New England Poetry Club

PoemCity 2023 Reading
2023-04-08 12:30 - 14:30 (America/New_York) | Massachusetts
NEPC Member Ralph Culver will read with Sydney Lea and Samn Stockwell on Saturday, April 8 at 12:30 PM ET at the Kellogg-Hubbard Library, 135 Main St., in Montpelier, Vermont as part of PoemCity 2023, Montpelier’s annual monthlong celebration of National Poetry Month.
This is a free in-person event and fully accessible.

A Day of Poetry
2023-04-08 | Massachusetts
NEPC Member C. I. Marshall will offer “A Day of Poetry” including, “Poetry Prescriptions” and a reading (in-person events) on April 8 at the Chilmark Library, 522 South Road, Chilmark, MA 02535. These events co-hosted by the Vineyard Haven Library. Twenty minutes time slots are offered via Library sign-up. Marshall will also give an in-person reading at the Chilmark Library on April 8 at 5:30 PM following the “Poetry Prescriptions” event.
To register for “Poetry Prescriptions” email: tthorpe@clamset.org

Reading by Board Member Lynne Viti
2023-04-06 17:00 - 18:00 | Massachusetts
Lynne Viti will read in person with Heather Corbally Bryant, on Thursday, April 6 at 5 p.m. EDT at the Newhouse Center for the Humanities, 2d floor, Green Hall, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481.
Q and A and book signing to follow. The location is accessible. Free and open to the public.
For parking information, see https://www.wellesley.edu/events/attending or call 781-283-2698.

Conversation with Blair Austin
2023-03-31 19:00 - 20:00 | Porter Square Books, 25 White St, Cambridge, MA, 02140, United States
NEPC member Molly Akin will moderate a conversation with Cambridge writer Blair Austin on March 31 at 7 p.m. EDT at Porter Square Books, 25 White St, Cambridge, MA 02140. The location is accessible.

Member Celebration Reading
2023-03-25 15:00 - 17:00 | Online
Please join the New England Poetry Club in a Member Celebration!

March 25, 3-5 pm On Zoom
Twenty-five poets will read from their work, giving us a great opportunity to experience some of the range of NEPC members’ poetry.

To attend, register in advance through this link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIkde6hrT0vHtb55WTe3rBXJ7xu304yxDIX

March Workshop (Members Only)
2023-03-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Online
The NEPC workshop will meet on the third Monday of the month, September-May, from 7-9 pm on Zoom. Current NEPC members are welcome to participate.

Please contact Mary Buchinger if you’d like to take part or to learn more.

Poetry The Art of Words
2023-03-12 14:00 - 16:00 | Massachusetts
Poetry Reading with Joyce Wilson and Steven Riel. Besides the featured readings, there will be an open mike for those who want to read one poem. Look for the signup sheet when you arrive.

Books and Sundry
150 Water Street, Unit 104
Plymouth, MA

Parking is free across the street from this renovated section of Plymouth, but the lots tend to fill up. Give yourselves time to find a space before 2:00 on Sunday.

NEPC February Reading at Fruitlands
2023-02-26 14:00 - 15:00 | Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Rd, Harvard, MA, 01451
Join the New England Poetry Club at Fruitlands Museum for monthly poetry readings this winter. February Poets: Ralph Culver, Carolyn Oliver, and Kent Wittenburg
Sponsoring poetry in New England since 1915, the New England Poetry Club presents readings by poets with ties to the New England states and annual poetry contests. Members of the NEPC benefit from being part of a community of poets, gathering for readings by members with new books, and participating in monthly writing workshops.
Readings are free with admission to the Museum: $5 for nonmember adults, seniors, students, and children ages 5-13. There is no charge for Trustees Members or children under age 5. Please be sure to check in at the Museum Shop (white building) for your admission sticker before proceeding to the Art Gallery.
About the Poets
Ralph Culver- Ralph Culver moved in 1970 from Pittsburgh, where he grew up, to Vermont to do undergraduate studies in creative writing, literature, and studio art at Goddard College–and then pretty much stayed. He also has studied writing and literature at the New School in New York City and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and filmmaking at the University of Vermont. The last couple of years he has divided his time between the Green Mountains and central Pennsylvania. Ralph’s latest collection of poems is A Passable Man (MadHat Press, 2021).
Carolyn Oliver- Carolyn Oliver is the author of three chapbooks and Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry. Her poems appear in The Massachusetts Review, Copper Nickel, TAB Journal, Southern Indiana Review, Superstition Review, Shenandoah, Plume, 32 Poems, and elsewhere. Her awards include the E. E. Cummings Prize from the NEPC, the Goldstein Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review, and the Frank O’Hara Prize from The Worcester Review, where she now serves as editor. Carolyn lives with her family in Massachusetts. Her website is carolynoliver.net.
Kent Wittenburg- Kent Wittenburg resumed writing poetry and short fiction in 2018 after a 34-year hiatus during which he had a career in technology research and research management and raised two children with his wife. He then published his first book of poetry The Story is Beginning and Here I am Soaking Wet: Poems for Forest Bathing. His work has also appeared in The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (translation), La Piccioletta Barca, Beyond Words Magazine, Small Moon, and literary magazines at Hampshire and Amherst colleges. He lives in Charlestown, Massachusetts.

February Workshop (Members Only)
2023-02-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Online

NEPC January Reading at Fruitlands Museum
2023-01-29 14:00 - 15:00 | Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Rd, Harvard, MA, 01451
Join the New England Poetry Club at Fruitlands Museum for monthly poetry readings this winter. January Poets: Jennifer L. Freed, Matthew E. Henry, and Hannah Mahoney
Sponsoring poetry in New England since 1915, the New England Poetry Club presents readings by poets with ties to the New England states and annual poetry contests. Members of the NEPC benefit from being part of a community of poets, gathering for readings by members with new books, and participating in monthly writing workshops.
Readings are free with admission to the Museum: $5 for nonmember adults, seniors, students, and children ages 5-13. There is no charge for Trustees Members or children under age 5. Please be sure to check in at the Museum Shop (white building) for your admission sticker before proceeding to the Art Gallery.
About the Poets
Jennifer L. Freed- Jennifer L Freed’s When Light Shifts: A Memoir in Poems (finalist, 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize) explores the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage, touching on themes of identity and ability, healing and loss, and the altered relationships that emerge in a family crisis. Freed is also the author of These Hands Still Holding, a finalist for the 2013 New Women’s Voices Chapbook competition. Her work has been published in print and on-line journals including Atlanta Review, Connecticut River Review, West Trestle Review, The Worcester Review, and Zone 3, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Orison Anthology.. Other awards include the 2022 Frank O’Hara prize, the 2020 Samuel Washington Allen Prize, and honorable mention for the 2022 Connecticut Poetry Award. Please visit jfreed.weebly.com to learn more.
Matthew E. Henry- Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022), Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020) and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020). He is EIC of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s poetry appears in The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Pangyrus, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Shenandoah, and Solstice. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at www.MEHPoeting.com
Hannah Mahoney- Hannah Mahoney’s debut haiku chapbook, Shifting Light, was published in 2022 by Backbone Press. In 2021, she was a featured poet in A New Resonance 12, an annual collection showcasing emerging voices in haiku. Her haiku have appeared in several anthologies, as well as numerous print and online journals. She is a recipient of the Kaji Aso International Haiku Award and the Kaji Aso International Senryu Award. She also writes “regular” poetry and has had her work published in several journals, including the Ekphrastic Review, Unlost, and One Sentence Poems. She lives in Cambridge and works in children’s publishing.

January Workshop (Members Only)
2023-01-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Online

January Fest Reading
2023-01-08 15:00 - 17:00 | Online
Please join us for a reading featuring four NEPC poets: Terence Culleton, Richard Fein, and Kenneth Lee. The event will take place at 3 PM on January 8 online.
Register Here
About the Readers:
A former Bucks County PA Poet Laureate and two-time Pushcart nominee, Terence Culleton has published several collections of formally crafted narrative and lyric poems, including A Communion of Saints (2011) and Eternal Life (2015), both with Anaphora Literary Press. His most recent book, A Tree and Gone, out through Future Cycle Press, is a collection of formal English sonnets, many of which have appeared in journals and anthologies and/or been short-listed in sonnet contests. A Tree and Gone was recently included in the New York Review of Books Small Press Releases listing and is available at https://amzn.to/3qDrRqN. Mr. Culleton has had work featured on NPR, and he reads widely throughout the Philadelphia and New York regions.
Richard Fein has published twelve books of poetry. Among the latest are Not a Separate Surge: New and Selected Poems and Losing It. He has also published three books of translations of Yiddish poetry, the latest being The Full Pomegranate: Poems of Avrom Sutzkever. He has published three books of prose: a critical study, Robert Lowell; a memoir of Yiddish, The Dance of Leah; and a book of personal essays, Yiddish Genesis. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.
Kenneth Lee is the author of seven books of poetry as well as individual poems published in Nimrod, Poetry East, The Lyric and several others. He is a recently-retired pathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He lives in Jamaica Plain with his wife, Kathleen.

Eileen Cleary, Wendy Drexler, Eric Hyett and Alexis Ivy
2023-01-05 19:00 | Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge, MA, United States
NEPC Board member Wendy Drexler will be reading with Eileen Cleary, Alexis Ivy and Eric Hyett, at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop on Thursday, January 5, 2023, at 7 pm. Sign up for the live or virtual reading: https://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org/upcoming-readings

A Reading to Celebrate Bernadette Mayer
2022-12-22 18:00 | Online
​​NEPC member Chandler Camerato is planning a Zoom marathon reading of Bernadette Mayer’s collection: Midwinter Day.
If you’d like to participate and read a section of the book, please contact Chandler at this address: thismidwinterday@gmail.com
The reading will take place on December 22, 2022, beginning at 06:00 PM Eastern Time.
Register in advance for the link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAodeirrTgtH9TeuE18018LaiPrm9Oy70vD
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

More about Bernadette Mayer and Midwinter Day
Bernadette Mayer (May 12, 1945-November 22, 2022) was “an avant-garde writer associated with the New York School of poets. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Mayer had spent most of her life in New York City. Her collections of poetry include Midwinter Day (1982, 1999), A Bernadette Mayer Reader (1992), The Desire of Mothers to Please Others in Letters (1994), Another Smashed Pinecone (1998), Poetry State Forest (2008), and Works and Days (2016), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
Known for her innovative use of language, Mayer first won critical acclaim for the exhibit Memory, which combined photography and narration. Mayer took one roll of film shot each day during July 1971, arranging the photographs and text in what Village Voice critic A.D. Coleman described as “a unique and deeply exciting document.”
Mayer’s poetry often challenges poetic conventions by experimenting with form and stream-of-consciousness; readers have compared her to Gertrude Stein, Dadaist writers, and James Joyce. Poet Fanny Howe commented in the American Poetry Review on Midwinter Day, a book-length poem written during a single day in Lenox, Massachusetts: “In a language made up of idiom and lyricism, Mayer cancels the boundaries between prose and poetry, … Her search for patterns woven out of small actions confirms the notion that seeing what is is a radical human gesture.” [Excerpted from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/bernadette-mayer]

spoKe 9 Launch
2022-12-21 19:00 | Grolier Poetry Book Shop, Cambridge, MA, United States
spoKe 9 Launch
NEPC Board Member Danielle Legros Georges, Susan Eisenberg, and Suzanne Mercury will read with an introduction by Kevin Gallagher.
To register for in-person: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ejilvn0f17cea2d6&llr=6hztvkcab
To register for Zoom: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ejilvn4b18e43a57&llr=6hztvkcab

December Workshop (Members Only)
2022-12-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Online

An Evening of Poetry and Song
2022-12-14 18:00 - 20:00 | Massachusetts
PERFORMANCES by poets Regie Gibson, Jeffrey Harrison, Megan Marshall, Anna V.Q. Ross, and Lloyd Schwartz with Sarah Chalfey, Jonathan Woody, and composer Scott Wheeler
Join us for a special evening of song and spoken word featuring six acclaimed Boston-area poets. Hear soprano Sarah Chalfy and baritone Jonathan Woody sing each poets’ works set to composer Scott Wheeler’s original music. Wheeler’s settings include references to Bach, Satie, Mozart, and Caccini in a style that straddles the art song of Virgil Thomson and the theatrical music of Stephen Sondheim. The program, including a poignant work from the late Scott Harney, is sure to inspire.

More Information and Tickets Here:

https://community.bostonathenaeum.org/s/events?event=a2K8a000007c2uI

Voices of Poetry at Cambridge Public Library
2022-12-11 14:00 - 15:30 | Cambridge Public Library, 449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA, 02138, United States
Join us for an afternoon of exceptional poetry and music, featuring poetry by Mary Buchinger, Tom Daley, Chard DeNiord, Paul Nemser, and Tzynya Pinchback. Music will be played by guitarist, composer, and musicologist Sebastien Jean.
The City of Cambridge does not discriminate on the basis of disability. The Cambridge Public Library will provide auxiliary aids and services, written materials in alternative formats, and reasonable modifications in policies and procedures to persons with disabilities upon request.
Registration is encouraged, but not required.

NEPC December Reading at Fruitlands Museum
2022-12-11 14:00 - 15:30 | Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Rd, Harvard, MA, 01451
Chris O’Carroll, Kathleen Aguero, Anastasia Vassos
Sponsoring poetry in New England since 1915, the New England Poetry Club presents readings by poets with ties to the New England states and annual poetry contests. Members of the NEPC benefit from being part of a community of poets, gathering for readings by members with new books, and participating in monthly writing workshops.
These poetry readings will be held in the Fruitlands Museum Art Gallery exhibition “Wind from the Hills.” Drawn from Fruitland’s permanent collection, the selection of artworks in this exhibition is inspired by select poems from Fruitlands Museum Founder, Clara Endicott Sears’ 1935 anthology “Wind from the Hills and Other Poems.” The galleries feature nineteenth century landscape paintings, folk art, Shaker textiles, and Indigenous artworks, revealing the complexities of Sears’ artistic interests while reviving her words through highlights of the collection.
Readings are free with admission to the Museum: $5 for nonmember adults, seniors, students, and children ages 5-13. There is no charge for Trustees Members or children under age 5. Please be sure to check in at the Museum Shop (white building) for your admission sticker before proceeding to the Art Gallery.

Chris O’Carroll is the author of two books of poems, The Joke’s on Me, and Abracadabratude. He has been Light magazine’s featured poet, and his work appears in New York City Haiku, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, Extreme Sonnets, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among other collections. Chris has performed widely as a stand-up comedian, and is also a member of Actor’s Equity. His favorite roles on stage have included Frank in Educating Rita, Friar Lawrence in Romeo and Juliet, Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, and Eeyore in Winnie the Pooh.
Kathleen Aguero’s most recent book of poetry is World Happiness Index from Tiger Bark Books. Her other poetry collections include After That, Investigations: The Mystery of the Girl Sleuth, Daughter Of, The Real Weather, and Thirsty Day. She has co-edited three volumes of multi-cultural literature for the University of Georgia Press (A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare) and is consulting poetry editor at Kenyon Review. She teaches in the Solstice low-residency M.F.A. program and in Changing Lives through Literature, an alternative sentencing program. Kathleen has received grants from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and the Elgin Cox foundation.
Anastasia Vassos was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate, 2021). Her chapbook Nostos will be published by Kelsay Books in 2023. Her work has been named a finalist in Two Sylvias’ and Headlight Review’s Chapbook Contests. Her poems appear in Thrush, RHINO, SWWIM, Comstock Review and elsewhere. She is a reader for Lily Poetry Review, speaks three languages, and is a long-distance cyclist. She lives in Boston with her husband.

November Workshop (Members Only)
2022-11-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Online

NEPC November Reading at Fruitlands
2022-11-13 14:00 - 15:30 | Fruitlands Museum, 102 Prospect Hill Rd, Harvard, MA, 01451
David P. Miller, Stephen Honig, Jennifer Millitello
Sponsoring poetry in New England since 1915, the New England Poetry Club presents readings by poets with ties to the New England states and annual poetry contests. Members of the NEPC benefit from being part of a community of poets, gathering for readings by members with new books, and participating in monthly writing workshops.

These poetry readings will be held in the Fruitlands Museum Art Gallery exhibition “Wind from the Hills.” Drawn from Fruitland’s permanent collection, the selection of artworks in this exhibition is inspired by select poems from Fruitlands Museum Founder, Clara Endicott Sears’ 1935 anthology “Wind from the Hills and Other Poems.” The galleries feature nineteenth century landscape paintings, folk art, Shaker textiles, and Indigenous artworks, revealing the complexities of Sears’ artistic interests while reviving her words through highlights of the collection.

David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Denver Quarterly, The Poetry Porch, subTerrain, Muddy River Poetry Review, Constellations, Lily Poetry Review, Caustic Frolic, Clementine Unbound, and Nixes Mate Review, among others. He lives with his wife, the visual artist Jane Wiley, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

Stephen Honig has published four books of poetry and one of short stories. He presently is seeking a publisher for one of his novels and preparing for 2023 publication another volume of recent poetry. He will read from his 2021 collection Laertres in America and from more current works. Steve lives in Newton with his wife, youngest of four children and an intransient dog. While often described as a recovering attorney, Steve asserts that once you become a lawyer there is no known cure. Follow him at www.smhonigauthor.com.

Jennifer Militello is the author of The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books, 2021), called “emotionally resonant” by Publishers Weekly and “stunningly original” by Green Mountains Review, and the memoir Knock Wood, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize (Dzanc Books, 2019), as well as four previous collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College.

Free with Museum Admission

October Workshop (Members Only)
2022-10-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Online

NEPC October Reading at the Old Manse
2022-10-16 14:00 - 15:30 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
Join the New England Poetry Club outdoors in the open air tent at the Old Manse for free poetry readings on Sunday afternoons this September and October.
October Poets
Mark Pawlak, LR Berger, Aidan Rooney
Open Mic after the readings & we encourage people to bring selections by Levertov to read.
About the Poets

Mark Pawlak’s book-length memoir My Deniversity: Knowing Denise Levertov was published in fall 2021 by MadHat Press. He is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Reconnaissance (Hanging Loose, 2016), and the editor of six anthologies. His work has been translated into German, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish, and has been performed at Teatr Polski in Warsaw. His poems appeared widely in anthologies such as The Best American Poetry, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, and in the literary magazines New American Writing, Arrowsmith, and Mother Jones, among many others. He teaches mathematics at the UMass Boston.
L.R. Berger will be reading from her new collection of poems, Indebted to Wind (Deerbrook Editions). Her book, The Unexpected Aviary, received the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry. With the late Palestinian artist and writer, Kamal Boullatta, she assisted in the translation from the Arabic of Beginnings, by Adonis (Pyramid Atlantic Press). She’s been grateful for support from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN New England, the NH State Council on the Arts, MacDowell, the Blue Mountain Center, and the American Academy in Rome.
Aidan Rooney’s most recent poetry collection is Go There (Madhat Press, 2020). Earlier collections, Day Release (2000) and Tightrope (2007), are published by The Gallery Press. Aidan grew up in Monaghan, Ireland, and has been a teacher and coach since 1988 at Thayer Academy in Massachusetts. Aidan is currently translating Emmelie Prophète’s Les Villages de Dieu (Mémoire d’Encrier, 2020).

NEPC Prize Winner Reading
2022-10-02 15:00 - 17:00 | Online
Register for the Reading Here

September Workshop (Members Only)
2022-09-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Online

NEPC September Reading at the Old Manse
2022-09-18 14:00 - 15:30 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
Join the New England Poetry Club outdoors in the open air tent at the Old Manse for free poetry readings on Sunday afternoons this September and October.
September Poets
Marcia Karp, Alan Smith Soto, Dr. Parmit Singh
Q&A to follow the reading
About the Poets
In addition to her If by Song (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2021; NEPC Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize finalist, 2022), Marcia Karp has published poems and translations in journals and anthologies in England and America, including The Times Literary Supplement; Harvard Review; Agenda; Literary Imagination; The Guardian; Ploughshares; Partisan Review; Penguin Books’ Catullus in English and Petrarch in English; Joining Music with Reason: 34 Poets, British and American, Oxford 2004-2009 (Waywiser); and The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (Norton). She taught literary and editorial matters at Boston University after earning graduate degrees there.
Alan Smith Soto, a resident of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and a member of the Jamaica Pond Poets, was born in San José, Costa Rica. He is the author of three books of poems, Fragmentos de alcancía (Treasure Jar Fragments) (Cambridge: Asaltoalcielo editores, 1998), Libro del lago (Pond poems) (Madrid: Árdora Ediciones, 2014) and Hasta que no haya luna (Until There is no Moon) (2021, Huerga y Fierro Editores, Madrid). His translation of Robert Creeley’s Life and Death (Vida y muerte) was published in 2000 (Madrid: Árdora Ediciones). His poetry has been anthologized in Poetas sin fronteras (Madrid: Verbum, 2000) and Sabia savia (Segovia: Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Esteban Vicente, 2006).
Dr. Parmit Kumar Singh is from a beautiful village, Paniyadih, in the Siwan district of the Indian state of Bihar. Siwan is famous as the birthplace of the first president of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad. Dr. Singh is a poet and writer. He has published poetry books on Kindle, one in each language: Hindi, English, and his native language Bhojpuri. He received several awards for his poetry and writing at the university level during his college days (2001–2008). He also received an award from the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs for the National Youth Parliament Competition in 2001. In 2019, he was the keynote speaker at an event organized by the Bihar Jharkhand Association of New England (BJANE) on two Bhojpuri poets, Mahakavi Vidyapati and Bhikhari Thakur. He has recited his poems at events or open mic programs organized by several groups, such as the Annual India Poetry Meeting at Harvard University, South Asian Poets of New England, the Boston Poetry Slam, Modern Party Art, and the New England Poetry Club. The Harvard Medical Postdoc Association highlighted his poetry to celebrate “Women Through Art.” Moreover, he participated in the “Boston Renaissance” series, an initiative of the Woodberry Poetry Room, to promote collaborative writing. Currently, he works as a scientist at the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School. His interest is in understanding the mechanism of the integration of HIV-1 into the host genome. In his spare time, Dr. Singh enjoys cooking, reading, and spending time with friends.

Poetry Reading: Chen Chen and Natalie Shapero
2022-08-21 15:00 - 16:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Chen Chen’s second book of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is out from BOA Editions this September. His first book, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), was long-listed for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award. A 2022 United States Artists Fellow, he serves on the poetry faculty for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast.
Natalie Shapero is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection POPULAR LONGING. Natalie’s writing has appeared in The Nation, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere.

Sam Cornish Poetry Award: Elizabeth McKim and Askia Touré
2022-08-07 15:00 - 16:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
The Sam Cornish Award is given in recognition of a poet of long-standing artistry, literary advocacy, and generous mentorship who has made a significant impact on the literary communities of New England and beyond.
Elizabeth Gordon McKim is a poet, teacher, and spoken word artist, whose roots are embedded in the oral tradition of song, story and chant. Born in Hartford Connecticut in 1938, she has authored six collections of poetry, including The Red Thread (2003) and Lovers in the Free Fall (2020). She is the poet laureate of the European Graduate School for Expressive Arts, and is affectionately known as the Jazz Poet of Lynn. McKim’s poetry is both local and global, inclusive, wide ranging, incisive, freedom-seeking, bluesy, jazzy, spirited and streetwise. She inspires and has been inspired by poets and writers of diverse ages, traditions, and cultures. She engages with language making, origin stories, works of the imagination and the pressing issues of our life and times. She throws out the life-line in long chanting lines, and brings it back home in the compression of a haiku.
Askia M. Touré is one of the pioneers of the Black Arts/Black Aesthetics movement and the Africana Studies movement. A co-founding Architect of the eminent Black Arts Movement, Mr. Touré revolutionized African-American literature with the creation of an ethnic-based Aesthetic. In 1967/68, at San Francisco State University, he taught African history in the first Africana Studies program located at a majority university. Ishmael Reed has called Askia Touré “the unsung poet laureate of cosmopolitan Black Nationalism.” His books include From the Pyramids to the Projects, winner of the 1989 American Book Award for Literature; African Affirmations: Songs for Patriots: New Poems, 1994 to 2004, and Mother Earth Responds. In 1996, he was awarded the prestigious Gwendolyn Brooks Lifetime Achievement award from the Gwendolyn Brooks Institute in Chicago. His screenplay for “Double Dutch: A Gathering of Women,” won the 2003 Roxbury International Film Festival Best Director Award. Since August 2019, Mr. Touré has been reading with the Makanda Orchestra, beginning with a celebration of the South African musician Ndikho Xaba.

Golden Rose Poetry Award: Patricia Smith
2022-07-17 15:00 - 16:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Patricia Smith is the winner of the 2022 Golden Rose, one of America’s oldest literary prizes. Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tin House and in Best American Poetry, Best American Essays and Best American Mystery Stories.
She is a Guggenheim fellow, a Civitellian, a National Endowment for the Arts grant recipient, a finalist for the Neustadt Prize, a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. Patricia is a Distinguished Professor for the City University of New York and an instructor in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada University and in the Vermont College of Fine Arts Post-Graduate Residency Program.

Poetry Reading: Martha Collins and Philip Nikolayev
2022-07-10 15:00 - 16:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Martha Collins has published ten volumes of poetry, most recently Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), which won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. She has also published four volumes of co-translated Vietnamese poetry, most recently Black Stars: Poems by Ngo Tu Lap (Milkweed, 2013, with the author), and edited a number of anthologies. Her newest book of poems, Casualty Reports, is forthcoming in fall 2022.
Philip Nikolayev is a Russo-American bilingual poet living in Boston. He is a polyglot and translates poetry from several languages. Nikolayev’s verse collections include Monkey Time (Verse/Wave Books, winner of the 2001 Verse Prize) and Letters from Aldenderry (Salt). He co-edits Fulcrum, a serial anthology of poetry and critical writing. His bilingual edition, The Star of Dazzling Ecstasy: 79 Poems by Alexander Pushkin, Translated by Philip Nikolayev has been published by Tiptop Street.
