended, to benefit the festival) and a free reading series the first Sunday of each month (11am-noon) of books whose authors will be speaking, the A&A festival offers the opportunity to create and learn for the next 6 months

Contact Name: Lis McLoughlin
Email Address: Lisa@hemlockhouse.net

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Janet MacFadyen

Janet MacFadyen

Managing Editor, Slate Roof Press
Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Adrift in the House of Rocks (photo-poetry collaboration from New Feral Press 2019) and Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres 2017); with a new collection, State of Grass, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry 2023. Her work... Read More →
CS

Cheryl Savageau

Of Abenaki and French Canadian heritage, Cheryl Savageau was born in central Massachusetts. She graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied writing at the People’s Poets and Writers Workshop in Worcester. She is the author of the poetry collections Home... Read More →


Saturday February 27, 2021 11:00am - 5:00pm EST
Online

2:00pm EST

Poetry Reading with Charles Coe
Known for his powerful readings and unusually warm and compassionate voice, Charles Coe's poems speak to the heart and mind as well as the ear. He combines subjects as diverse as Afro-American history, myth, jazz, and family as well as surprising observations of those unexpected moments of joy to be found in a work-a-day city. Hear from one of our region's finest poets as he shares his sometimes humorous, sometimes poignant, but always insightful work. Coe will weave stories from his own life and reflections on his writing process through readings of poems from his 3 published collections. The reading will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience. A recipient of a Mass. Cultural Council fellowship in poetry, Coe served as an Artist-iin-Residence for the City of Boston in 2017 and is an Artist Fellow for Boston's St Botolph Club. Teaching poetry and prose is a special interest and he has taught in a wide variety of settings; currently he is an adjunct professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, teaching poetry and non fiction in the low-residency MFA program. Presented by Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture in collaboration with Robbins Library and Arlington's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Division in conjunction with the launch of "Elevating Arlington's Voices of Color", a new collection welcoming poems, stories, essays, memoirs, photos, videos, diaries, artworks, and other digital artifacts from the Arlington Black, Indigenous and People of Color communities. Advance registration required at https://artisttalkcharlescoe.eventbrite.com

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Charles Coe

Charles Coe

Poet and writer Charles Coe is author of two books of poetry: All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents and Picnic on the Moon, both published by Leapfrog Press. His poetry and prose has appeared in a number of literary reviews and anthologies. He is author of Spin Cycles, a short novel... Read More →


Saturday February 27, 2021 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST
Online

5:30pm EST

Book Launch of Honoring Nature: An Anthology of Authors and Artists Festival Writers
This new anthology Honors Nature with poems, prose, and art. Meet most of the 40 poets and other creatives in this volume including: National Beat Poet Laureate Paul Richmond; Carlos Dufflar; Angel Martinez; Cheryl Savageau; JuPong Lin; Jason Grundstrom-Whitney; Janet MacFadyen; Robert Eugene Perry; Paul Rabinowitz; Dina Stander;  Zarnab Tufail;  Kate Rex; Roger West

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Paul Richmond

Paul Richmond

Owner/ Operater, Humen Error Publishing
I run two monthly reading and an annual festival - Greenfield Annual Word Festival - www.gawfest.org and Word stage at the Garlic & Arts Festival and other events yearly. Always looking for feature writers. I also publish books. I have three books myself with my fourth coming out... Read More →
avatar for Janet MacFadyen

Janet MacFadyen

Managing Editor, Slate Roof Press
Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Adrift in the House of Rocks (photo-poetry collaboration from New Feral Press 2019) and Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres 2017); with a new collection, State of Grass, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry 2023. Her work... Read More →
CS

Cheryl Savageau

Of Abenaki and French Canadian heritage, Cheryl Savageau was born in central Massachusetts. She graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied writing at the People’s Poets and Writers Workshop in Worcester. She is the author of the poetry collections Home... Read More →


Saturday February 27, 2021 5:30pm - 7:00pm EST
Online
 
Sunday, February 28
 

11:00am EST

Authors and Artists Festival - Day 2
Day 2 of the Authors and Artists Festival: Honoring Nature, completely free and online

The 2021 Authors and Artists Festival is themed "Honoring Nature." Last year's 2020 online fest involved 61 adult and children authors and artists; ultimately reaching over 800 audience members.

This year all programming will also be online, and will feature headline speakers, poets, and new Associated Programming in the months leading up to the festival. Designed to extend the festival experience with hands-on workshops (stipended, to benefit the festival) and a free reading series the first Sunday of each month (11am-noon) of books whose authors will be speaking, the A&A festival offers the opportunity to create and learn for the next 6 months

Contact Name: Lis McLoughlin
Email Address: Lisa@hemlockhouse.net

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Janet MacFadyen

Janet MacFadyen

Managing Editor, Slate Roof Press
Janet MacFadyen is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Adrift in the House of Rocks (photo-poetry collaboration from New Feral Press 2019) and Waiting to Be Born (Dos Madres 2017); with a new collection, State of Grass, forthcoming from Salmon Poetry 2023. Her work... Read More →
CS

Cheryl Savageau

Of Abenaki and French Canadian heritage, Cheryl Savageau was born in central Massachusetts. She graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and studied writing at the People’s Poets and Writers Workshop in Worcester. She is the author of the poetry collections Home... Read More →

Hosts
avatar for Paul Richmond

Paul Richmond

Owner/ Operater, Humen Error Publishing
I run two monthly reading and an annual festival - Greenfield Annual Word Festival - www.gawfest.org and Word stage at the Garlic & Arts Festival and other events yearly. Always looking for feature writers. I also publish books. I have three books myself with my fourth coming out... Read More →


Sunday February 28, 2021 11:00am - 5:00pm EST
Online
 
Wednesday, March 3
 

12:30pm EST

MCC Visiting Writers Series presents Kevin Carey
Kevin Carey is a poet, fiction writer, playwright, & filmmaker. He has published three books of poetry, The One Fifteen to Penn Station (2012), Jesus Was a Homeboy (2016), & Set in Stone (2020), a new novel, Murder in the Marsh (2020), and a chapbook of short stories, The Beach People (2014). His play, The Stand or Sal is Dead, premiered at the Actor’s Studio in Newburyport (2018), & his one act plays have been staged at The New Works Festival in Newburyport & The New Hampshire Theater Project. His co-written screenplay Peter’s Song won Best Screenplay at the 2009 New Hampshire Film Festival. He has co-directed & co-produced two documentary films about poets, including Unburying Malcolm Miller which premiered at the Mass Poetry Festival in 2017. His fiction & poetry have appeared in The Red Mountain Review, Silk Road, Rip Tide: Crime Stories by New England Writers, & elsewhere. Kevin Carey is the Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University.

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday March 3, 2021 12:30pm - 1:45pm EST
Online
 
Friday, March 12
 

7:30pm EST

CHAPTER AND VERSE LITERARY READING SERIES
Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches Modern Poetry at Manhattanville College and offers individual manuscript conferences at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, PLUME, Poetry London, the NYT, PBS NewsHour, upstreet, The Writer’s Almanac, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, and Ted Kooser’s  column, among others. In 2002, she was a finalist for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. Her books include Talking Underwater and Second Skin (Wind Publications, 2007 and 2010); Galapagos Poems (Kattywompus Press, 2016); Echolocation (Plume Editions Madhat Press, 2018). Echolocation was long-listed or runner-up for Best Book of the Year from the Julie Suk Award, the Eric Hoffer Prize and the Poetry by The Sea Prize, all in 2018. To buy it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1941196551/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published in 2016 by Indolent Books and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length 2019 collection from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications, his poetry appears in The American Journal of Poetry, Massachusetts Review, On the Seawall, Rattle, Shenandoah and Tar River Poetry. Robert is a poetry editor with Indolent Books and recently retired from a career as Deputy Director for the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Additional information, including book purchase information, can be found at robertcarr.org

Jennifer De Leon is the author of Dont Ask Me Where I’m From (Atheneum/Simon & Schuster, 2020) and the editor of Wise Latinas (Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2014). An Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University, and a faculty member in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at Bay Path University, she has published prose in over a dozen literary journals and is a GrubStreet instructor and board member. Her essay collection, White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing, is the recipient of the Juniper Prize and will be published by UMass Press in Spring 2021. Signed copies of her book may be ordered through Word on the Street Books: https://wordstreetbooks.indielite.org/ Ask for a signed copy in the checkout comment box. Bookshop.org is also an option (but not for signed copies): bookshop.org.

To receive a Zoom invitation with a link to the reading, email your name and email address to SandeeStorey@fastmail.fm before 2 pm on March 11. You will be emailed a Zoom invitation with the link by noon March 12. For security reasons, please do not publicize, post, or broadcast the Zoom link itself. If people you know want to attend, you may send them the link, but please ask them also not to publicize, post, or broadcast the link itself.

For more information, check our website at http://jamaicapondpoets.com or email dorothy.derifield@gmail.com or call 617-325-8388. The next Chapter and Verse Literary Reading on Zoom in the 2020/2021 series will be at 7:30 pm on Friday, April 9, 2021.


Friday March 12, 2021 7:30pm - 8:30pm EST
Online
 
Saturday, March 13
 

11:00am EST

A Light Breeze from Kerry: A Virtual Poetry Reading with Curt Curtin
As part of a virtual book tour, the Worcester Public Library is hosting a live reading with Curt Curtin and his wife Dee O'Connor. Curt is a first-generation Irish-American poet who grew up in Boston and lives in Worcester. Both his parents emigrated from County Kerry at the beginning of the 20th century, and their experiences inspired Curt's latest collection, Kerry Dancers.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →


Saturday March 13, 2021 11:00am - 12:00pm EST
Online
 
Tuesday, March 16
 

4:00pm EDT

A Parade of Poets for St. Patrick's Day
Retired Professor Curt Curtin will be joined by three current students and three alumni from Westfield State University in a reading in honor of St. Patrick's Day. Students will read from their own work; Curt and is wife Dee O'Connor (also a WSU alum) will read selections from Kerry Dancers, Curt's latest collection focused on his Irish-American roots.

 Pre-registration info is forthcoming! 

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →


Tuesday March 16, 2021 4:00pm - 5:15pm EDT
Online
 
Wednesday, March 17
 

11:00am EDT

Kerry Dancers: A Family Portrait in Poetry
The Worcester Senior Center Celebrates St. Patrick's Day and the Worcester County Poetry Association's 50th anniversary with a reading from Kerry Dancers, Curt Curtin's newest poetry collection. Curt, his wife, and fellow poets/friends will read selected poems. You'll meet Da, Ma, Aunt Nora and the rest of the family, dance a reel in Boston's Hibernian Hall, and "shake the hand of the man who shook the hand" of notorious Boston Mayor James Michael Curley. With lively fiddle by members of the New England Enrichment Foundation, you'll be dancing in your seat.

This will air on Worcester Cable Station, Channel 192 subsequently be available on YouTube. Initial air time is estimated; program will run for several days after initial airing.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →


Wednesday March 17, 2021 11:00am - 12:00pm EDT
Online

6:30pm EDT

Pakachoag Music School Presents Chasing Dreams to American Shores
Musicians from Worcester's Pakachoag Music School provide fiddle music to accompany Curt Curtin's reading of selected poems from Kerry Dancers. Though the collection focuses on Curt's Irish-American heritage, it is a more generic immigrant's tale dedicated to "immigrants from around the world who chased their dreams to the American shores".

This pre-recorded event will stream on YouTube.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →


Wednesday March 17, 2021 6:30pm - 7:00pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, March 20
 

2:30pm EDT

Poetry Writing Workshop with Susan Roney-O’Brien: Syllabics From Basho to Yeats and Beyond
Do you remember clapping out the syllables of your name in first grade? Pure syllabic poetry is common in languages like Japanese but rarer in English, which counts both syllables and stresses. Starting with haikus, we will try our hands at writing tankas, nonets, roundels, cinquains, and diamantes. And as we go along, we’ll applaud each other’s syllabic creations and explore how poets like Yeats, Thomas and Plath used the syllabic form.

Susan Roney-O’Brien earned her MFA at Warren Wilson College and is the author of five poetry collections. She hosts monthly poetry readings, teaches workshops and coordinates the Stanley Kunitz summer writing series.

Readers/Speakers

Saturday March 20, 2021 2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Online
 
Sunday, March 21
 

3:00pm EDT

Concord Poetry at the Library Series presents: An Afternoon with Allison Adair and Tiana Clark
Join acclaimed poets Allison Adair and Tiana Clark who will read from prize-winning debut collections and talk about their inspiration, influences, and some essential elements of craft in developing the poems in these books.

Allison Adair’s debut collection, The Clearing, selected by Henri Cole for Milkweed’s Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, was named a New York Times "New and Noteworthy" book. From the midst of the Civil War to our current era, Adair charts fairy tales that are painfully familiar, never forgetting that violence is often accompanied by tenderness. Described by Cole as “haunting and dirt caked,” her unromantic poems of girlhood, nature, and family linger with an uncommon, unsettling resonance. Adair’s poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, Waxwing, and ZYZZYVA; and have been honored with the Pushcart Prize, the Florida Review Editors’ Award, the Orlando Prize, and first place in the Mid-American Review Fineline Competition. Originally from central Pennsylvania, Adair lives in Boston, where she teaches at Boston College and Grub Street.

Tiana Clark’s (author photo credit: Crystal K Marteldebut) full-length poetry collection, I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018) is winner of the 2017 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize and the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award.  Clark is also the author of Equilibrium (Bull City Press), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the 2016 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, a Pushcart Prize, the 2017 Furious Flower’s Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize, and the 2015 Rattle Poetry Prize. She was the 2017-2018 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing. Clark has received fellowships to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University’s M.F.A. program where she served as the poetry editor of the Nashville Review. Her writing has appeared in or is forthcoming from The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The Washington Post, VQR, Tin House Online, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Oxford American, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. Clark teaches creative writing at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.

Sponsored by The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library in Concord, Massachusetts  

Readers/Speakers


Sunday March 21, 2021 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Online
 
Tuesday, March 23
 

7:00pm EDT

Across the Tracks: A Virtual Poetry Reading with Curt Curtin
In this final book launch event, Curt Curtin and his wife Dee O'Connor will read some of the lesser-known poems from Curt's newest collection, Kerry Dancers. Selected poems include "Across the Tracks," "Ma," "Eldest Sister," and "Paying respects at Katie's Wake" along with many popular favorities from his Irish-American heritage. As fellow poet, Susan Roney O'Brien, says, "[We] want to be caught in the ballad, the hornpipe, the reel--want to be pulled into the dance."

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin

Curt Curtin is a lifelong poet with three self-produced chapbooks and many individual poems appearing in journals and other publications. In 2005 he was the recipient of the Jacob Knight Poetry Award and in 2010 received the Frank O’Hara award for poetry. In 2019 he won second place... Read More →


Tuesday March 23, 2021 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, April 10
 

3:00pm EDT

The Cambridge Poetry MashUp: The KickOff
YOU ARE INVITED to: The Cambridge Poetry MashUp in April 2021, a National Poetry Month celebration. The series of events will celebrate the poetic and cultural diversity of poets who live in Cambridge, MA & its neighboring cities. Artists from other states will join us. Poetry, Song, and Storytelling shall abound.

Join us for the first event in Cambridge Poetry MashUps National Poetry Month series! Details forthcoming.

https://www.poetrymashup.org/

Readers/Speakers

Saturday April 10, 2021 3:00pm - 6:30pm EDT
 
Monday, April 12
 

7:30pm EDT

SRP Broadside Reading & Craft Talk with Jendi Reiter & Armen Davoudian
Armen Davoudian and Jendi Reiter, winners of Slate Roof's Glass Broadside Contest, will read their winning poems and other work. A craft talk follows the reading, featuring our master letterpress printer, Ed Rayher, and artist J. Hyde Meissner, who will describe the process of creating the woodcuts and producing the broadsides printed on a Vandercook Universal. The evening closes with an audience Q&A. Hosted by Slate Roof Press www.slateroofpress.com. To register go to https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZElcOurqTkoEtGVKMvNLQUk6xnO6-bg3Vpa 

Armen Davoudian is the author of Swan Song, which won the 2020 Frost Place Chapbook Competition. His poems and translations from Persian appear in AGNI, The Sewanee Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. He grew up in Isfahan, Iran and is currently a PhD candidate in English at Stanford University.

Jendi Reiter is the author of the novel Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018), and four poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree, 2015). Awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for Poetry, the New Letters Prize for Fiction, the Wag's Revue Poetry Prize, the Bayou Magazine Editor's Prize in Fiction, and two awards from the Poetry Society of America. Two Natures won the Rainbow Award for Best Gay Contemporary Fiction and was a finalist for the Book Excellence Awards and the Lascaux Prize for Fiction. Reiter is the editor of WinningWriters.com, an online resource site with contests and markets for creative writers. Visit JendiReiter.com.



Monday April 12, 2021 7:30pm - 8:30pm EDT
Zoom
 
Wednesday, April 14
 

7:00pm EDT

Martín Espada: Floaters and other poems
The Boston College Lowell Humanities Series hosts Martín Espada on Wednesday April 14, 2021 at 7:00pm EST. This event will be live streamed in Webinar format. Registration is required, however, all Lowell Humanities Series events are free and open to the public.

Readers/Speakers


Wednesday April 14, 2021 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Online

7:00pm EDT

Poets of Worcester Present: A Writing Workshop with Worcester’s Poet Laureates
Join the City of Worcester’s Poets Laureate Juan Matos and Amina Mohammed for a Poetry Writing Workshop! Experienced poets and novices, teens and adults alike are invited to join this virtual workshop and hear the experiences of the Poets Laureate, who will share some of their works and guide attendees through creating their own poetry. In celebration of National Poetry Month, this Poetry Writing Workshop is hosted in partnership between the Worcester Public Library and the City of Worcester’s Cultural Development Division. For ages 16+.

Juan Matos earned a Master's Degree in bilingual education at Worcester State University and went on to teach Spanish Literature and ESL for 32 years, the last 22 of which in Worcester Public Schools. During this time he wrote and published 12 poetry books and anthologies, took part in local and international literary festivals and founded several literary groups and workshops.

Youth Poet Laureate Amina Mohammed grew up in Worcester's Main South neighborhood, the daughter of an immigrant family. Her parents worked long hours to provide for her and her siblings with considerable support from neighbors. Mohammad is the first Youth Poet Laureate in the state of Massachusetts.

Presented by the Worcester Public Library. 

Readers/Speakers

Wednesday April 14, 2021 7:00pm - 8:00pm EDT
Online
 
Thursday, April 15
 

7:00pm EDT

Poetry Month Celebration with Mass. Book Award Poetry Winners
Enjoy a Poetry Month Celebration with local award-winning authors Karen Skolfield, Oliver de la Paz, and Andrea Cohen. The program will feature a reading from each of the poets, followed by a discussion and Q & A. Karen Skolfield will share an excerpt from Battle Dress: Poems, which recently won the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry. Honorees Oliver de la Paz (The Boy in the Labyrinth) and Andrea Cohen (Nightshade) will read from their books.

About the Books:
Battle Dress: Poems by Karen Skolfield: In a poetic voice at once accessible and otherworldly, gutsy and insightful, U.S. Army veteran Karen Skolfield offers a rare glimpse of a female soldier's training and mental conditioning. Through the narratives of a young soldier, her older counterpart, and her fellow soldiers, Skolfield searches for meaning in combat preparation, long-term trauma, and the way war is embedded in our language and psyche.

The Boy in the Labyrinth by Oliver de la Paz: In a long sequence of prose poems, questionnaires, and standardized tests, The Boy in the Labyrinth interrogates the language of autism and the language barriers between parents, their children, and the fractured medium of science and school.

Nightshade by Andrea Cohen: The poems in Andrea Cohen's Nightshade, her sixth full-length collection, are constructed from the wisdom of loss--of lovers and loved ones and a world gone awry. Cohen builds a short poem the way a master carpenter does a tiny house, in lines that are both economic and precise, with room enough for sorrow and wit to exist comfortably in their spaces.

About the Poets:
Karen Skolfield’s book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry, and she is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize in poetry from The Missouri Review. Skolfield is a U.S. Army veteran and teaches writing to engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; she’s the poet laureate for Northampton, MA for 2019-2022. Learn more: https://karenskolfield.com/

Oliver de la Paz is the author of five collections of poetry: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth which was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. He also co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member, Oliver serves as the cochair of the Kundiman advisory board. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. His work has been published in journals such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Tin House, The Southern Review, and Poetry Northwest. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the LowResidency MFA Program at PLU. Learn more: https://www.oliverdelapaz.com/

Andrea Cohen's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her seventh poetry collection, Everything, was recently published by Four Way Books. Other recent books include Nightshade and Unfathoming. Cohen directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA. Learn more: https://www.andreacohen.org/

This event is sponsored by the Billerica Public Library Foundation.
Presented in collaboration with libraries in Tewksbury, North Reading, and Chelmsford.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Andrea Cohen

Andrea Cohen

Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, etc. A new book of poems, The Sorrow Apartments, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Other collections include... Read More →
avatar for Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield’s book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry, and she is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors... Read More →
avatar for Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz is the author of four collections of poetry: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, and Post Subject: A Fable. He also co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member, Oliver serves as the co-chair... Read More →


Thursday April 15, 2021 7:00pm - 8:30pm EDT
Online

7:00pm EDT

Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Microphone
Bruce Weigl is the author, editor or translator of over thirty books of poetry, poetry in translation, critical essays, and prose. His most recent poetry collection, On the Shores of Welcome Home, won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and was published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2019. This year BOA will also publish a collection of his short prose, Among Elms, in Ambush, and the Writers Association Publishing house in Ha Noi, Vietnam will publish his co-translation of Slaughterhouse, a book-length poem by Nguyen Quang Thieu, one of Vietnam’s most important writers.

Cammy Thomas’ first book, Cathedral of Wish, received the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. A fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation helped her complete Inscriptions. Her third collection, Tremors, is forthcoming in 2021. All are published by Four Way Books. Her work appeared recently in the anthology, Poems in the Aftermath. Two of her poems under the title Far Past War were set to music by her sister, composer Augusta Read Thomas. The work will premiere in 2022. Cammy lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

To sign up for this Zoom reading, contact hguran@aol.com

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Cammy Thomas

Cammy Thomas

Cammy Thomas’ first book of poems, Cathedral of Wish, received the 2006 Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Both it and her second book, Inscriptions, are published by Four Way Books. A fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation helped her complete Inscriptions... Read More →

Hosts

Thursday April 15, 2021 7:00pm - 9:00pm EDT
 
Sunday, April 18
 

3:00pm EDT

Concord Poetry at the Library Series presents: Andrea Cohen / Fady Joudah
Join acclaimed poets Andrea Cohen and Fady Joudah reading from recent work and talking about their practice.

Andrea Cohen reads from Everything (Four Way Books, 2021) – poems that traffic in wonder and woe, in dialogue and interior speculation. Humor and gravity go hand in hand here. “A work of great and sustained attention, true intelligence, and soul,” praises Christian Wiman.  Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, and elsewhere. Her other collections include Nightshade (Four Way, 2019), winner of the 2020 American Fiction Book Award for Contemporary Poetry, Unfathoming (Four Way, 2017), Furs Not Mine (Four Way, 2015), Kentucky Derby (Salmon Poetry, 2011), Long Division (Salmon Poetry, 2009), and The Cartographer's Vacation (Owl Creek Press, 1999). Cohen has received a PEN Discovery Award, Glimmer Train's Short Fiction Award, and several fellowships at The MacDowell Colony. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, MA.

Fady Joudah reads from Tethered to Stars (Milkweek Editions, 2021.) With an analytical eye and a lyrical heart, Joudah shifts deftly between the microscope, the telescope, and sometimes even the horoscope. His gaze lingers on the interior space of a lung, on a butterfly poised on a filament, on the moon temple atop Huayna Picchu, on a dismembered live oak. In each lingering, Joudah shares with readers the palimpsest of what makes us human. Joudah’s other collections include Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance (Milkweed Editions, 2018), Textu (Copper Canyon Press, 2013), Alight (Copper Canyon, 2013), and The Earth in the Attic (Yale University Press, 2008.) He has translated several collections of poetry from the Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Houston, with his wife and kids, where he practices internal medicine.

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Andrea Cohen

Andrea Cohen

Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, etc. A new book of poems, The Sorrow Apartments, is forthcoming from Four Way Books. Other collections include... Read More →

Hosts


Sunday April 18, 2021 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Online

3:00pm EDT

The Cambridge Poetry MashUp Presents: The Poetry of Toni Morrison, a Workshop with The New England Poetry Club
YOU ARE INVITED to: The Cambridge Poetry MashUp in April 2021, a National Poetry Month celebration. The series of events will celebrate the poetic and cultural diversity of poets who live in Cambridge, MA & its neighboring cities. Artists from other states will join us. Poetry, Song, and Storytelling shall abound.

Join us on April 18th for a workshop on the Poetry of Toni Morrison, with The New England Poetry Club. Details forthcoming.

https://www.poetrymashup.org/

Readers/Speakers

Sunday April 18, 2021 3:00pm - 4:30pm EDT
 
Thursday, April 22
 

6:00pm EDT

NBF Presents: Poetry in Protest
It’s National Poetry Month, and to celebrate, National Book Award–honored authors Toi Derricotte (“I”: New and Selected Poems), Camonghne Felix (Build Yourself a Boat), and Terrance Hayes (American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin) discuss the impact of protest poetry on American literature and American politics with Kyle Dacuyan, Executive Director of the Poetry Project.


Thursday April 22, 2021 6:00pm - 7:00pm EDT
Online
 
Friday, April 23
 

5:30pm EDT

Free Happy Hour Writing Session - Remote
What's more satisfying than leaving work behind on a Friday afternoon? Rounding out the week with a free writing session, of course! Maximize that Friday feeling and kick off your writing weekend. Leave work behind on Friday, April 23rd, from 5:30pm-6:30pm, grab a snack and/or your favorite after-work beverage, and log into GrubStreet Remote for some writing! In 60 jam-packed minutes, you’ll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some great writing exercises.

Best of all, you’ll sign off with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your evening and beyond. Please make sure to register ahead so we can email you a link to join!

Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Friday April 23, 2021 5:30pm - 6:30pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, April 24
 

3:00pm EDT

The Cambridge Poetry MashUp Presents: Poets in the Garden
YOU ARE INVITED to: The Cambridge Poetry MashUp in April 2021, a National Poetry Month celebration. The series of events will celebrate the poetic and cultural diversity of poets who live in Cambridge, MA & its neighboring cities. Artists from other states will join us. Poetry, Song, and Storytelling shall abound.

Join us on April 24th for Poets in the Garden. Details forthcoming.

https://www.poetrymashup.org/



Readers/Speakers

Saturday April 24, 2021 3:00pm - 6:30pm EDT
 
Sunday, April 25
 

3:00pm EDT

Tuning in to a higher power: poems of prayer
Poetry, like all of the arts, helps raise heavy hearts, and who doesn’t need more of that right now? Join us to listen and/or share poetry about the uplifting power of Love. For more information, go to christianscience.com/tmcrrnow

Attendees are encouraged to share favorite poems and original works about God’s goodness and care for us.

Sunday April 25, 2021 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, May 1
 

TBA

The Cambridge Poetry MashUp Presents: Future Leaders Read - youth & teen poetry
YOU ARE INVITED to: The Cambridge Poetry MashUp in April 2021, a National Poetry Month celebration. The series of events will celebrate the poetic and cultural diversity of poets who live in Cambridge, MA & its neighboring cities. Artists from other states will join us. Poetry, Song, and Storytelling shall abound.

Join us on May 1st for Future Leaders Read: youth & teen poetry. Details forthcoming.

https://www.poetrymashup.org/



Readers/Speakers

Saturday May 1, 2021 TBA
 
Wednesday, May 5
 

12:30pm EDT

Brown Bag Lunch Session - Remote
Looking for some virtual mid-week writing community? Or do you have a schedule that gives you free afternoons instead of evenings? Join our FREE Brown Bag Lunch Writing Series live via easy to use video conferencing. Join us on Wednesday, May 5th from 12:30pm-1:15pm. For 45 minutes, you’ll meet fellow writers and get your creative juices flowing with some cool writing exercises. Led by one of our award-winning instructors or ambassadors.

Best of all, you’ll sign off with some new ideas to ponder for the rest of your day and beyond. Please make sure to register ahead so we can email you a link to join!

Readers/Speakers
Hosts

Wednesday May 5, 2021 12:30pm - 1:15pm EDT
Online
 
Sunday, May 16
 

3:00pm EDT

Concord Poetry at the Library Series presents: Krysten Hill and Cynthia Manick, A reading and conversation with Joyce Peseroff
The Concord Poetry at the Library Series is proud to present award-winning poets Krysten Hill and Cynthia Manick who will read from their poetry collections and in conversation with poet and editor Joyce Peseroff talk about their inspirations, influences, and the act of writing.

Krysten Hill (Photo Credit: Jonathan Beckley) is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize from the New England Poetry Club. Her work has been featured in The Academy of American Poets, apt, B O D Y, Boiler Magazine, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Muzzle, PANK,Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Winter Tangerine Review and elsewhere. The recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award and 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, she received her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Boston, where she currently teaches.  

Cynthia Manick (Photo Credit: Sue Rissberger) is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) and editor of Soul Sister Revue: A Poetry Compilation (Jamii Publishing, 2019) and The Future of Black: Afrofuturism and Black Comics Poetry (Blair Publishing, forthcoming 2021). She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, MacDowell Colony, and Château de la Napoule among others. Winner of the Lascaux Prize in Collected Poetry, Manick was also awarded Honorable Mention for the 2019 Furious Flower Poetry Prize. She is Founder of the reading series Soul Sister Revue; and her poem "Things I Carry Into the World" was made into a film by Motionpoems, an organization dedicated to video poetry, and has debuted on Tidal for National Poetry Month. A performer at literary festivals, libraries, universities, and most recently the Brooklyn Museum, Manick’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, Callaloo, Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB), The Wall Street Journal, and elsewhereShe currently serves on the board of the International Women’s Writing Guild and the editorial board of Alice James Books.

Joyce Peseroff’s most recent, sixth poetry collection is Petition (Carnegie Mellon University Press, Fall, 2020.) She edited Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake, The Ploughshares Poetry Reader, and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. Her fifth book of poems, Know Thyself, was designated a “must read” by the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems and reviews appear in American Journal of Poetry, Consequence, On the Seawall, Massachusetts Review, Plume, Salamander, and on the website The Woven Tale Press. Her honors include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation as well as a Pushcart Prize. She directed and taught in UMass Boston’s MFA Program in its first four years. Currently she blogs for her website and writes a poetry column for Arrowsmith Press.

Sponsored by The Friends of the Concord Free Public Library in Concord, Massachusetts

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Krysten Hill

Krysten Hill

Krysten Hill is an educator, writer, and performer who has showcased her poetry on stage at The Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Blacksmith House, Cantab Lounge, Merrimack College, U35 Reading Series, Mr. Hip Presents, and many others. She received her MFA in poetry from UMass Boston... Read More →



Sunday May 16, 2021 3:00pm - 4:00pm EDT
Online
 
Saturday, June 5
 

2:30pm EDT

Poetry Writing Workshop with Susan Roney-O’Brien
This virtual poetry workshop is a vehicle for critique, a time of close reading and thoughtful responses that help craft the written word so that it says exactly what the author intends. The focus is the work itself. Poets are respectful of each other, value the craft, understand the courage it takes to have work critiqued, and make the final decisions about their own writing. Please join us. Writing prompts will be shared with registrants one week before the workshop, and we request you submit your work at least three days before the workshop to give attendees time to read your poem.

Susan Roney-O’Brien earned her MFA at Warren Wilson College and is the author of five poetry collections. She hosts monthly poetry readings, teaches workshops and coordinates the Stanley Kunitz summer writing series.

Readers/Speakers

Saturday June 5, 2021 2:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Online
 
Sunday, November 14
 

2:00pm EST

Slate Roof Press reads
Slate Roof Press, publisher of art-quality chapbooks, is having a sweet little reading next Sunday (14th) afternoon featuring our most recent SRP chapbook and our three upcoming books -- two about to pop out of the oven soon! Join us here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqcemoqT8iHNVjobhM2orM-9mOT_dukGSR 

Audrey Gidman is a queer poet living in Maine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Luna Luna, SWWIM, Wax Nine, Okay Donkey, Rogue Agent, Volume Poetry, The Inflectionist Review, Bear Review, The Shore, The West Review and elsewhere. She serves as assistant poetry editor for Gigantic Sequins and an editor for Newfound's Emerging Poets Chapbook Series. Her chapbook, body psalms, winner of the Elyse Wolf Prize, is forthcoming from Slate Roof Press.  

Richard Wollman is the author of Evidence of Things Seen (Sheep Meadow Press) and A Cemetery Affair (Finishing Line Press). His awards include the Gulf Coast Prize for Poetry and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poems on the Jewish Experience. His poems have appeared in New England Review, Margie, Notre Dame Review, Florida Review, and Poetry Daily. He is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Simmons College. He holds degrees from Brandeis University and Columbia University.

Amanda Lou Doster was the winner of the 2nd Annual Slate Roof Press Chapbook Contest. She has won the Poet's Seat Poetry Contest and was a finalist in the Hedgerow Books Competition. Her work has appeared in Cider Press Review and Sidelines, among other journals. Her chapbook, Everything Begins Somewhere, was published by Slate Roof Press in the summer of 2020. She holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire and lives with her husband and son in Greenfield, MA. 

Susan Glass’s poetry has appeared in Snowy Egret, The Broad River Review, Birdland Journal, Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, Honoring Nature: An Anthology of Authors and Artists Festival Writers, and elsewhere. After teaching many years at San Jose State University and West Valley Community College, she now co-edits the Blind Californian Magazine for the California Council of the Blind, and the AABT Briefs newsletter for the American Association of Blind Teachers.





Sunday November 14, 2021 2:00pm - 3:00pm EST
Zoom
 
Thursday, July 28
 

7:00pm EDT

The Poetorium at Starlite Reading Series & Open Mic Featuring Wayne-Daniel Berard
Please join us on July 28th for our monthly open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium at Starlite hosted by Paul Szlosek and Ron Whittle. It will be a full evening of poetry and spoken word starting with a brief interview on stage with our featured poet Wayne-Daniel Berard ( Co-Founding Editor of Soul-Lit Online Journal of Spiritual Poetry and Author of Art of Enlightenment and Little Ghosts on Castle Floors), followed by a poetry reading by our feature, a 10-minute tribute to a dead poet by a guest reader, a short intermission, and then the open mic (with 5-minute slots for each reader). Admission is free (but a hat will be passed to pay our features and compensate the Starlite for the use of their space). For more information, please visit the Poetorium at Starlite website or email us at poetorium@mail.com

Co-Founder / Co-Host
avatar for Paul Szlosek

Paul Szlosek

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
avatar for Ron Whittle

Ron Whittle

Co-Founder/Co-Host, The Poetorium at Starlite
Ron Whittle, a lifetime resident of Massachusetts, was born in Worcester in 1947 and raised and educated in his home town of Shrewsbury. Further education came by way of the U.S. Navy, Vietnam, the Apollo 13 recovery team, and 45 years of family living. Ron divides his time between... Read More →

Readers/Speakers
avatar for Wayne-Daniel Berard

Wayne-Daniel Berard

Co-Founding Editor, Soul-Lit: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry
Wayne-Daniel Berard, PhD, is an educator, poet, writer, shaman, and sage. An adoptee and former Franciscan seminarian, his adoption search led him to find and embrace his Jewishness. Wayne- Daniel is an interfaith clergy person, called a Peace Chaplain, as well as a past-life regression... Read More →


Thursday July 28, 2022 7:00pm - 10:00pm EDT
Starlite Bar & Gallery 39 Hamilton Street, Southbridge, MA, USA
 


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