New England Poetry Club

NEPC + WCPA: Gloria Monaghan, Ivy Schweitzer, Renee Slovick
2026-04-26 15:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Park View Room, 230 Park Avenue, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01609
The New England Poetry Club is delighted to team up with the Worcester County Poetry Association for a collaboration to round out National Poetry Month! The event takes place on Sunday, April 26, at the Park View Room, 230 Park Avenue in Worcester. (Please note: this is a change from the originally announced location.) The reading is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the featured poets. Join us!
Gloria Monaghan is a Professor at Wentworth University. She has published seven collections of poetry: Diary of Saint Marion, Lily Poetry Review, (2025), Cormorant on the Strand, Lily Poetry Review (2023), Hydrangea, Kelsay Press,(2020), Torero, Nixes Mate, (2020) False Spring, Adelaide Books, (2019), The Garden, Flutter Press (2015), and Flawed, Finishing Line Press (2011). Her poems have appeared in Mom Egg Review, Quartet and River Heron among others. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, for the Griffin Prize, and for the Shelia Margaret Motton Award. She was a Semi-Finalist for the Tenth Gate Prize. She is also a film maker.
Born in Brooklyn, Ivy Schweitzer lives in Norwich, Vermont and has taught American Literature and Women’s Studies at Dartmouth College. She writes about cultural identity and social justice from a feminist and Jewish perspective. Her poems have appeared recently in Passager, Ritualwell, Tikkun, New Croton Review, Mississippi Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New England Poetry Club’s Prize Winners’ Anthology 2024 and The Mountain Troubadour. Finishing Line Press published her debut solo collection, Dividing Rivers, in 2025. Visit her author page https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ivyschweitzer/.
Renee Slovick writes poems and short stories and drinks too much Diet Coke. She was born and raised in NYC but you can only hear the accent when she gets mad. She’s not a Yankees fan, which became really important when she moved to Worcester in 2002. She married a guy who took her to an arcade on their first date and has one human son and one cat son. These days she likes to hyper focus on horror movies and serial killers, and fall asleep to true crime documentaries. Her favorite tarot card is The Hanged Man.

NEPC and Beehive Poetry: Jason O’Toole, John Pijewski
2026-04-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
The NEPC’s partnership with the Beehive Poetry Group concludes in April, with a reading presented by Jean Flanagan, the Arlington, Massachusetts Poet Laureate Emerita. This month’s event features Jason O’Toole and John Pijewski.
The event is free and open to the public. The Robbins Library is an accessible venue.
Open-mic reading slots are on a first-come, first-served basis and open 15 minutes before the start time. Sign up to read, or attend and enjoy a night of poetry!
Jason O’Toole is Poet Laureate Emeritus of North Andover, MA. His collections include The Strange Misgivings of the Sadly Gifted (Dead Man’s Press, 2025), and the chapbook Enragés (Between Shadows Press, 2025). He serves on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club, and as treasurer of the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco. He is the winner of the 2025 Amy Lowell Prize and has been nominated for the Rhysling and the Pushcart Prize. He was the co-founder of the Anne Bradstreet Prize and serves as judge for the Tom Nattell Peace Poetry Prize and the Capital District Slam Poetry Festival in NY. Recent poems and prose have appeared in the anthology Love is for All of Us (Storey Publishing), as well as Ghost City Press, The Somerville Times, Phil Lit, Molecule: a tiny lit mag, and Deceleration News.
John Pijewski was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1952. He graduated from Boston University, the University of New Hampshire in Durham, and attended Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop. His book of poems, Dinner with Uncle Jozef, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1982. He received a writing fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1984.
John taught Creative Writing as an adjunct professor for 35 years at Boston University, the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the University of Southern Maine in Portland. His poems have been published in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Tri-Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The New Yorker, and other journals.
John describes the poems in his new book, Collected Father, as existing in the province between Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird, in which an abandoned boy tries to survive on his own in the brutal peasant culture of Poland during WW II, and Franz Kafka’s Letter to His Father.

Everyone Has a Voice: Carla Schwartz, Nicole Rocci, Hope Z. Fernandes
2026-04-18 14:00 - 15:30 | Brockton Public Library, 304 Main Street, Brockton, MA, 02301, United States
The NEPC continues our collaboration with Phillip Hasouris, recent Brockton Poet Laureate, for the Everyone Has a Voice” series, presented at the Brockton Public Library. These events pair an established poet with a student poet and include an open mic. This month’s reading is hosted by Queen of Ceremonies Hope Z. Fernandes and takes place in the Driscoll Art Gallery. The library offers ample off-street parking.
Carla Schwartz’s poems have appeared in her collections, including Signs of Marriage. Her poem “Pat Schroeder Was Our Mother” received the 2023 New England Poetry Club E.E. Cummings Prize. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Contemporary Haibun Online, Cider Press Review, Door is a Jar, Euphony, Modern Haiku, New Verse Review, North Dakota Quarterly, One Art, Pan Haiku Review, Past Ten, Rattle Magazine, Pork Belly, Sense and Sensibility, and Verse-Virtual Online. Carla lives half the time in the greater Boston area, and half the time on an unbridged island in Lake Winnipesaukee. She is passionate about cycling, Nordic skiing, hiking, freshwater long-distance swimming, paddle-boarding, pedal kayaking, reading, and gardening. Learn more at https://carlapoet.com, or on all social media @cb99videos.
Nicole Rocci is a poet and essayist who describes her work as observational, curious, and raw. She always knew she was a writer- what started as songs about teenage heartbreak has transformed into pieces on sexuality, relationship dynamics, and how she sees herself in the world. Nic’s poems “The Valley”, “ Melpomene”, and “Orion” have been featured in the literary magazine Mill Pages. While she works as a Domestic Violence Counselor in the present day, she will always be a writer who welcomes discomfort, curiosity, and tenderness into her work and those who read it.
Hope Z. Fernandes, CAGS, is a Massachusetts professionally licensed educator in multiple areas who has taught for decades and was a school administrator almost as long. She has data-driven experience in equity and inclusion, as well as mindfulness and compassion education. She has been a teacher, Director of Language Acquisition, Assistant Principal of Discipline, Assistant Principal of Teaching, Learning, 504s and Special Education, a Principal, Visiting Lecturer at Bridgewater State College, and the University of Massachusetts Boston. As an Educational Leader, she has focused on Equity and Inclusion Practices as they relate to student success and educator inclusion.
Ms. Fernandes has been writing poetry since her formative years. Her first published poem, “The Gallery,” appeared in Silver Spectrum in 1989. She went on to be the Editor of her college poetry magazine, The Tree Well. She began the first High School competitive Poetry Slam Group on the South Shore in 1996, where her students competed orally in poetry competitions. She has coached three of the Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud State Champions and two second runners-up for Poetry Out Loud’s National Championships. Her love for poetry stems from her mother, who had a poem for every life situation. Hope describes Poetry as honoring and celebrating each other as humans in the most compassionate, mindful, and humble ways; her poetry celebrates Cape Verdean Culture, family, and her students.

Poetry Reading: Tribute to Rhina P. Espaillat
2026-04-17 18:00 - 19:30 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
The NEPC is proud to partner with the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site in honoring Rhina P. Espaillat, beloved Dominican diasporic poet and English crossover poet. Espaillat will read favorite selections from her work, alongside readings by the acclaimed Dominican diasporic poet and author Leonardo Nin and the award-winning Dominican poet José Enrique Delmonte, with translations by Shira Zohara Dickey. To register for this event, visit this page.
April 17, 2026 | 6:00 PM-7:30 PM
Dominican-born Rhina P. Espaillat has published twenty-four full-length books, four chapbooks, and two CDs comprising her own poetry collections, essays, and short stories in both English and her native Spanish, as well as numerous translations, from and into both languages, of work by other authors. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, journals, and websites, and has received many national and international awards
Espaillat is a founding member of the Fresh Meadows Poets, the Powow River Poets, The Melopoeia musical Trio, and the musical quintet known as The Diminished Poets. She has earned many national and international awards, including the T. S. Eliot and Richard Wilbur Awards, several from the Poetry Society of America, the New England Poetry Club, The Robert Frost Foundation, the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Salem State College.
José Enrique Delmonte is a poet, essayist, historian, PhD in linguistics and literature, and architect. He has received several literary awards, including the 2014 Poetry Prize from the Universidad Iberoeramericana, the Ibero-American Poetry Prize at the 2014 Madrid Book Fair, the 2016 León Felipe International Poetry Prize (Zamora, Spain), and the 2024 Editorial Project Award from Sial Pigmalión Publishing House, Madrid, Spain. He has published the poetry collections Alquimias de la ciudad perdida (Alchemies of the Lost City), Once palabras que mueve tu mundo (Eleven Words That Move Your World), and several others. José Enrique is a member of the Organizing Committee of the Santo Domingo International Poetry Week. His poetry has been translated into English and French.
Shira Zohara Dickey (translator) is a US-born architectural historian, author, lecturer, and former academic society director. She also translates and writes poetry and makes fine art. Fluent in multiple languages, she has translated two Spanish poetry books by the renowned Santo Domingo poet, essayist, and architect, José Enrique Delmonte, into English. Shira’s forthcoming projects include publications in architectural history, a translation of another poetry collection by Delmonte, and a chapbook with her illustrations dedicated to memories of her loving companion, deceased MIT atmospheric physicist Ralph J. Markson.
Leonardo Nin is a writer, novelist, poet, and independent researcher in the fields of cultural anthropology and sociolinguistics. One of the main voices of Dominican literature in the United States and Latin America, his published works include: Paid Space (poetry, El Salvador, 2019), That is why I will never go back (Short Stories 20202), I Only Know They Called her, Shadow; At the Blue Side of Nothingness, and many others. He is currently the director of the Taino Museum of Magua, Dominican Republic, and editor of Ivy Editorial of Randolph, Massachusetts.

NEPC @ the BPL: Lee Varon, Gale Batchelder, Robert Eugene Perry
2026-04-04 14:00 - 16:00 | Boston Public Library (Jamaica Plain), 30 South Street, Jamaica Plain, MA, 02130, United States
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.

NEPC and Beehive Poetry: Regie Gibson, Tribute to Charles Coe
2026-03-17 19:00 - 20:30 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
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.

NEPC and Beehive Poetry: Wendy Drexler and Philip Hasouris
2026-02-17 19:00 - 20:00 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
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 Wendy Drexler and Philip Hasouris, with introductions by Steve Rapp.
The event is free and open to the public. The Robbins Library is an accessible venue.
Open-mic reading slots are on a first-come, first-served basis and open 15 minutes before the start time. Sign up to read, or attend and enjoy a night of poetry!
Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Harvest of What Remains, will be published in January 2026 by Lily Poetry Review and received honorable mention for the Paul Nemser Prize. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Solstice, The Mid-American Review, The Sun, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She was the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, from 2018 to 2023 served as programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club from 2016–2024.
Philip Hasouris‘s poetry invites you on a profound journey. His insightful verses explore themes of love, tragedy, and hope, showcasing the transformative power of poetry. His writing captures a deep connection to life’s experiences with exquisite sensitivity. His collections include Light of the Moon: My Journey Through the Stages of Grief. In recognition of his dedication to fostering a love of poetry, advocating for literature, and supporting arts and education, Philip was appointed the first Poet Laureate of Brockton, 2021- 2025.

Reimagined and Recomposed: An online workshop with Brian Evans-Jones
2026-02-08 13:00 - 15:00 | Online
In contemporary classical music, recomposing means to take the work of a composer from the past and use it as the basis for a new piece of music. Sometimes the original changes only a little, and sometimes it seems to vanish almost entirely! (An example is The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed by Max Richter.)
This workshop will recompose this idea of recomposition by applying it to poetry. You’ll take poems that you love, and recompose them and their words into original poems of your own. This is a way to pay homage to a poem and poet you value—and learn more about how it works—while also finding your own space and voice within their poem. Moreover, it’s a chance to step outside your usual voice and rhythm, as the exercise pushes you to create phrasing and imagery that you normally would not.
Please come prepared with:

Two poems by others that are important to you;
One poem by yourself that you’re not happy with.

Each poem should be at least about sonnet length (i.e., 14 lines) but not longer than a page.
Note: by February 4th, send your poem selections to brian@brianevansjones.com in a Word or Pages document.
Brian Evans-Jones is a poet and teacher from Britain who now lives in Sharon, NH. He was Poet Laureate of Hampshire, England, before moving to New England in 2014 to do his MFA at the University of New Hampshire. He won the Maureen Egan award from Poets & Writers in 2017, and his poems have been published in journals and contests on both sides of the Atlantic. He has taught poetry in colleges, schools, and workshops, as well as online through his website The Poetry Place, where he publishes resources on poetry and creativity.
Advance registration is required. There will not be a “one size fits all” Zoom link. After registering here, you will receive a confirmation email with your personalized session link. Please feel free to share the registration link, but not your personal link.

NEPC and Beehive Poetry: Carla Panciera and Julia Thacker
2026-01-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
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 Carla Panciera and Julia Thacker, with introductions by Steve Rapp.
The event is free and open to the public. The Robbins Library is an accessible venue.
Open-mic reading slots are on a first-come, first-served basis and open 15 minutes before the start time. Sign up to read, or attend and enjoy a night of poetry!
Carla Panciera’s poetry collections include Cider Press Award Winner One of the Cimalores, Bordighera Press Award Winner No Day, No Dusk, No Love and most recently, One Trail of Longing, Another of String (also Bordighera). Her short story collection, Bewildered, received AWP’s Grace Paley Award and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press. She was the James E. Kilgore scholar in Nonfiction at Bread Loaf Writers Conference and is the recipient of an Individual Artist Grant in Creative Nonfiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her book Barnflower: A Rhode Island Farm Memoir, was released in 2023 by Loom Press.
Julia Thacker’s debut collection To Wildness was selected by Paul Muldoon for the 19th annual Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and published by The Waywiser Press in 2025. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals, including AGNI, Bennington Review, Gulf Coast, The Massachusetts Review and The New Republic. A portfolio of her work, The Empress of Serifs, won the 2019 Winter Chapbook award from Poetry International. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Radcliffe Institute. In 2024, she was an Edith Wharton Writer-in-Residence at The Mount. Julia has taught writing at Tufts University, in the Radcliffe Seminars and as a poet-in-residence in public schools throughout the state. She lives in Arlington.

Everyone Has a Voice: Mark Pawlak, Darvince Oddies, Hope Z. Fernandes
2026-01-17 14:00 - 15:30 | Brockton Public Library, 304 Main Street, Brockton, MA, 02301, United States
The NEPC is happy to announce a collaboration with Phillip Hasouris, recent Brockton Poet Laureate. In January, we’ll participate in the series, “Everyone Has a Voice,” presented at the Brockton Public Library. These events pair an established poet with a student poet and include an open mic. This month’s reading is hosted by Queen of Ceremonies Hope Z. Fernandes and takes place in the Driscoll Art Gallery. The library offers ample off-street parking.
Mark Pawlak is the author of ten poetry collections, most recently Away Away (Arrowsmith Press, 2024), and the memoir My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov (MadHat Press, 2021). His poems have been translated into German, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish. In English, his poems and prose have appeared widely in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry and Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, among many other places. As managing editor of Hanging Loose Press, he has published four anthologies of the “Best Poetry” by high school-age writers.
Darvince Oddies is a 15-year-old Haitian student at New Heights Charter School, and he is the youngest of three children. He is named after his father and has “Viguez” as his middle name. Darvince developed a passion for poetry in 2020, initially using it to cope with his emotions. After 2023, he began writing less often, choosing instead to share his poems out loud with friends. Encouraged by his friends, who recognized his potential and talent, and by teachers who heard his earlier work, Darvince has been inspired to return to writing and begin performing his poems.
Hope Z. Fernandes, CAGS, is a Massachusetts professionally licensed educator in multiple areas who has taught for decades and was a school administrator almost as long. She has data-driven experience in equity and inclusion, as well as mindfulness and compassion education. She has been a teacher, Director of Language Acquisition, Assistant Principal of Discipline, Assistant Principal of Teaching, Learning, 504s and Special Education, a Principal, Visiting Lecturer at Bridgewater State College, as well as the University of Massachusetts Boston. As an Educational Leader, she has focused on Equity and Inclusion Practices as they relate to student success and educator inclusion.
Ms. Fernandes has been writing poetry since her formative years. Her first published poem, “The Gallery,” appeared in Silver Spectrum in 1989. She went on to be the Editor of her college poetry magazine, The Tree Well. She began the first High School competitive Poetry Slam Group on the South Shore in 1996, where her students competed orally in poetry competitions. She has coached three of the Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud State Champions and two second runners-up for Poetry Out Loud’s National Championships. Her love for poetry stems from her mother, who had a poem for every life situation. Hope describes Poetry as honoring and celebrating each other as humans in the most compassionate, mindful, and humble ways; her poetry celebrates Cape Verdean Culture, family, and her students.

NEPC @ Westwood: Jim Brosnan, Jennifer L Freed, Alix Klingenberg
2026-01-11 14:30 - 15:30 | Westwood Public Library, 660 High Street, Westwood, MA, 02090, United States
The New England Poetry Club is delighted to return to the Westwood (Mass.) Public Library! The reading will happen on Sunday, January 11, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., in the Community Reading Room. The poets will be introduced by Lynne Viti, Westwood Poet Laureate Emerita and a member of the NEPC Advisory Board. This event is free and open to the public, in an accessible venue. An open mic will follow the featured poets.
Pushcart nominee Jim Brosnan is a university professor, writer, photographer, and avid traveler, who lives with his wife Donna in southeastern Massachusetts when they are not spending time as residents of coastal Maine. He is a five-time finalist in NEATE’s Poet of the Year competition and has won awards by the National Federation of Poetry Societies. His poetry has appeared in many journals including The Aurorean, The Avocet, The Bridge, Eunoia Review (Singapore), Lakeview Journal (India), Minnesota English Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), and Voices of the Poppies (UK). His first book, Nameless Roads (Moon Pie Press, 2019) focused on New England. Long Distance Driving, his second collection (Ochre Leaf Press 2024), focuses on states west of the Mississippi.
Jennifer L Freed is the author of When Light Shifts (2022), a finalist for the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motton book prize, and second place in the 2025 Eric Hoffer Legacy Non-fiction awards, where it was also a finalist for the Medal Provocateur for poetry. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, Rust and Moth, Sheila-na-Gig, Vox Populi, and others, and have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net For many years she taught adult-level English language (ESL) classes both overseas and to immigrants in the USA. She now leads creative writing programs and facilitates workshops from Beverly, Massachusetts. Please visit Jfreed.weebly.com
Alix Klingenberg is a poet, artist, and Unitarian Universalist spiritual director. Her poetic work moves between the intimate and the elemental, braiding daily life with ecological and spiritual attention. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Secrets and Stars, Bread Sex Trees, Hermit Season, and most recently Quietly Wild (Mandala Earth Publishing, 2025), which pairs poems and photographs with rituals honoring the seasons of the year.
Her poems have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, and she currently serves as the Managing Poetry Editor at Phil Lit Journal. Alix studied visual art at Oberlin College and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and holds a Master of Divinity from Meadville Lombard Theological School. In addition to her writing, she teaches workshops and leads retreats that guide participants into deeper connection with language, creativity, and the living world.

NEPC and Beehive Poetry: Sara Letourneau and Owen Lewis
2025-12-16 19:00 - 20:30 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
The New England Poetry Club 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 Sara Letourneau and Owen Lewis, with introductions by Steve Rapp.
The event is free and open to the public. The Robbins Library is an accessible venue.
Open-mic reading slots are on a first-come, first-served basis and open 15 minutes before the start time. Sign up to read, or attend and enjoy a night of poetry!
Sara Letourneau is the author of Wild Gardens (Kelsay Books, 2024); a book editor and writing coach at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services; the cofounder and cohost of the Pour Me a Poem open mic in Mansfield, Massachusetts; and the co-editor of the Pour Me a Poem anthology. Her poetry has won the 2023 Beals Prize for Poetry and the Blue Institute’s 2020 Words on Water contest. Her latest work can be found in The Arts Fuse, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Ekphrastic Review, Nixes Mate Review, Silver Birch Press, The Somerville Times, The Table Review, Third Wednesday Magazine, and Wild Greens. Sara lives in Foxboro, Massachusetts.
Owen Lewis is the author of four collections of poetry and three chapbooks, most recently A Prayer of Six Wings. His prior book, Field Light, was a “Must Read” selection in the 2021 Mass Book Awards. Honors include the 2024 E.E. Cummings Prize from the New England Poetry Club, the 2023 Guernsey International Poetry Prize, the 2023 Rumi Prize for Poetry, the International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, and the NEPC Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award. He is Professor of Psychiatry in the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University and teaches Narrative Medicine.

Finding Warmth Under the Waning Moon
2025-12-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Open Doors Yoga Studios, 65 Washington Street, Weymouth, MA, 02188, United States
Gloria Monaghan (NEPC Membership Secretary and Advisory Board member) invites you to the Open Doors Center for the Arts for a reading featuring Lynne Viti (NEPC Advisory Board member), Cynthia Bargar, Stephen Haven, and Steven Cramer. An open mic and wine + cheese reception will follow. The event will happen on Saturday, December 6, from 6-8 pm. Please note that the venue, at 65 Washington Street, Weymouth, Mass., is not wheelchair accessible.

José Enrique Delmonte, Shira Zohara Dickey, Rhina P. Espaillat and Juan Matos
2025-12-05 19:00 - 20:30 | Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge, MA, United States
December 5, 2025, 7 pm, Grolier Poetry Book Shop, 6 Plympton St, Cambridge
The NEPC is honored to co-present this evening of poems by José Enrique Delmonte, Shira Zohara Dickey, Rhina P. Espaillat, and Juan Matos with the Grolier Poetry Book Shop. Leonardo Nin will introduce the poets.
The event will take place synchronously in-store at 6 Plympton Street, Cambridge, and on Zoom. Please note that registration is required. Use this link to register for the in-store reading, and this link for the virtual reading. For the in-store reading, note that space is limited, and if you arrive after the start time, you may jeopardize your seat.
José Enrique Delmonte (1964, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic). Poet, essayist, historian, PhD in linguistics and literature, and architect. He has received several literary awards, including the 2014 Poetry Prize from the Universidad Iberoeramericana, the Ibero-American Poetry Prize at the 2014 Madrid Book Fair; the 2016 León Felipe International Poetry Prize (Zamora, Spain); and the 2024 Editorial Project Award from Sial Pigmalión Publishing House, Madrid, Spain. He has published the poetry collections Alquimias de la ciudad perdida (Alchemies of the Lost City), Once palabras que mueve tu mundo (Eleven Words That Move Your World), La redondez de lo posible (Roundness of the Possible), Habitantes del tedio (Inhabitants of Tedium), and La palabra más larga (The Longest Word). José Enrique is a member of the Organizing Committee of the Santo Domingo International Poetry Week. His poetry has been translated into English and French.
Shira Zohara Dickey is a US-born architectural historian, author, lecturer, and former academic society director. She also translates and writes poetry and makes fine art. Fluent in multiple languages, with reading proficiency in others, she has translated two Spanish poetry books by the renowned Santo Domingo poet, essayist, and architect, José Enrique Delmonte, into English. Shira’s forthcoming projects include publications in architectural history, a translation of another poetry collection by Delmonte, and a chapbook with her illustrations dedicated to memories of her loving companion, deceased MIT atmospheric physicist, Ralph J. Markson. Shira Zohara enjoys being a Massachusetts Cantabrigian and sharing her home with her Berger Blanc Suisse.
Dominican-born Rhina P. Espaillat has published twenty-four full-length books, four chapbooks, and two CDs comprising her own poetry collections, essays and short stories in both English and her native Spanish, as well as numerous translations, from and into both languages, of work by other authors. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, journals, and websites, and has received many national and international awards. Among the countless other authors whose poetry she has also translated are Robert Frost, Richard Wilbur, Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, as well as San Juan de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Miguel Hernández, Federico García Lorca, César Sánchez Beras, Juan Matos, Julia Alvarez, José Marmol, and many others from Europe, Latin America, English speaking authors, and the large and active Caribbean diaspora in the United States.
Espaillat is a founding member of the Fresh Meadows Poets, the Powow River Poets, The Melopoeia musical Trio, and the musical quintet known as The Diminished Poets. She has earned many national and international awards, including the T. S. Eliot and Richard Wilbur Awards, several from the Poetry Society of America, the New England Poetry Club, The Robert Frost Foundation, the Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Salem State College.

Juan Matos (1956). Educator and cultural activist residing in Lunenburg, MA. He migrated from the Dominican Republic in 1985. He served as Worcester Poet Laureate (2020-22); sharing and promoting poetry in community centers, schools, universities, and other institutions; and developing creative writing workshops with youth. He has written numerous poetry books; most recent are “Labrador de palabras”(2021); Con pecado concebido (2021); Temblor de espejos (2021); The Man Who Left /El hombre que se fue (2017); Sugar, Cape, and Port (2018). His works have been included in many anthologies and magazines. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemistry (Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo); a Master’s Degree in New York; another Master’s in Elementary School (Lehman College, NY); and another Master’s Degree in Bilingual Education (Worcester State University). Matos taught ESL & Spanish Literature for 35 years and retired from Worcester Public Schools in 2019. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Latino Educational Institute in Worcester, MA. juanmatospoeta.com

NEPC @ The Menino: Linda Haviland Conte, Jenny Grassl, Scott Ruescher
2025-11-22 14:00 - 16:00 | Menino Arts Center, 26 Central Avenue, Hyde Park, MA, 02136, United States
Join the New England Poetry Club on November 22, as we return to the Menino Arts Center in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. The reading begins at 2:00 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.
Linda Haviland Conte is the author of the full-length collection Seldom Purely and the chapbook Slow as a Poem (Ibbetson Street Press). Her work has appeared in the anthologies From the Farther Shore, Constellations, Bagels with the Bards, and Connecticut River Review. Linda has been featured in Verse Daily and WCAI’s Poetry Sunday. Her poems have received recognition from state and national poetry societies. Linda serves on the board of The New England Poetry Club. (lindaconte.net)
Jenny Grassl lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Ocean State Review, The Boston Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Bennington Review, Radar Poetry, Lana Turner Journal, Laurel Review, and others. She was a runner-up for The Boston Review Annual Prize, selected by Mary Jo Bang, and a finalist for The National Poetry Series. Magicholia, her first book, was published in 2024 by 3: A Taos Press. Her second book, Forever Mistaken for Ourselves, won publication by Tupelo Press in their July Open Reading period and is forthcoming in 2026.
Scott Ruescher is the author of two full-length collections—Above the Fold, published by Finishing Line Press in April 2025, and Waiting for the Light to Change, published by Prolific Press in 2017—and at least two or three chapbooks. Several years ago, and twice in a row, he won the New England Poetry Club’s now-defunct Erika Mumford Prize for poetry about travel and international culture. His new poems have been appearing in Black Horse Review, Muleskinner Journal, Pangyrus, Poets Against Racism and Hate, The Somerville News, and The Lantern—the online magazine of the Colby Museum of Art. In retirement from higher education administration and teaching jobs, he writes promotional copy for an affordable housing nonprofit and works in ESOL and citizenship classrooms in the immigrant communities on the “near North Shore” of Boston.

NEPC and Beehive Poetry New Book and Open Mic Night
2025-11-18 19:00 - 20:30 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
The New England Poetry Club is proud to partner with the Beehive Poetry Group in a reading presented by Jean Flanagan, the Arlington, Massachusetts Poet Laureate. This month’s reading features Krysten Hill and Heather Treseler, with introductions by Steve Rapp.
The event is free and open to the public.
Open-mic reading slots are on a first-come, first-served basis and open 15 minutes before the start time. Sign up to read, or attend and enjoy a night of poetry!

NEPC 2025 Contest Reading
2025-11-16 13:00 - 15:30 | Online
Please join us on Zoom for our annual reading, featuring Winners and Finalists from our contests:

Samuel Washington Allen Prize for a long poem or poem sequence
E.E. Cummings Prize, for a compelling, lyrical, or experimental short poem
Amy Lowell Prize, for an outstanding poem of any length or style by a poet with strong ties to New England
Diana Der-Hovanessian Prize, for a translation from any language.
Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.

The reading will take place in two parts, the first beginning at 1:00 pm, the second at 2:30 pm. There will be an “intermission” break between the two parts.
Advance registration is required. There will not be a “one size fits all” Zoom link. After registering here, you will receive a confirmation email with your personalized session link, which will be good for both parts of the reading.
We look forward to seeing you!

NEPC in Worcester: Linda Carney-Goodrich, Steven Ratiner, Elaine Reardon
2025-11-09 15:00 - 17:00 | Salisbury House, 61 Harvard Street, Worcester, MA, 01609, United States
Please join the New England Poetry Club on November 9, 2025, as we rejoin the Worcester County Poetry Association for a reading at the Salisbury House. The reading is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the featured poets. The building has limited access, with steps leading to the entrance.
Linda Carney-Goodrich is a writer and teacher from Boston. Her first book of poetry, Dot Girl (Nixes Mate, 2024) was a finalist for the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. Her poems have been displayed at Boston City Hall and have been published in Solstice Literary Magazine, Lily Poetry Review, The MacGuffin, Literary Mama, Muddy River Poetry Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Amethyst Review, Gyroscope Review and more. Linda is a recipient of a writing residency at T.S. Eliot House and an Artist Opportunity Grant through the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture. As Poetry Coordinator for the Menino Arts Center, she organizes a monthly reading series, poetry & wine pairings, and a mobile arts project that brings poets to elders in senior housing. She offers classes, tutoring, and educational consulting through her business, Home Scholars of Boston.
Steven Ratiner is the author of Grief’s Apostrophe, published by Beltway Editions in 2025. He’s also published three poetry chapbooks and a collection of poetry interviews. His work has appeared in scores of journals in America and abroad, including Parnassus, Agni, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Salamander, Vox Populi, QRLS (Singapore), and Poetry Australia. He’s also written poetry criticism for The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. Giving Their Word: Conversations with Contemporary Poets was reissued in a paperback edition (University of Massachusetts Press). He is Poet Laureate Emeritus for Arlington, Massachusetts, and was elected in 2024 as President of the New England Poetry Club, one of the oldest literary associations in America. His weekly Red Letter Poems features a diverse range of poets, from up-and-coming talents to some of the most important voices in contemporary poetry (stevenratiner.com).
Elaine Reardon writes in a forest in the north Quabbin area. She’s an herbalist and former educator. Her work has been published In the United States and Europe in a variety of journals. Elaine’s first two chapbooks, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope and Look Behind You won first honors from Flutter Press. A new chapbook, Stories Told In A Forgotten Tongue, recently published by Finishing Line Press tells her family story from landing in the United States as refugees to assimilation. www.elainereardon.wordpress.com

Red Letter Live! - Regie Gibson, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Steven Ratiner, Rick McLaughlin
2025-11-08 13:00 - 15:00 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
Arlington Center for the Arts is pleased to be hosting these special Poetry Readings by 3 Red Letter Poets as part of Arlington Open Studios! The event will also feature music by bassist Rick McLaughlin!
Hosted by Steven Ratiner, publisher of The Red Letters and Jean Flanagan, Arlington’s Poet Laureate in the Community Room at Robbins Library (700 Mass Ave Arlington, MA | 1-3pm)
More info available at ACARTS.ORG
Regie Gibson is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. 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 the life, works, and influence of William Shakespeare. He has lectured and performed widely in the US, Cuba, and Europe. Among a long list of honors, Regie has received the Walker Scholarship from the Providence Fine Arts Work Center; multiple Mass Cultural Council Awards for poetry; the YMCA Writer’s Fellowship; the Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, and two Live Arts Boston (LAB) grants for the production of his first musical, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae. In Italy, representing the U.S., Regie received both the Absolute Poetry Award (Monfalcone) and the Europa en Versi Award (LaGuardia di Como). He 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 President James Madison’s home in Montpelier, Virginia. He teaches at Clark University in Worcester and is an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music.
Dzvinia Orlowsky is a founding editor of Four Way Books, translator, and author of seven poetry collections with Carnegie Mellon University Press including A Handful of Bees, reprinted as part of the Carnegie Mellon University Press Classic Contemporary Series; Bad Harvest, a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry; and her most recent, Those Absences Now Closest, named to Brilliant Book’s Most Brilliant Books of 2024 list. Her poem sequence “The (Dis)enchanted Desna” was a winner of the 2019 New England Poetry Club Samuel Washington Allen Prize selected by Robert Pinsky. For her co-translations with Ali Kinsella from the Ukrainian of Natalka Bilotserkivets’s and Halyna Kruk’s poetry, they have been short-listed, respectively, for the 2022 Griffin International Poetry Prize, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, ALTA’s National Translation Award in Poetry, and the 2025 PEN American Literary Award in Translation.
Steven Ratiner is the author of GRIEF’S APOSTROPHE, published by Beltway Editions in 2025. He’s also published three poetry chapbooks and a collection of poetry interviews. His work has appeared in scores of journals in America and abroad, including Parnassus, Agni, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Salamander, Vox Populi, QRLS (Singapore), and Poetry Australia. He’s also written poetry criticism for The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. GIVING THEIR WORD – Conversations with Contemporary Poets was reissued in a paperback edition (University of Massachusetts Press). He is Poet Laureate Emeritus for Arlington, Massachusetts, and was elected in 2024 as President of the New England Poetry Club, one of the oldest literary associations in America. His weekly Red Letter Poems features a diverse range of poets, from up-and-coming talents to some of the most important voices in contemporary poetry (stevenratiner.com). Steven will also be reading from Fellow Creatures, a new chapbook of poems by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, published as a benefit for the Red Letters.
Rick McLaughlin is a bassist, composer, arranger, and producer whose dynamic performances have taken him to stages on four continents. For more than 25 years, he has anchored the Grammy-nominated jazz ensemble Either/Orchestra, appearing in festivals and recordings from Boston to Barcelona and Addis Ababa. McLaughlin has shared the stage with Don Byron, Steve Lacy, Danilo Pérez, John Zorn, Mulatu Astatke, and other musical innovators, earning praise from George Russell as “one of my favorite bassists.” His acclaimed debut album, Study of Light, features a groundbreaking jazz adaptation of Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. Also an educator, McLaughlin is Professor of Harmony and Jazz Composition at Berklee College of Music, where his course on Stevie Wonder led to his guest appearance on The Wonder of Stevie podcast (2024).

A Master Class in Reading Your Work Aloud
2025-10-26 14:30 - 16:30 | First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
In the literary world today, writers often reach a wider audience through readings and live performances than through publication. Yet most writers are not trained to read their works aloud. Even well-known writers may read mechanically, monotonously, with too little—or too much—expression. In this master class, participants discuss what makes a good reading and explore the wide range of successful reading styles. The readers read a short poem of their own as if they were giving a public presentation, then get feedback from the class under the guidance of the instructor, who is an experienced actor, director, and radio commentator as well as a poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic. The readers get to “work through” to a livelier, more effective reading as they deepen their understanding of their own poems.
This event is free and open to all. If you wish to receive feedback on your reading, please prepare a poem of no more than two minutes in length.
Lloyd Schwartz was awarded the 2025 David Ferry and Ellen LaForge Annual Poetry Prize for his lifetime achievement in poetry and translation. His other honors include the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for his writing about music, and fellowships in poetry from the NEA, Guggenheim Foundation, and Academy of American Poets. The Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at UMass Boston, he has been the Somerville Poet Laureate since 2019. A noted scholar and editor of Elizabeth Bishop, he is also the longtime music critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and the WBUR website, and a member of the Advisory Boards of the New England Poetry Club, the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, and the Poets’ Theatre. His latest book is Who’s on First? New and Selected Poems (U of Chicago Press). He has offered master classes in reading your own work aloud since 1993.

NEPC @ the BPL: Lynne Viti, Chris O’Carroll, Shanta Lee
2025-10-11 15:00 - 16:00 | Boston Public Library (Jamaica Plain), 30 South Street, Jamaica Plain, MA, 02130, United States
The NEPC is delighted to return to the Boston Public Library, Jamaica Plain Branch, for our third event there this year! The reading, on Saturday, October 11 at 3:00 pm, will be free and open to the public. The JP Branch, at 30 South Street, is an accessible venue.
Shanta Lee is a visual artist, writer across genres, author, and public intellectual who often says she is a “…practitioner of entanglement” for all of the ways she brings things together in her work. Winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Grant for Poetic Achievement, Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award, and a 2024-25 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow, her work has been widely featured in addition to her published books. Her professional work has included public health, non-profits, education, arts administration, and other areas. Lee’s recent work includes a co-edited a critical anthology with Philip Brady, Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition (Etruscan Press, 2025). The work features interviews with 40+ writers and authors across different mediums and genres who were all invited to choose the “one page that sings” from among their work. To explore more, visit Shantalee.com.
Chris O’Carroll is the author of three books, The Joke’s on Me, Abracadabratude, and Quantum Creed, which includes a selection of his recent hell-yes-I-can-be-funny-about-having-cancer poems. He has been a Light magazine featured poet, and his work appears in New York City Haiku, Extreme Sonnets, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among other collections.
Lynne Viti is the author of four poetry collections, most recently The Walk to Cefalù (Cornerstone Press, 2022). Her work has received recognition in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Contest, WOMR/Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, Miriam Chaikin/Westbeth Artists Poetry Award, Tucson Festival of Books, Highland Park Poetry and Hale Education Poem of the Year. A faculty emerita at Wellesley College, she facilitates a poets in the schools project in Westwood, Massachusetts and serves on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club. She served as the inaugural poet laureate of Westwood, Massachusetts, 2023-2025.

The Collaborative Poet: A Day of Readings and a Workshop
2025-10-04 10:30 - 14:30 | All Souls Church at the West Village Meetinghouse, 29 South St. P.O. Box 2297, West Brattleboro, VT, 05303, United States
The Poetry Society of Vermont and New England Poetry Club are excited to announce our first collaborative event! We’ll present morning readings and an afternoon workshop on Saturday, October 4, 10:30 am – 2:30 pm, at the All Souls Church at the West Village Meetinghouse, West Brattleboro, Vermont.
The day begins with readings by NEPC members Richard Michelson and Gail Thomas, and PSOV member poet Scudder Parker. Cindy Ellen Hill will give a short craft talk on “Collaboration” and ways to engage. Lunch will be provided (including vegetarian, vegan and GF). During lunch, participants will be invited to “collaborate” and share their work later in an “open mic” format.
This event is free for New England Poetry Club and Poetry Society of Vermont members. If you are not a member, join NEPC and/or PSOV and register for this workshop. Register here by October 1st.

Richard Michelson’s books for children, teens, and adults have been listed among the Ten Best of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker, and among the Best Dozen of the Decade by Amazon. He’s received a National Jewish Book Award, two Gold Medals from the Association of Jewish Libraries, and his work was chosen to represent the Commonwealth at the Library of Congress National Book Festival. In 2019, Michelson received the Samuel Minot Jones Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement.
Michelson’s most recent collection, Sleeping as Fast as I Can, was a finalist for the 2023 Foreword Indies Award, and the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. Earlier collections include More Money than God, and Battles and Lullabies. Michelson wrote the libretto for the music theater piece Dear Edvard: Munch and his Muses.
A native of East New York, Brooklyn, Michelson served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, where he hosts Northampton Poetry Radio and owns R. Michelson Galleries.

Scudder Parker’s first volume of poetry, Safe as Lightning (Rootstock Publishing, 2020) was awarded the Best Poetry Book of 2020 by the Independent Publishers of New England (IPNE). Scudder’s poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals including Sun Magazine, Crosswinds, The Lascaux Review, Sky Island Journal, Vermont Life, Northern Woodlands, and Twyckenham. His poem “The Poem of the World” was selected as a finalist in the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.
For Scudder, poetry is the search for truthfulness, not homage to conclusion. It is exploration—fit of bone in socket, bees at riot in oregano blossoms, ache of old injustice summoning an opened heart, the strange joy of longing, laughter at long-defended foolishness. Family, farming, failing, finding. Foraging for the innocent sacred, patient in our midst. Scudder’s had numerous careers—preacher, organizer, gardener politician, energy consultant, poet—and is still learning from each of them. His new volume, The Poem of the World, published by Kelsay Books, It is now available in bookstores and online.

Gail Thomas’ books are Trail of Roots, Leaving Paradise, Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness, and Finding the Bear. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies including CALYX, Beloit Poetry Journal, North American Review, Cumberland River Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. Among her awards are the Seven Kitchens Press A.V. Christie Award for Trail of Roots, the Charlotte Mew Prize from Headmistress Press for Odd Mercy, the Narrative Poetry Prize from Naugatuck River Review, the Massachusetts Center for the Book’s “Must Read” for Waving Back, and the Quartet Review’s Editor’s Choice Prize. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and Ucross, and several poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry with Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshops, visits schools and libraries with her therapy dog Sunny, and supports immigrant and refugee families in Western Massachusetts.

Poetry at the Manse: bg Thurston, Stephen Honig, Sheila Lynch-Benttinen
2025-09-28 14:00 - 15:00 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
The NEPC’s 2025 season at The Old Manse in Concord, Mass., concludes on September 28. 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/.
bg Thurston lives on a sheep farm in Warwick, Massachusetts. She received her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College in 2002. She has taught poetry courses at Lasell Village, online for Vermont College, and conducts poetry workshops. Her third book of poetry, The Many Lives of Cathouse Farm/Tales of a Rural Brothel, was published in 2025 by Červená Barva Press and is the culmination of a decade of historical research about her 1770’s farmhouse.
Stephen Honig has published ten volumes of writings: seven of poetry, a spy novel, and two collections of short stories. His most recent poetic efforts include Unrequited Evils (exploring the decay of our modern world) and Parallel Universes (which asks whether modern poetry can be written in the mode of quantum physics and thus requires a new nomenclature to describe its attributes). A member of the Board of Directors of New England Poetry Club, Steve is presently working on a chapbook with one of his sons, which was prompted by that son’s poem advising “do not let your father grow up to be a poet.” When not writing, Steve has occupied himself with practicing corporate law in Boston for the last six decades. He lives in Newton with his wife, Laura, and his recalcitrant cock-a-poo, Popcorn.
Sheila Lynch-Benttinen has many interests that inform her poetry. She is the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. She has had over 25 haikus published in a number of journals, and one of her many longer-form poems was a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee.
With degrees from U. Mass Amherst and Harvard University, Sheila has had a varied career in Boston. She was President of Save The Harbor/Save the Bay in Boston, and a member of the Central Artery Urban Design Team. She was Executive Director of The Northeast Advanced Vehicle Consortium, on the Board of The Boston Greenspace Alliance, and The Stellwagen Bank Advisory Committee. She was Chair of the Spectacle Island Restoration Design Committee for 19 years. She lives south of Boston with her family. She has given lectures about local archeology, served on the Duxbury Historical Commission and the Duxbury Affordable Housing Trust, and loves painting and photography.

Poetry at Magazine Beach Park: Karen Klein, Linda Flaherty Haltmaier, Sara Letourneau
2025-09-07 15:30 - 17:00 | Magazine Beach Park Nature Center, 668 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The NEPC is delighted to return to Mass Audubon’s Magazine Beach Park Nature Center in Cambridge. This event, the second of two for 2025, is free of charge and the venue is accessible. Registration is requested: https://www.massaudubon.org/programs/magazine-beach/97530-nature-poetry-readings. Please join us!
Karen Klein began a haiku/senryu writing practice, published in Modern Haiku & Frogpond, then published contemporary lyric poems in journals including Constellations, Ibbetson Street, and Wilderness House Literary Review. She founded the poetry/dance collective teXtmoVes, performing in Greater Boston and Cape Cod, 2016- 2023. Her first full-length poetry book is This Close (Ibbetson Street Press, 2022) and her first chapbook, Embodied (Finishing Line Press, 2025). She is the co-author, with linocut artist Scott Ponemone, of Circularity (BookArt, 2025).
She studied contemporary dance with Martha Graham in NYC, Jose Limon Company in CT. Moving to the Boston area, performed with Across the Ages Dance for 8 seasons and with Prometheus Elders, 2005-2019. She retired as Associate Professor Emerita after 37 years in the English and American Literature Department, and is working on a third manuscript, 1324 Third Avenue South about growing up in Fargo, North Dakota from 1936-1954.
Linda Flaherty Haltmaier is the award-winning author of four books of poetry and the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Andover, MA. Her latest collection, Shadows Set to Burn, is the winner of the 2024 International Book Award for Narrative Poetry. Her debut collection, Rolling up the Sky, claimed the Homebound Publications Poetry Prize––and her follow-up, To the Left of the Sun, won the American Book Fest Award for Poetry. Additional accolades include winning the Robert Frost Poetry Prize, The JuxtaProse Poetry Prize, and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival Competition––and Finalist honors for the Princemere Poetry Prize, the New Millennium Award for Poetry, the Atlanta Review Poetry Competition and more. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Linda is a graduate of Harvard and lives on Boston’s North Shore with her husband and daughter.
Sara Letourneau is the author of Wild Gardens (Kelsay Books, 2024); a book editor and writing coach at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services; the cofounder and cohost of the Pour Me a Poem open mic in Mansfield, Massachusetts; and the co-editor of the Pour Me a Poem anthology. Her poetry has won the 2023 Beals Prize for Poetry and the Blue Institute’s 2020 Words on Water contest. Her latest work can be found in The Arts Fuse, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Ekphrastic Review, Nixes Mate Review, Silver Birch Press, The Somerville Times, The Table Review, Third Wednesday Magazine, and Wild Greens. Sara lives in Foxboro, Massachusetts.

Poetry at Magazine Beach Park: DeWitt Henry, Anthony DiPietro, Angela Patten
2025-08-31 15:30 - 17:00 | Magazine Beach Park Nature Center, 668 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The NEPC is delighted to return to Mass Audubon’s Magazine Beach Park Nature Center in Cambridge. This event, the first of two, is free of charge and the venue is accessible. Registration is requested: https://www.massaudubon.org/programs/magazine-beach/97530-nature-poetry-readings. Please join us!
DeWitt Henry’s books are Restless for Words: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2023); a U.S. edition of Foundlings: Found Poems from Prose (with art by Ruth K. Henry), Trim Reckonings: Poems, and Do I Dream or Wake? Longer Poems (all from Pierian Springs Press, 2024). His Perspectives: Uncollected Essays is coming this fall. He was the founding editor of Ploughshares and is Professor Emeritus at Emerson College. Details at www.dewitthenry.com.
Anthony DiPietro is a gay sex poet and arts administrator originally from Providence, Rhode Island. He has lived throughout New England and in California, New York, Oregon, and Tennessee. A graduate of Brown University with honors in creative writing, he also earned a creative writing MFA at Stony Brook University. Now serving as deputy director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, he resides in Worcester, MA. He composed his chapbook, And Walk Through (Seven Kitchens Press, 2021), on a typewriter during the pandemic lockdowns. kiss & release (Unsolicited Press, 2024) is his debut collection and was longlisted for a Mass Book Award in Poetry. He is also the 2025 winner of the Frank O’Hara Prize from the Worcester County Poetry Association. His writing and readings are featured at www.AnthonyWriter.com and on Instagram @ant.providence.
Angela Patten’s publications include five poetry collections, most recently Feeding the Wild Rabbit (Kelsay Books 2024), The Oriole & the Ovenbird (Kelsay Books), In Praise of Usefulness (Wind Ridge Books), Reliquaries and Still Listening (both from Salmon Poetry, Ireland), and a prose memoir, High Tea at a Low Table (Wind Ridge Books). Winner of the Anthony Cronin International Short Poem Award and the Cultural Center of Cape Cod National Poetry Prize, Patten has received artist grants from the University of Vermont, the Vermont Arts Council and the Vermont Community Foundation. Her work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. Born and raised in Dublin, she maintains dual citizenship in Ireland and the United States. She lives with her husband, poet Daniel Lusk, in Burlington, Vermont, and is a Senior Lecturer Emerita in English at the University of Vermont.

Poetry at the Manse: Libby Maxey, Nina Rubinstein Alonso, Matthew Henry
2025-08-24 14:00 - 15:00 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
The NEPC’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/.
Libby Maxey is a senior editor and poetry editor at the online journal Literary Mama, where she has been a member of the staff for over a decade. Her poems have appeared in Crannóg, Stoneboat, Whale Road Review, Blue Unicorn, and elsewhere. She is among the winners of the Princemere Poetry Prize, the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, and the Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest, and her chapbook, Kairos (2019), won the Finishing Line Press New Women’s Voices Contest. Her full-length collection, Indwelling (Resource Publications), was released last year. She lives with her family in the hills above the Pioneer Valley, where she sings classical repertoire and wrangles bells with the Western Massachusetts Guild of Change Ringers.
Nina Rubinstein Alonso’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Sumac, The New Boston Review, Southern Women’s Review, Broadkill Review, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, Peacock Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review, Nixes Mate, etc. Her book This Body was published by David Godine Press. Riot Wake was published by Červená Barva Press and her story collection Distractions En Route by Ibbetson Street. Her novel Balancing On One Leg is about to be published by Wilderness House, also her chapbook The Ones I Could Tell Anything, all available on Amazon. She’s also the editor of Constellations: a Journal of Poetry and Fiction (constellations-lit.com).
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, most recently said the Frog to the scorpion (Harbor Editions, 2024). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the creative nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. MEH’s publications include Barren Magazine, Had, Lily Poetry, Massachusetts Review, Mayday, Mom Egg Review, Nixes Mate, Pangyrus, Ploughshares, Redivider, Stone Circle Review, Terrain, Whale Road Review, and The Worcester Review. MEH is a high school teacher who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.

NEPC @ the BPL: Nidia Hernández, Naomi Mulvihill, Cheryl Clark Vermeulen
2025-08-23 15:00 - 16:00 | Boston Public Library (Jamaica Plain), 30 South Street, Jamaica Plain, MA, 02130, United States
The NEPC returns to the Boston Public Library, Jamaica Plain Branch, for a program featuring poets based in Jamaica Plain. The reading, on Saturday, August 23, at 3:00 pm, will be free and open to the public. The JP Branch, at 30 South Street, is an accessible venue.
Nidia Hernández is a poet, translator, editor, poetry curator, broadcaster, and radio producer. Her project “La Maja desnuda” won the World Summit Award 2011 in Culture & Heritage. You can listen to her Radio show on the UPV Radio website. Hernández serves as Associate Editor at Arrowsmith Press and is the poetry curator of Poesiaudio. She’s also a board member of the New England Poetry Club. Her latest book, “The Farewell Light” (2024), was published by Arrowsmith Press. “These poems are set against an invisible clock ticking, poignantly reminding us of the fleetingness of everything—the stability of the speaker’s home country, familial memories, and lost beloveds all retreat into the sea, like turtle hatchlings guided away from the shore”. ~Patricia Guzman, World Literature Today.
Naomi Mulvihill was a Margaret Murphy endowed fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. Her chapbook, We All Might Be (Factory Hollow Press), won the 2022 Tomaž Šalamun Prize Editor’s Choice Selection. Her first full-length volume of poems, The Knife Thrower’s Girl, was awarded the 2022 Washington Prize (The Word Works). Her poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, New Orleans Review, Salamander, Cimarron, West Branch, and others, and featured in Verse Daily. Naomi’s essays on language and learning have appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle and Harvard Educational Review. She is a veteran bilingual teacher in the Boston Public Schools.
Cheryl Clark Vermeulen is the author of They Can Take It Out and chapbooks Dead-Eye Spring and This Paper Lantern, and received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her poems, translations, or poetry reviews have appeared in many literary journals and the anthology Connecting Lines: New Poetry from Mexico. She edits poetry for Pangyrus literary magazine and teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where she founded the Creative Writing Minor. She lives in Boston with her family. Find out more at https://linktr.ee/cherylclarkvermeulen.

Longfellow Summer Arts Festival with Martha Collins
2025-08-10 15:00 - 16:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
For the final 2025 event in the NEPC’s We (too) The People series at the Longfellow House, we’re honored to present Martha Collins, this year’s recipient of the Golden Rose, one of America’s oldest literary prizes. We award the Rose to a poet who, through their poetry, inspires and encourages other writers and has made a significant mark on American poetry.
Martha Collins has published eleven books of poetry, most recently Casualty Reports (Pittsburgh, 2022) and Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019); the latter won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Her other publications include three books of poems that focus on race (Blue Front, White Papers, and Admit One: An American Scrapbook), and five co-translated volumes of Vietnamese poetry, most recently Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ (with Nguyen Ba Chung; Milkweed, 2023), a PEN America award finalist. She has also published several co-edited anthologies, including Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (with Kevin Prufer; Graywolf, 2017).
Collins founded the U.Mass. Boston creative writing program and for ten years served as Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. Her website is marthacollinspoet.com.
We’ll be joined by violinist Elizabeth Burke, with music beginning at 2: 45 pm.
If you’re not able to attend in person, you can watch online! Register here.
The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the East Lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public. For directions, parking, and accessibility information, see the Festival page.
In the event of inclement weather, the reading will be held indoors.

Longfellow Summer Arts Festival with Richard Blanco
2025-08-03 15:00 - 16:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
The NEPC’s summer season at the Longfellow House continues. For the third event in our We (too) The People series, we’re thrilled to present Richard Blanco to our audiences, with special musical guest Angel Subero.
Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize Blanco’s many collections of poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body, which reassess traditional notions of home as strictly a geographical, tangible place that merely exist outside us, but rather, within us. He has also authored the memoirs For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey and The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood.
Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. He was Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary degrees. Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University. In April 2022, Blanco was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County.
Special musical guest Angel Subero is a Venezuelan Trombonist, Professor & Head of the Brass Area at the Boston Conservatory, and on the Brass Faculty at Berklee College of Music. He is the Bass Trombonist of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and The Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra.
If you’re not able to attend in person, you can watch online! Register here.
The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the East Lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public. For directions, parking, and accessibility information, see the Festival page.
In the event of inclement weather, the reading will be held indoors.

Poetry at the Manse: Kathleen Latham, Steven Rapp, Sue Owen
2025-07-27 14:00 - 15:00 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
The NEPC’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/.
Kathleen Latham is a poet and short story writer from Westwood, MA whose work has appeared in multiple journals and anthologies such as The Comstock Review, The Masters Review, and Tipton Poetry Journal. A Highly Commended winner of the UK’s Bridport Prize, she’s also won the Web Microfiction Prize for Women Writers, the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition, and a Bath Flash Fiction Award. Twice nominated for Best Small Fictions and a Best of the Net award, she’s been shortlisted for the Bevel Summers Prize, the Stockholm Writer’s Festival First Pages Prize, and for contests in such places as Fish Flash Fiction, Reflex Fiction, and Fractured Lit. Her debut poetry collection, The Ones (Kelsay Books), was recently nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. She holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she grew up, and a master’s degree in human development from Harvard University.
Steven Rapp is a writer, environmental engineer, yoga teacher, and former Peace Corps volunteer (Benin 1986 – 1988). Steve’s poetry first appeared in his book, Aleph Bet Yoga, Embodying the Hebrew Letters For Physical and Spiritual Well-Being (Jewish Lights, 2002). His poetry has also appeared in The American Diversity Report, Silver Blade, and most recently in The Silver Note: Poets of Arlington, Massachusetts (Ibbetson Street, 2025). He is a member of the New England Poetry Club and one of the Beehive Poets in Arlington, Massachusetts. Since July 2023, Steve has coordinated and run Arlington’s Poetry New Book and Open Mic monthly series at the Robbins Library.
The dark humor poet Sue Owen, who has lived in Cambridge for twenty years, has published five books of poetry, including Nursery Rhymes for the Dead, The Book of Winter, My Doomsday Sampler, The Devil’s Cookbook, and most recently, Hurricane in a Bad Mood. Her poems have appeared in Harvard Magazine, The Iowa Review, The Nation, The Massachusetts Review, and Ploughshares, as well as in numerous anthologies. She also won the Gretchen Warren Award from the New England Poetry Club for the best poem published in the previous year.
