NEPC and Beehive Poetry: Regie Gibson, Tribute to Charles Coe

The NEPC continues our partnership with the Beehive Poetry Group, in a reading presented by Jean Flanagan, the Arlington, Massachusetts Poet Laureate. This month’s reading features Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson, presenting a tribute to the late Charles Coe. Additional readers include Susan Donnelly, Richard Hoffman, Cecily Miller, Steven Ratiner, Vijaya Sundaram, Deanna Witter, with introductions by Steve Rapp.

For this month’s open mic, readers must present a poem written by Charles Coe or a poem about him. Please contact jeanpflanagan@gmail.com if you would like to participate or if you have questions.

The event is free and open to the public. The Robbins Library is an accessible venue.

Sworn in by Governor Maura Healey on May 30, 2025, Regie Gibson is Massachusetts’s first Poet Laureate. He currently serves as the Co-Artistic Director of Pedagogy at the Arts for Social Cohesion. He is an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches courses on performance and spoken word poetry, and an Instructor at Clark University in Worcester, where he teaches the introduction to poetry. His poems for public occasions engage complex historical and social issues, inviting audiences into the dialogue with hope and often humor. He is intentional about using poetry to create common ground and foster social cohesion. He holds a master’s in fine arts in Creative Writing from New England College and lives in Lexington.

Regie Gibson has lectured and performed widely in the US, Cuba, and Europe. He has received the Walker Scholarship, a Mass Cultural Council Award, a YMCA Writer’s Fellowship, and the Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation. In addition, he was awarded two Live Arts Boston (LAB) grants for the production of his first musical, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae, in which he uses Euripides’ tragedy to explore African American music and spirituality.

Gibson has served as a consultant for the National Endowment for the Arts’ “How Art Works” initiative and “The Mere Distinction of Colour,” a permanent exhibit examining the legacy of slavery and the U.S. Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier home in Virginia. He is the author of Storms Beneath the Skin and the creator of The Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy, a theatrical, literary-musical performance focusing on William Shakespeare. Gibson has performed with, and composed texts for, Boston City Singers, Mystic Chorale, and the Handel and Haydn Society. He is a member of the New England Poetry Club Board of Directors.