Poetry at the Manse: Carla Panciera, Ed Meek, James K. Zimmerman
The NEPC’s 2026 season at The Old Manse in Concord, Mass., continues on Sunday, June 28. This free reading will be held under a tent outdoors, at an accessible venue.
Make a day of it! Arrive early or linger after the reading to explore the orchard, stroll along the Concord River, or enjoy a picnic on the grounds. You can also deepen your visit by joining a guided tour of the historic house before or after the event.
Learn more and pre-register for a tour: https://thetrustees.org/place/the-old-manse/.
Carla Panciera was born on her family’s dairy farm in Westerly, Rhode Island. Her poetry collections include Cider Press Award Winner, One of the Cimalores, Bordighera Press Award Winner, No Day, No Dusk, No Love, and most recently, One Trail of Longing, Another of String (also Bordighera). Her short story collection, Bewildered, received AWP’s Grace Paley Award and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press. She is also the author of Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including the New England Review, Poetry, Spillway, Water~Stone Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review. Carla has received funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. A retired high school English teacher, Panciera lives on the North Shore of Massachusetts.
Ed Meek’s fifth book of poetry is Great Pond. He is also the author of Luck, a collection of short stories. He has a memoir and a children’s book due out this summer. He writes book reviews for The Arts Fuse. He has had work in The Paris Review, The Sun, The Boston Globe, The North American Review, and The Baltimore Review, among other publications. He teaches creative writing at the Osher Institute.
James K. Zimmerman’s poetry appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, Folio, Lumina, Nimrod, Pleiades, Rattle, Reed, Salmagundi, and numerous other journals and anthologies. A thirteen-time Pushcart Prize nominee, his writing has won many awards, including the Edwin Markham, E.E. Cummings, Vern Cowles, Pat Schneider, and Hart Crane Prizes. He is the author of five books of poetry – most recently The Further Adventures of Zen Patriarch Dōgen, Uncertainty, and Unbroken Circle, Unending Thread. His poetry is featured on websites such as The Poetry Foundation and American Life in Poetry. He values his neurodivergence as an essential wellspring of his creative process.