New England Poetry Club

NEPC Golden Rose poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021)

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We are saddened by the news of the death of NEPC Golden Rose poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

“Ferlinghetti began his career at a revolutionary time in arts and music. In 1994, he still believed art could make a difference. “I really believe that art is capable of the total transformation of the world, and of life itself,” he said. “And nothing less is really acceptable. So I mean if art is going to have any excuse for — beyond being a leisure-class plaything — it has to transform life itself.”

Through more than half a century of writing and publishing, Lawrence Ferlinghetti did.” (from NPR)

Poet and author Lawrence Ferlinghetti, pictured above in 1960, was born on March 24, 1919.

From “Autobiography“

I am leading a quiet life   
in Mike’s Place every day   
watching the pocket pool players   
making the minestrone scene   
wolfing the macaronis   
and I have read somewhere   
the Meaning of Existence   
yet have forgotten
just exactly where.
But I am the man
And I’ll be there.
And I may cause the lips   
of those who are asleep   
to speak.
And I may make my notebooks   
into sheaves of grass.   
And I may write my own   
eponymous epitaph
instructing the horsemen   
to pass.

NEPC poet Helen Marie Casey has a new chapbook!

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Helen Marie Casey’s new poetry chapbook, “You Kept Your Secrets”, is available from Finishing Line Press. Susan Edwards Richmond has written of the book: “In this deeply affecting collection, Helen Marie Casey chronicles the aftermath—and persistence—of loss in the absence of a beloved child. “What do we become when we cease to be/who we were?” the poet asks, a question that resonates for subject, author, and reader alike. These poems both celebrate a brief life, “you/young boy, hawk-like, spreading/your sweatered wings wide” and map the ever-widening circles of pain and joy.”

Congratulations to NEPC poet David Wyman!

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David Wyman’s poetry collection Violet Ideologies has been published by Kelsay Books. This is Wyman’s second book; his first, Proletariat Sunrise, came out on 2017, also from Kelsay Books. The poems express a dissident sensibility often exploring themes of our commodified identities in a culture subsumed by capitalism. 

His poems have appeared in BlazeVOX, Dissident Voice, Zombie Logic Review, Clockwise Cat, Picaroon Poetry, The Voices Project, Squawk Back, Tuck Magazine, S/WORD and Genre: Urban Arts among other publications. He’s a fan of Noam Chomsky, jazz guitar and the visionary poetry of William Blake. 

Violet Ideologies is available on the Kelsay Books website, on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and Powells.com 

Violet Ideologies, David Wyman’s second collection, lays out a brilliant spectrum of incongruous ideas. It’s ominous yet funny, apocalyptic but oddly serene, a splice of the beautiful and the monstrous. The result is “a binary like foxglove” where the language of Wall Street is grafted to the poetics of the natural world. It is a book for our times, when translating corporate-speak has become almost impossible and the day’s “official transcript gets redacted.” Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Wyman asks and the answer is evident. Still, he won’t stop reminding us there is more to see than spread sheets and trendy electronica: horses gathered along a stone wall, a pub where poems taste like hard cider, songs sung to infants. Commodified language insists on a mandatory unity, even as lyricism escapes its confines again and again. Can the binary be broken? The book isn’t saying.

Lori Lamothe author of Kirlian Effect

In Violet Ideologies, “worn hearts/turn meaning into value.” Wyman knows that as sure as authority is constructed, “Landscape is temporary too.” Things are held in orbit by the caustic sting of pure feeling. It’s never a slow tectonics, but a rapidly shifting reality. Writing to “awakening/to an even greater understanding/of the inner dimensional self” is an uncomfortable benediction.

Jess Mynes author of One Anthem  

The NEPC Victor Howes Prize in Poetry is OPEN for submissions!

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Please spread the word! The NEPC is accepting submissions for the Victor Howes Prize in Poetry. This is for undergraduate English majors studying in New England and comes with a $1000 prize and a reading (virtual this year) at the Longfellow House in Cambridge.

Congratulations to NEPC member Michael Favala Goldman!

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As the translator of book three of the Copenhagen Trilogy, Dependency, Michael Favala Goldman was on the January 26 panel launch for this gripping memoir by Danish author Tove Ditlevsen. Fresh Air gave the Trilogy a rave review on NPR on Feb 3.

Below are the links to those two events and a recent podcast.


Michael Favala GoldmanPoet and Translator
PODCAST
FRESH AIR BOOK REVIEW, FEB 3, 2021
BOOK LAUNCH VIDEO

New Poetry & Open Mic, February 14, 2021, 3 pm

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Join us for a reading of poetry by NEPC members with new books! 


This event is free and open to the public. It will take place on Zoom; the link will be sent out via the newsletter or you can email info@nepoetryclub.org.

READER BIOS:

Krikor Der Hohannesian’s poems have appeared in over 175 literary journals including South Carolina Review, Atlanta Review, Louisiana Literature, Connecticut Review, Comstock Review and Natural Bridge. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, author of two chapbooks, Ghosts and Whispers(Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Refuge in the Shadows (Cervena Barva Press, 2013), as well as a full-length book, First Generation (Dos Madres Press, 2020). Ghosts and Whispers was a finalist for the Mass Book awards poetry category in 2011. 

Anyone wishing to purchase a copy of his latest collection, First Generation, can do so by e-mailing him at krikorndh@verizon.net  or, alternatively by telephone: 781-488-3933. 

Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry.  She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks (BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. A Boston native, her poems have been displayed in City Hall and featured by Mass Poetry aboard the red line subway.  Her poems have recently appeared in Saranac Review, Poet Lore and Sugar House Review.  She works as an advocate for the homeless in Cambridge, and teaches in the PoemWorks community. Her website is alexisivypoet.com

To buy her book:

Taking the Homeless Census | IndieBound.org

Barbara Thomas grew up in the Last Green Valley. She earned a Masters Degree from Boston University in Education and taught English and Reading in the public schools for 35 years. 

Barbara is an active member of The New England Poetry Club, the Greek Institute, and Glenbrook, an environmental writing group in New Hampshire. She was a Joiner Center participant for ten years and received the Jeff Mayle Award. Her most recent book is The Last Green Valley, Cedar Grove Press, 2019. Other publications are a chapbook, Seduced Sighs of Trees, Cloudkeeper Press, 2007, and her poems have appeared in the Paterson Literary Review, Fiele-Festa, Lalitamba, and in several of the Bagel Bards Anthologies,among others.  Her recent book, The Last Green Valley, can be purchased on Amazon ( $19.00) from Cherry Grove Collections: The Art of the Lyric; cherry-grove.com/barbara_thomas.html.

Sign-up for the open mic in the chat box before the reading begins; each participant will read ONE poem (no longer than a page). Limit 12 readers.