Nature Poetry in the Park

Sunday, September 3, 2023.  Free and open to the public. Fully accessible (with rest rooms)

Magazine Beach Park Nature Center, 668 Memorial Dr, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Three poets, Linda Haviland Conte, Wendy Drexler, and Denise Washington from the board of the New England Poetry Club look forward to sharing poems that explore our complex and intimate relationship with the natural world-nature as solace and nourishment, and nature under threat from habitat loss and climate change. In the spirit of eco-poetry, these are poems that comfort, but also that urge and awaken, taking as their premise that the human and natural worlds are interdependent. After the poets share their poems, there will be time for comments and questions.

Linda Haviland Conte is the author of the full-length collection Seldom Purely and the chapbook Slow as a Poem (Ibbetson Street Press). Her work has appeared in the anthologies From the Farther Shore, Constellations, Bagels with the Bards, and Connecticut River Review. Linda has been featured in Verse Daily and WCAI’s Poetry Sunday. Her poems have received recognition from state and national poetry societies. Linda serves on the board of The New England Poetry Club. (lindaconte.net). Linda lives in Somerville, MA.

Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, was published in September 2022 by Terrapin Books. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, and The Threepenny Review, among others. 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. Wendy lives in Belmont, MA.

Denise Washington is so excited to be using the power of poetry to positively bring people together one poem at a time! She is Founder, CEO and Curator of her #Pop-Up Poetry Series, A Denise Plays Hard Event Featuring Akili Jamal Haynes, Becoming Chibuzo, #Pop-Up Poetry’s Multi-disciplinary Artist! She was born and raised in Roxbury, Mass., is an Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts Alum, a voice student of the late John Andrew Ross, a mentee of the late Ed Bullins, and a New England Poetry Club Advisory Board member.