NEPC @ The Menino: Barbara Cassidy, Jennifer M Phillips, Vijaya Sundaram
On May 16, please join the New England Poetry Club in a return to the Menino Arts Center in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The reading begins at 3:00 p.m. and is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the featured poets.
The Menino Arts Center, located at 26 Central Avenue, is an accessible venue, with a wheelchair ramp into the building and an elevator to the second floor. We’re grateful to Home Scholars of Boston for their generous sponsorship.
Barbara Cassidy is a poet, singer-songwriter, and Sean-nós singer who resides in Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Open Doors Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, The Stonecoast Review, on the 2023/2025 Martin Poetry Path in Newton, among others, and have been set to music by composer Eric Chasalow. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook, Divination (Dancing Girl Press, 2026).
Jennifer M Phillips is a boundary-crosser, retired skydiver, and bonsai-grower, and has authored three chapbooks, Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity, A Song of Ascents, and Sailing to the Edges, and a collection, Wrestling with the Angel. Phillips’ work has appeared in over 140 journals, recently Spoon River Poetry Review, London Grip, and The Alembic), and was thrice-nominated for a Pushcart Poetry Prize and an Eyelands Book Prize. She is moved to write poetry these days by changing landscapes during climate shift and the need for a new communitarianism to forge connections in our time of fragmentation.
Vijaya Sundaram is an Indian-born, Medford-based poet, musician, artist, and community college professor. She served as Medford’s second Poet Laureate between 2023-2025. Her first collection of poems, Fractured Lens, was published in 2023 by Červená Barva Press. Her second poetry book, Reverberations, was published in 2025 by Ibbetson Street Press. Aside from poems, she has written short stories, plays, and a short novel. Her poetry and short pieces have appeared in publications like The Rising Phoenix Press, the Stardust Review, and TELL Magazine, among others. She has read her poems at poetry events in and around the Boston and Greater Boston areas, and currently runs an Open Mic for Poetry and Original Song at the Arts Collaborative Medford, as well as a Medford Poetry Club at the Medford Public Library. She is a recipient of the Mass Cultural Council Grant for Creative Individuals for 2026.