Poetry at the Manse: Catherine Staples, José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes, Elizabeth McCarthy

The New England Poetry Club’s summer season continues at The Old Manse in Concord, Mass. This free reading will be held under a tent outdoors, at an accessible venue.

Make a day of it! Arrive early or linger after the reading to explore the orchard, stroll along the Concord River, or enjoy a picnic on the grounds. You can also deepen your visit by joining a guided tour of the historic house before or after the event.

Learn more and pre-register for a tour: https://thetrustees.org/place/the-old-manse/.

Catherine (Calello) Staples grew up in Dover, Massachusetts. Her latest book, Vert (Mercer University Press, 2024), is rooted in New England woods, meadows, and Cape Cod coasts. From the track of skates on the Charles River to words etched on the Manse’s nineteenth-century glass, place is at the heart of the transformation of loss. She’s also the author of The Rattling Window and Never a Note Forfeit. Her poems and reviews have appeared in the Academy of American Poets, Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and others. Honors include: Guy Owen prize, McGovern Poetry Prize, and Walter Dakin Fellowship. She teaches in the Honors and English programs at Villanova University and serves on the board of the Thoreau Society.

José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes was born and raised in the Philippines. He is the author of Present Values, winner of the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize from the New England Poetry Club. His poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Rattle, Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, RHINO Poetry, Consequence Forum, Laurel Review, Lily Poetry Review, and other journals; and have been featured on The Slowdown. His work has also been anthologized in The Powwow River Anthology (Volumes I and II), Villanelles (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poetry Series), and The Achieve Of, The Mastery: Filipino Poetry and Verse from English, mid-‘90s to 2016 (University of the Philippines Press). In 2024, he received the Robert H. Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America for a selection of poems.

Elizabeth McCarthy lives in an old farmhouse in northern Vermont. Retired from teaching, she turned to poetry in 2020 when the world closed down and time became a windfall. She is a member of the Poetry Society of Vermont and the Lockdown Poets of Aberdeen, Scotland, an online international group of poets. Elizabeth enjoys running with her husband along the woods roads in the Northeast Kingdom where they train for local and national races. Many of her poems have been found during those long slow runs. Elizabeth’s first manuscript, Digging Potatoes, was shortlisted in the Hunger Mountain: VCFA May Day Mountain Chapbook Series Contest in 2021. Since then she has published four collections of poetry, including; The Old House (a self-published poetry memoir,) Winter Vole (Finishing Line Press 2022,) Hard Feelings (Finishing Line Press 2024) and Wild Silence (Kelsay Books 2024).