NEPC @ the BPL: Lee Varon, Gale Batchelder, Robert Eugene Perry

The NEPC kicks off National Poetry Month with a return to the Boston Public Library, Jamaica Plain Branch! The reading, on Saturday, April 4, at 2:00 pm, will be free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the featured poets. The JP Branch, at 30 South Street, is an accessible venue.

Lee Varon is a social worker and writer.  Her latest poetry collection, The Last Bed, was published in 2024. She is the author of two children’s books, My Brother is Not a Monster: A Story of Addiction and Recovery (2021) and A Kids Book About Overdose (2024).

Gale Batchelder lives in Cambridge. Her work has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, Pangyrus, Colorado Review, SpoKe4, Lily Poetry Review, and in the poetry anthologies New Smoke (2009) and Triumph of Poverty (2011), from Off the Park Press. Her collaborative manuscript Chalk Song (with Judson Evans and Susan Berger-Jones) was published in 2022 by Lily Poetry Review Books.

Robert Eugene Perry is a native of Massachusetts and the author of six books. His most recent collection of poetry, I Dreamt I Was Water, was published in 2025.  He was also nominated for the Stanley Kunitz Medal in 2025. Perry has emceed the monthly Open Mic at Booklovers’ Gourmet in Webster, Mass., since May 2017, as well as organizing/emceeing the monthly feature Slightly Off-beat Poets since first featuring poet Richard Fox in September of 2022. 

Perry’s poetry has been featured in numerous magazines, anthologies, and publications. His poem Heard Street/ Hadwen Park in Winter was a winner in the 2024 Poems in and out of Places, sponsored by Mapping Worcester in Poetry. He publishes fellow authors on his own imprint, Metaphysical Fox Press, begun in 2024. As a metaphysical poet, he finds inspiration in nature and endeavors to draw connections between our higher selves and the natural world.