NEPC @ St. Mary’s: Jennifer M Phillips, Janet Edmonds, Scott Withiam

Please join the New England Poetry Club for an afternoon on Cape Cod! We’re grateful to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Barnstable for their generous hospitality. The event is free, open to the public, and held in a wheelchair-accessible space. Refreshments will be provided.

Janet Edmonds grew up in several states and Middle Eastern countries before settling down for good in New England at age fourteen. By that time, she was writing poems that she showed to no one and certainly did not read aloud. After all the early moving from one place to another, she remained in New England and finally found a place that feels like home on Cape Cod. She now gardens, writes, and carves burls near Barnstable’s salt marshes and harbor. Her book Small Craft was published in 2022.

Jennifer M Phillips is a retired skydiver, scuba diver, priest, and bonsai-grower, settled on Cape Cod, and has authored three chapbooks, Sitting Safe in the Theatre of Electricity, A Song of Ascents, and Sailing to the Edges (Finishing Line Press), and a collection, Wrestling With the Angel (Wipf and Stock Pub., 2024). Phillips’ work has appeared in over 145 journals, and has been thrice-nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize, and earned 1st prize – The Malovrh-Fenlon Poetry Prize- in the Orchard Street Press Poetry Competition 2026.

Scott Withiam’s most recent book of poems, Waste Management Facility, was released by MadHat Press in July 2025. Doors Out of the Underworld was previously published by MadHat Press, and Arson & Prophets was published by Ashland Poetry Press. His chapbook, Desperate Acts & Deliveries, won the Two Rivers Review Prize. He has also received Ploughshares Magazine’s Cohen Award. His most recent poems and prose pieces can be found in Another Chicago Magazine, Barrow Street, One Art, Diagram, Rattle, Tampa Review, and Diagram. New work is forthcoming in On the Seawall, Blue Mountain Review, and Plume. Withiam taught in public schools and colleges and counseled for non-profits. He resides in Marblehead, MA.