New England Poetry Club

Marcia Karp; A Poet in the House Workshop.
2023-10-29 14:00 - 15:30 (America/New_York) | MA
An exclusive event for NEPC members: “An Order the Leaves Allow”
“You can write Click on this link to register for this event”

Marcia Karp taught literary and editorial matters at Boston University. She has poems and translations in 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) and in her collection, If by Song (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021).
Join on Zoom, from 2:00 to 3:30 pm,for this discussion of the variety of ways volumes of poems are ordered. Since a book itself is a participant in, and a witness to, the order within it, we will begin by thinking about how the material world of poems – the pages they are on and the variety of books in which they have been collected – might effect and affect their ordering.
Most of us hope that our own ordering will be discovered by attentive readers whose understanding of what we have done would then be deepened. This Poet in the House session will consider particular arrangements of poems, including those you might be working on, as well as general matters. Please come. Enthusiastic disorder is welcome.

Poet in the House with Marcia Karp
An Order the Leaves Allow
This Poet in the House gathering will be a place to talk about a variety of ways volumes of poems, including your own, might be ordered. Since a book itself is a participant in, and a witness to, the order within it, we will begin by thinking about how the material world of poems – the pages they are on and the variety of books in which they have been collected – might effect and affect their ordering.
Papyrus scrolls allowed certain orders that might have some bearing on our own digital scrolls. Books with a spine, those things beloved of centuries of readers and writers, make other things possible.
One way to look at how a volume might be ordered, is to start with pieces of papyrus or paper and work backwards. The poem we call “My Cat Jeoffry” was found somewhere in “sixteen folio pages closely written on both sides in the handwriting of Christopher Smart.” If possible, you will be sent pages that duplicate some of those and together we will try to make sense, ordered sense, of what was once considered madness, and then seen as greatness.
Some of us hope that our ordering will be discovered by attentive readers whose understanding of what we have done would then be deepened. George Herbert and Sylvia Path took great with arrangements, only to have those undone by editors. In any case, readers have their own ways of going through what they read. Anne Ferry wrote “anthologies have the advantage in containing discontinuous, short pieces suited to the desultory mode of reading that has come to be called dipping.” True, too, of volumes of a single author’s poems. What’s a poet to do?
This Poet in the House session will consider particular arrangements of poems, including those you might be working on, as well as general concerns. Please come. Enthusiastic disorder is welcome.

CANCELLED: Poetry at the Old Manse – October
2023-10-22 14:00 - 15:00 | MA
This outdoor reading is cancelled due to the weather forecast: to be rescheduled.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2023 AT 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Join the Trustees and the New England Poetry Club outdoors in the open air tent at the Old Manse for free poetry readings on select Sunday afternoons.
Extend your visit by signing up for a tour of the historic house prior to or following the reading. Learn more about tour offerings and pre-register for house tours here: https://thetrustees.org/place/the-old-manse/. Plan to come early or stay late for a stroll around the orchard and along the banks of the Concord River or bring a picnic to enjoy on the grounds.

October Poets:
Mary Buchinger is the author of six collections of poetry; her most recent books are Navigating the Reach and Virology; her work has appeared in AGNI, Maine Review, Plume, Salamander, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, and elsewhere. Buchinger grew up on a farm in Michigan, volunteered for the Peace Corps, and earned a doctorate in linguistics from Boston University. She teaches at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and serves on the board of the New England Poetry Club.
Dr. Sara Epstein is a clinical psychologist who integrates mindfulness practices, including writing, in her psychotherapy work with children and adults. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly, Amethyst Review, Chest Journal, Nixes Mate Review, Plainsongs, and museum of americana, among others. Bar of Rest is her first book of poems, published this year by Kelsay Books.
“Transparent, vulnerable and strong, Sara’s poems open the reader to a courageous journey of imagery and metaphor that gracefully land in insight, understanding and healing.”
––Lani Peterson, Psy.D, psychologist and story coach
Merryn Rutledge is a poet, reviewer, and teacher of poetry as craft. Sweet Juice and Ruby-Bitter Seed (Kelsay Books, 2023) features poems about her forebears in the American South, challenges like grief, and reflections on the costs of racism. Her poems have appeared widely in journals throughout the world and in several anthologies, such as All Shall Be Well (Amythest Press, 2023), an anthology celebrating the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich. Merryn’s reviews of new poetry books by women have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly and Pedestal, for example. After earning a Masters and BA with honors in English from Smith College, Merryn taught literature, writing, and film studies at Phillips Exeter Academy. In a second career, she earned a doctorate in leadership and led a national leadership development consulting firm. During that period, essays based on her field research on leadership were published in the peer-reviewed journals and in books. Merryn enjoys working for social justice causes, singing, dancing, and playing on the shore near her home south of Boston.

ZOOM. 2023 contest prize-winners
2023-10-08 15:00 - 17:00 | MA
Sunday, October 8, 3 pm (ET via ZOOM)

NEPC 2023 Prize-Winners’ Reading by the authors of the prize-winning and honorable-mention poems from our annual contests:

Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, for full-length poetry collections
Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize
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

Advance registration required

Poetry at the Old Manse – September
2023-09-24 14:00 - 15:00 | MA
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2023 AT 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Join the New England Poetry Club outdoors in the open air tent at the Old Manse for free poetry readings on select Sunday afternoons.
Extend your visit by signing up for a tour of the historic house prior to or following the reading. Learn more about tour offerings and pre-register for house tours here. Plan to come early or stay late for a stroll around the orchard and along the banks of the Concord River or bring a picnic to enjoy on the grounds.

September Poets:
Frances Donovan is the author of Arboretum in a Jar (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023). Her chapbook Mad Quick Hand of the Seashore was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Donovan’s poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Solstice, Heavy Feather Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Her interviews of other poets can be found at The Rumpus and on her website, www.gardenofwords.com. Donovan holds an MFA in poetry from Lesley University and is a certified Poet Educator with Mass Poetry. A poem of hers has been displayed at Boston City Hall. Donovan’s work deals with themes of home, family, intergenerational trauma, and sexual and gender identity. She remembers fondly the summer of 1998, when she drove a bulldozer in a Pride parade while wearing a bustier.
Marybeth Rua-Larsen lives on the South Coast of Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Magma, Orbis, Crannóg, Measure, and American Arts Quarterly, among others. She won the 2011 Over the Edge New Writer of the Year Competition in Poetry in Galway, Ireland; the 2016 Parent-Writer Fellowship in Poetry from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing; the 2017 Luso-American Fellowship for the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. She was a Hawthornden Fellow in Scotland in 2019. Her chapbook Nothing In-Between is available from Barefoot Muse Press.
Susan Jo Russell is a mathematics educator from Somerville, MA. Her poems have appeared in Bellingham Review, Chautauqua, Cider Press Review, Comstock Review, EcoTheo Review, Leon, Passager, and elsewhere, and she has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poem, “Tree,” won the 2018 Amy Lowell Prize from the New England Poetry Club and “Membrane,” appears in the collection, From the Farther Shore: Discovering Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry. She co-directs the Brookline (MA) Poetry Series.

DETAILS
Date: SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2023
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
VENUE
Old Manse 269 Monument St
Concord, MA 01742 + Google Map
Phone:(978) 369-3909 View Venue Website

Nature Poetry in the Park
2023-09-03 17:00 - 18:00 | MA
Sunday, September 3, 2023. Free and open to the public. Fully accessible (with rest rooms)

Magazine Beach Park Nature Center, 668 Memorial Dr, Cambridge, MA 02139.
Three poets, Linda Haviland Conte, Wendy Drexler, and Denise Washington from the board of the New England Poetry Club look forward to sharing poems that explore our complex and intimate relationship with the natural world-nature as solace and nourishment, and nature under threat from habitat loss and climate change. In the spirit of eco-poetry, these are poems that comfort, but also that urge and awaken, taking as their premise that the human and natural worlds are interdependent. After the poets share their poems, there will be time for comments and questions.
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). Linda lives in Somerville, MA.
Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, was published in September 2022 by Terrapin Books. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, and The Threepenny Review, among others. She’s been the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, since 2018, and is programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club. Wendy lives in Belmont, MA.
Denise Washington is so excited to be using the power of poetry to positively bring people together one poem at a time! She is Founder, CEO and Curator of her #Pop-Up Poetry Series, A Denise Plays Hard Event Featuring Akili Jamal Haynes, Becoming Chibuzo, #Pop-Up Poetry’s Multi-disciplinary Artist! She was born and raised in Roxbury, Mass., is an Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts Alum, a voice student of the late John Andrew Ross, a mentee of the late Ed Bullins, and a New England Poetry Club Advisory Board member.

Poetry at the Old Manse – August 2023
2023-08-27 02:00 - 15:00 | MA
SUNDAY, AUGUST 27, 2023 AT 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT

Join the New England Poetry Club outdoors in the open air tent at the Old Manse for free poetry readings on select Sunday afternoons.
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.
Extend your visit by signing up for a tour of the historic house prior to or following the reading. Learn more about tour offerings and pre-register for house tours here. Plan to come early or stay late for a stroll around the orchard and along the banks of the Concord River or bring a picnic to enjoy on the grounds.

August Poets:

Cynthia Bargar is Associate Poetry editor at Pangyrus. Her poems have appeared in many journals including Nixes Mate, SWWIM Every Day, Driftwood Press, Rogue Agent, Book of Matches, LUMINA and in the book, Our Provincetown: Intimate Portraits by Barbara E. Cohen (Provincetown Arts Press, 2021). Her poetry collection, Sleeping in the Dead Girl’s Room, came out from Lily Poetry Review Books in January, 2022. Cynthia lives with her partner, cartoonist Nick Thorkelson, in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Tom Laughlin is a professor and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Middlesex Community College. He was a founding editor of Vortext, a literary journal of Massasoit Community College, a volunteer staff reader for many years for Ploughshares, and he has taught literature classes in two Massachusetts prisons. His poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Ibbetson Street, Drunk Monkeys, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Blue Mountain Review, Superpresent Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, Molecule, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, The Rest of the Way, was released by Finishing Line Press in August 2022. His website is www.TomLaughlinPoet.com
Jess Levens lives with his wife, sons and dogs in Holliston, Massachusetts, where he draws inspiration from New England’s landscapes and history. His debut chapbook, A Break in the Spine, is available from Alien Buddha Press, and his poetry has been published in The Dillydoun Review, Roi Fainéant Press and Prometheus Dreaming. Jess is a Marine Corps veteran and Northeastern University alum. Follow him on Twitter @levensworks.

DETAILS
Date: SUNDAY, AUGUST 27, 2023
2:00 pm – 3:00 pm
VENUE
Old Manse269 Monument St
Concord, MA 01742 + Google Map
Phone:(978) 369-3909View Venue Website

Poetry Reading, New Books. Mary Buchinger & Hilary Sallick
2023-08-26 15:00 - 17:00 | MA
Saturday, August 26, 3-5 pm

Join NEPC board members Mary Buchinger and Hilary Sallick
on Saturday, August 26, 3-5 PM, for a joint book launch.

Mary Buchinger will read from NAVIGATING THE REACH (Salmon Poetry)
and Hilary Sallick will read from LOVE IS A SHORE (Lily Poetry Review Books).

The event will be held at the St. James Parish Hall, 1991 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge,
near the Porter Square MBTA stop.
Book signing and reception will follow the reading.

This is an accessible venue. All are welcome!

Mary Buchinger will read from
NAVIGATING THE REACH (Salmon Poetry)

Hilary Sallick will read from
LOVE IS A SHORE (Lily Poetry Review Books).

Poetry Reading: Laura Budofsky Wisniewski & Rajiv Mohabir
2023-08-20 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Laura Budofsky Wisniewski is the author of Sanctuary, Vermont which won the 2020 Orison Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. She is also author of the chapbook, How to Prepare Bear. She was a finalist in the 2022 Narrative Poetry Prize, runner up in the 2021 Missouri Review Miller Audio Prize, and winner of Ruminate Magazine’s 2020 Janet B. Mccabe Poetry Prize, the 2019 Poetry International Prize, and the 2014 Passager Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry International, Narrative Magazine, The Missouri Review, The Chicago Quarterly Review, Image, and other journals. Laura lives quietly in a small town in Vermont.
Rajiv Mohabir was selected for the 2014 Intro Prize in Poetry by Four Way Books for his The Taxidermistʻs Cut, Rajiv Mohabir’s first collection is a finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry. His second book The Cowherd’s Son won the 2015 Kundiman Prize. In 2021 Mohabir’s poetry collection Cutlish was longlisted for the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award. Mohabir was also awarded the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets for his translation of Lalbihari Sharma’s I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara, published originally in 1916. In 2019 Mohabir also received the New Immigrant Writing Award from Restless Books for his memoir Antiman. His memoir received a Forward Indies Award for LGBTQ+ Adult Nonfiction. Winner of the inaugural chapbook prize by Ghostbird Press for Acoustic Trauma, he is the author of three other multilingual chapbooks: Thunder in the Courtyard: Kajari Poems, A Veil You’ll Cast Aside, na mash me bone, and na bad-eye me. In 2021 he collaborated with Aotearoa based poet Rushi Vyas to write Between Us, Not Half a Saint. While in New York working as a public school teacher, he also produced the nationally broadcast radio show KAVIhouse on JusPunjabi (2012-2013). He received his PhD in English from the University of Hawai’i and teaches in the BFA/MFA program in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department at Emerson College.

2023 Golden Rose Award with Afaa M. Weaver
2023-08-13 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Afaa M. Weaver (formerly Michael S.Weaver) is the author of sixteen collections of poetry, several plays, and some short fiction. As a journalist in Baltimore, where he was born in 1951, Afaa wrote for the Baltimore Sun, the Baltimore Afro-American, and other papers. His awards include a Fulbright appointment, a Guggenheim fellowship, multiple Pushcarts, the PDI Award in playwriting, the Kingsley Tufts, and the 2019 St. Botolph Distinguished Artist Award. His collaborative translation and cultural communication projects with Chinese poets in the U.S. and abroad has earned him national recognition in China, and in Taiwan. He has taught at several colleges and universities in the U.S. and in Taiwan. At Simmons University he held the Alumnae Chair in English for twenty years. Afaa’s newest collection of poetry is A Fire in the Hills (Red Hen Press). He lives in upstate New York with his wife Kristen Skedgell Weaver.
photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Poetry Reading: Enzo Silon Surin & Joan Houlihan
2023-07-23 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, librettist, publisher and social advocate. He is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including When My Body Was A Clinched Fist, winner of the 21st Annual Massachusetts Book Awards for Poetry and the forthcoming collection, American Scapegoat. He is co-editor of Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience, and the recipient of a Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, a PEN New England Discovery Award and a 2020 Denis Diderot Grant as an Artist-in-Residence at Chateau d’Orquevaux in France. Surin teaches creative writing and literature at Bunker Hill Community College and is also Founding Editor and Publisher at Central Square Press and Founder/Executive Director at the Faraday Publishing Company, Inc., a nonprofit literary services and social advocacy organization.
Joan Houlihan is the author of six poetry collections, most recently It Isn’t a Ghost if it Lives in Your Chest, winner of the 2021 Julia Ward Howe Award from the Boston Author’s Club. Her previous collections include Shadow-feast, named a must-read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book; The Mending Worm, winner of the New Issues Green Rose Award; The Us, named a must-read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book; the sequel Ay; and Hand-Held Executions: Poems & Essays. Her poems have been anthologized in The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries; The Book of Irish-American Poetry, 18th Century to Present; and others. She currently serves on the faculty of Lesley University’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is Professor of Practice in Poetry at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Houlihan is the founding director of the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.

Poetry in Translation: Dzvinia Orlowsky & Nidia Hernandez
2023-07-09 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Pushcart prize poet, an award-winning translator, and a founding editor of Four Way Books. She’s published six poetry collections by Carnegie Mellon University Press including A Handful of Bees, Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones, and Bad Harvest, a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in Poetry. Her poem sequence “The (Dis)enchanted Desna” was selected by former national poet laureate Robert Pinsky as a 2019 winner of the New England Poetry Club Samuel Washington Allen Prize. Her award-winning co-translations with Ali Kinsella from the Ukrainian of Natalka Bilotserkivets’s poems, Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow, was published by Lost Horse Press in 2021. She is Writer-in-Residence at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Nidia Hernández was born in Venezuela, and has been living in the US since 2018. She is a poet and translator of Portuguese poetry, editor, broadcaster, poetry curator, and radio producer. Nidia directs the editorial project lamajadesnuda.com, which won the 2011 WSA prize for Cultural Heritage. She curates Poesiaudio Arrowsmith Press Sundara Ramaswamy Prize 2021, for her assemblage of The Land of Mild Light, selected poems of Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas. She edited in 2022 The Invisible Borders of Time; Five Female Latin American Poets, and is a contributor for Mercurius Magazine. She has presented works drawn from the 34 years of her radio program (also called La maja desnuda) which has more than 1,768 broadcasts. Currently, she is broadcasting the program through UPV Radio 102.5 FM in Valencia, Spain. In 2023 she was invited to serve on the board of the New England Poetry Club.

Poetry Reading: Sam Cornish Award with Harris Gardner & Ruth Lepson
2023-06-25 15:00 - 17:00 | 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.
Harris Gardner has been the Poetry Editor of Ibbetson Street since 2010. He has authored four poetry collections: Chalice of Eros, co-authored with Lainie Senechal; Lest They Become; Among Us; and No Time for Death. His numerous publication credits include The Harvard Review, A Poet’s Siddur, Midstream, Cool Plums, Rosebud, Fulcrum, and many others. He co-founded, with Lainie Senechal, Tapestry of Voices and the Boston National Poetry Month Festival; he also co-founded, with Doug Holder, Breaking Bagels with the Bards. Gardner was Poet-in-Residence at Endicott College from 2002-2005. He founded and hosted many poetry venues over the past 22 years, including Boston Borders, Poetry in The Chapel Series (Forest Hills Cemetery), and Mad Poets Café (Pawtucket, RI). In 2015, Gardner received a Life Time Achievement Award from Ibbetson Street Press and a Citation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He is currently a member of the Academy of American Poets.
Ruth Lepson recently retired after 25 years from the New England Conservatory of Music, and is now poet-in-residence emerita. Her books are Dreaming in Color, Morphology and I Went Looking for You, ask anyone, and on the way: new and selected poems. Her anthology, Poetry from Sojourner: A Feminist Anthology, was published by the University of Illinois Press. Her poems have appeared in many periodicals, such as Let the Bucket Down, Ploughshares, Agni, Ping Pong, Ecopoetics, spoKe, and The Brooklyn Rail, and New American Poetry and other anthologies. Lepson has taught at Boston College, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, The Kennedy School, Bentley College, Northeastern, and other Boston-area colleges. Lepson is most proud of volunteering for Oxfam America for 14 years, for which she set up poetry readings to raise money for famine relief. She has collaborated with musicians in all sorts of ways and performed in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Boston. She lives in Cambridge.

Longfellow Student Poetry Awards
2023-06-04 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Kick off the summer with a celebration of emerging poets! The Longfellow Student Poetry Contest is an annual competition of original poetry, with categories for high school, middle school, and elementary school students. Students will read their winning poems at this ceremony, followed by a celebration on the lawn.
The ceremony concludes with the presentation of the Victor Howes Prize to Mary Gracie Meijer, an undergraduate student at Boston College studying English and Medical Humanities.
The contest aims to encourage and celebrate young poets in exploring their craft, and is co-sponsored by the Frank Buda Memorial Fund, New England Poetry Club, Friends of the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters, and National Park Service.

Poetry at the Old Manse - May
2023-05-28 14:00 - 15:00 | 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 select Sunday afternoons.
Extend your visit by signing up for a tour of the historic house prior to or following the reading. Learn more about tour offerings and pre-register for house tours here. Plan to come early or stay late for a stroll around the orchard and along the banks of the Concord River or bring a picnic to enjoy on the grounds. Register here.
May Poets:
DeWitt Henry’s most recent books are FOUNDLINGS: FOUND POEMS FROM PROSE, (Gazebo Books/Life Before Man, 2022) and RESTLESS FOR WORDS: POEMS (Finishing Line Press, 2023). His memoir, ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS: FAMILY ESSAYS (Mad Hat Press), was long listed for the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay, 2022. TRIM RECKONINGS: POEMS will be published by Pierian Springs Press in fall 2023. He was the founding editor of Ploughshares and is Prof. Emeritus at Emerson College. Details at www.dewitthenry.com.
Elizabeth Sylvia lives with her family in southeastern Massachusetts, where she teaches English. Her first book None But Witches (2022), poems inspired by Shakespeare’s female characters, was the winner of the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. Sylvia’s work is upcoming or has recently appeared in Verse Daily, Carve, Cherry Tree, Lily Poetry Review, On the Seawall, The Southern Review, and SWWIM, among others. She has been a semi- or finalist in competitions sponsored by DIAGRAM, 30 West, and Wolfson Press; has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes; and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day.
Pamela Wax, an ordained rabbi, is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and the forthcoming chapbook, Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have received a Best of the Net nomination and awards from Crosswinds, Paterson Literary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. She has been published in literary journals including Barrow Street, Tupelo Quarterly, About Place Journal, Mudfish, Connecticut River Review, Naugatuck River Review, Pedestal, Split Rock Review, Sixfold, and Passengers Journal. She offers spirituality and poetry workshops online from her home in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.

The Loom Poetry: Katie Farris & Ilya Kaminsky
2023-04-30 16:30 - 18:30 | The Brick Church, 13 Canal Street, Harrisville, NH, United States
Katie Farris & Ilya Kaminsky will read in person on Sunday, April 30 at 4:30 EDT as part of The Loom, Poetry in Harrisville reading series at the Brick Church, 13 Canal Street, Harrisville NH.

CANCELLED: Poetry at the Old Manse - April
2023-04-30 14:00 - 15:00 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
Due to inclement weather, this reading has been cancelled. It will be rescheduled at some point in the future.

New England Poetry Club at 3rd Space
2023-04-18 18:00 - 21:00 | MA
A FREE evening of poetry readings and music at 3rd Space!
Presented by The New England Poetry Club, local poets Toni Bee, Charles Coe, and David Miller will perform readings. There will also be a performance from folk duo Crowes Pasture.
Complimentary refreshments will be provided; no registration is required.
Tue, Apr. 18, 2023
6:00 PM — 9:00 PM
12 SUMMER STREET
BOSTON, MA 02110

April Workshop (Members Only)
2023-04-17 19:00 - 21:00 | MA
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.

Three Poets @ The Keene Toadstool
2023-04-15 11:00 - 13:00 | Toadstool Bookshops, 12 Emerald St., Keene, NH, 03431, United States
Presented by New England Poetry Club & The Keene Toadstool
Jennifer R. Edwards’ full-length, debut collection is Unsymmetrical Body (Finishing Line Press, 2022). She won the 2022 New England Poetry Club Amy Lowell Prize and was honorably mentioned in 2020. She received a Pushcart Prize nomination from the Poetry Society of NH, a Thomas Lux Poetry Fellowship at Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and support from the Colgate Writers Conference and VCFA Postgraduate Writers' Conference. Her poems appear in literary magazines including Mom Egg Review, One Art, Gyroscope Review, Passengers Journal, Terrain, Literary Mama, Snapdragon, Tiny Spoon, The Racket, Remington Review, FreezeRay Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, and the anthologies Smoky Quartz: Tenth Anniversary Anthology (Monadnock Writers’ Group, 2022) and COVID Spring: Granite State Pandemic Poems (Hobblebush Press, 2020). She currently curates for Button Poetry. Originally from Vermont, she now makes Concord, NH her home and works as an educator and preschool speech-language pathologist. See her work and get in touch at https://linktr.ee/JenEdwards ; Twitter Jennife00420145; Instagram Jenedwards8;
https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/jennifer_r_edwards.
Rebecca Kaiser Gibson’s debut novel is The Promise of a Normal Life (Arcade Publishing, Feb.2023). Her poetry collections are Girl as Birch, (2022), and OPINEL (2015) Bauhan Publishing. Her work is in these reviews: Agni; Barrow Street; Field; Green Mountains; Greensboro; Interim; Harvard; Massachusetts; Ocean State; Passengers; Salamander; Slate; Tupelo; Antigonish; and VerseDaily, among others. She’s received fellowships from MacDowell, Massachusetts Cultural Council, VSC and VCCA. As Fulbright Scholar she taught in India. She taught poetry at Tufts University for 23 years, then founded, and runs The Loom, Poetry in Harrisville, a poetry reading series.
J. Kates is a minor poet and a literary translator. He has been granted three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. He has published three chapbooks of his own poems and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents). He is the translator of a dozen books of Russian and French poetry, edited two anthologies of translations, and collaborated with Stephen A. Sadow on a half dozen books of Latin American and Peninsular Spanish poetry in translation.

An Evening of Poetry with C.I. Marshall
2023-04-11 17:30 - 19:00 | MA
NEPC Member C.I. Marshall will read in person from her prize-winning book, “The Locksmith Journeys Into the Afterlife” at The Tidepool Book Shop, 372 Chandler Street, Worcester, MA 01602 on Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 5:30pm. Join us for an evening of poetry with C.I. (Consuelo) Marshall reading from and discussing her new book. Book signing to follow the reading.

PoemCity 2023 Reading
2023-04-08 12:30 - 14:30 | MA
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 | MA
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 | MA
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

Poetry The Art of Words
2023-03-12 14:00 - 16:00 | MA
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.
