Member News

Congratulations to NEPC poet Eleanor Kedney, whose collection, Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020), has been named a 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards finalist in Poetry!

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Eleanor Kedney’s collection Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020) has been named a 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards finalist in Poetry. Other honors include the 2019 riverSedge Poetry Prize (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) for her poem “Bubbles Blown through a Wand” and a 2020 Mslexia finalist Prize for her poem “Imagine,” and a finalist mention for the 2020 Best Book Award (American Book Fest). Her poems have appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Fjords Review, Miramar Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, and Under a Warm Green Linden. Kedney is the founder of the Tucson branch of the New York-based Writers Studio, and served as the director for ten years. She is a Tucson Poetry Festival board member. To purchase Between the Earth and Sky from the publisher, click

Between the Earth and Sky

Author Photo by Chris Conforti

Congratulations to NEPC poet Thomas DeFreitas on his new collection of poems!

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Thomas DeFreitas is celebrating the recent publication of his chapbook Winter in Halifax (Kelsay Books). This collection of 26 poems includes “The Old Dry Dock” (an ode to a Boston barroom), “Our Lady of Cambridge” (finding the Madonna in unlikely places), “Chasing the Waves” (the poet’s elegiac remembrance of his father), and “Detox” (a sobering look at the consequences of alcoholism). Cathie Desjardins has praised the volume, and has observed “[a] skillful use of language and form [that] unerringly serves what’s being closely observed or recalled.”

Congratulations to NEPC poet Laura Budofsky Wisniewski on her new book!

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Laura Budofsky Wisniewski’s Sanctuary, Vermont, is the winner of the 2020 Orison Poetry Prize.

About Sanctuary, Vermont

Here, past, present, and future residents of Sanctuary, a richly imagined Vermont town, are given voice. Laura Budofsky Wisniewski joins the lineage of Edgar Lee Masters, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Louise Glück in inhabiting and valorizing the extraordinary inner lives of everyday people. Sanctuary’s townspeople endure hardships and loneliness, suffer injustice and racism, but still find moments of solace, beauty, and communion.

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Congratulations to NEPC poet Carolyne Wright on her new book!

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Masquerade is a jazz-inflected, lyric-narrative sequence of poems, a “memoir in poetry” set principally in pre-Katrina New Orleans and in Seattle, involving an interracial couple who are artists and writers. Moved by mutual fascination, shared ideals and aspirations, and the passion they discover in each other, the two are challenged to find a place together in the cultures of both races and families, amidst personal and political dislocations as well as questions of trust—all against the backdrop of America’s racism and painful social history. The twentieth century’s global problem, the color line, as W. E. B. du Bois named it, is enacted here in microcosm between these lovers and fellow artists, who must face their own fears and unresolved conflicts in each other. Similar stories have been told from the male protagonist’s point of view; Masquerade is unique in foregrounding the female perspective. Here are online links for a few of the poems that will be in the book: 

Purchase

Purchase Masquerade here.

NEPC poet and board member Wendy Drexler is reading with NEPC poet (and award winner!) José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes on Thursday, June 17, 7 pm!

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Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Mic

Thursday, June 17th, 2021, 7 pm on Zoom

Sponsored by Friends of the Roslindale LibraryFeatured Poets

Born and raised in the Philippines, José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes is the author of Present Values, winner of the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award from the New England Poetry Club. His poems have appeared most recently in Scoundrel Time, Solstice, and Memorious; and have been anthologized in The Powow River Anthology (Volumes I and II), Villanelles, and The Achieve Of, The Mastery: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, mid-‘90s to 2016. 

Wendy Drexler’s third poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. Her poems have appeared  in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, South Florida Poetry Review, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and in numerous anthologies. She is poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, and is programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club. 

To sign up for this Zoom reading, contact hguran@aol.comand let me know if you want to read in the open microphone 

Friends of  Roslindale Branch Library

www.friendsofroslindalelibrary

Congratulations to NEPC poet and board member Jennifer Markell on her new book!

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Jennifer Markell‘s first poetry collection, Samsara, (Turning Point, 2014) was named a “Must Read Book of Poetry” by the Massachusetts Book Awards, 2015. Her work has appeared in publications including The Bitter Oleander, The Cimarron Review, Consequence Magazine, RHINO, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Women’s Review of Books. For the past twenty years Jennifer has worked in community mental health and as a psychotherapist. She lives with her husband and two well-versed cats. Singing at High Altitude (available for pre-order from The Main Street Rag) is her second book of poetry.

“The high-altitude singing in Jennifer Markell’s poetry comes not only from birds on the wing. In these poems we hear dreams and longings, odes and elegies, love-songs and laments. We hear also of piercing childhood memories, harsh societal bewilderments, and dire ecological warnings. These beautifully crafted and deeply moving poems are the songs of ongoing life on this earth, and they rise as high as we allow our imaginations to take them.”–Fred Marchant, Author of Said Not Said (Graywolf Press)