New England Poetry Club

NEPC at Westwood: Cindy Ellen Hill, Fred Gerhard, B. Fulton Jennes
2025-01-26 14:00 - 16:00 (America/New_York) | Westwood Public Library, 660 High Street, Westwood, MA, 02090, United States
The New England Poetry Club is delighted to present a reading by three poets at the Westwood (Mass.) Public Library! The reading will happen on Sunday, January 26, 2025, at 2:00 p.m. The poets will be introduced by Lynne Viti, Westwood Poet Laureate and a member of the NEPC Advisory Board. This event is free and open to the public.
PLEASE NOTE: the Library building itself opens at 2 pm. We will begin the reading as promptly as possible.
Fred Gerhard’s book, Drifting to “Hello” (Khotso Publishing), arrived in 2023. His chapbook, Lilacs Still Bloom in Ashburnham (Local Gems Poetry Press), came out in 2023, with a second edition from Petronella Press in 2024. His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Entropy Magazine, Friends Journal, Harpy Hybrid Review, Pif Magazine, POETiCA REViEW, and other magazines and anthologies. His poems have been in various galleries, including the Fitchburg Art Museum, and have been voiced by actor Kirk Lawrence-Howard on YouTube. He is one of the 2023 winners of the Poetry in the Pines contest in New Hampshire. And he is the 2024 poetry winner for Art on the Trails in Massachusetts. He is an editor for Quabbin Quills and for Smoky Quartz. And he is one of the founders of the New Dawn Writers’ Group in Ashburnham where he leads monthly poetry workshops and hosts open mic nights.
Cindy Ellen Hill is the author of Mosaic: Poems from Travels in Italy (Wild Dog Press 2024), Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022), Wild Earth and Other Sonnets (Antrim Press 2021). Her collection Love in a Time of Climate Change is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press 2025. Primarily a formalist, her poetry has been included in Treehouse Literary Review, Flint Hills Review, Anacapa Review, and The Lyric. Her essays on sonnet elements have recently appeared in American Poetry Review and Unlikely Stories. Hill holds an MFA in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, where her creative thesis was a novel in sonnet verse. She writes, plays fiddle, and is obsessed with gardening in Middlebury, Vermont.

B. Fulton Jennes is an award-winning poet whose work has appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including CALYX, Comstock Review, Extreme Sonnets, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. In 2022, “Glyphs of a Gentle Going” was awarded the Lascaux Prize; another poem, “Father to Son,” won the 2023 New Millennium Award. Her collection Blinded Birds received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. FLOWN—an elegy-in-verse to her late sister—was published by Porkbelly Press in April 2024. Jennes is poet laureate emerita of Ridgefield, CT, where she directs the Poetry in the Garden reading series each summer and served for many years as poet-in-residence at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum.

Winter Solstice Poetry Reading
2024-12-28 18:00 - 20:00 | Open Doors Yoga Studios, 65 Washington Street, Weymouth, MA, 02188, United States
Join NEPC member Jennifer Martelli, who will be reading from her new collection, PSYCHIC PARTY UNDER THE BOTTLE TREE, with poets Jennifer Jean and Sara Letourneau on Saturday, December 28, from 6-8 pm, as part of the Open Doors Reading Series. 65 Washington Street, Weymouth, MA.
An open mic will follow along with a wine & cheese reception.
Free and open to the public.
All attendees must be fully vaccinated.
The venue is not wheelchair accessible.

An Afternoon with the New England State Poets Laureate
2024-12-15 15:00 - 17:00 | Online
Join the New England Poetry Club on Zoom as we bring the five New England State Poets Laureate for a discussion and reading. We’re delighted to host Julia Bouwsma (Maine), Antoinette Brim-Bell (Connecticut), Colin Channer (Rhode Island), Jennifer Militello (New Hampshire), and Bianca Stone (Vermont). We’ll have an open-ended discussion in which they share their experiences, projects, plans, and initiatives, as well as what drew them to the Poet Laureate position. We’ll also hear their poems! The discussion will be led by two Massachusetts municipal Poets Laureate, Lloyd Schwartz (Somerville) and Lynne Viti (Westwood), who are also members of the NEPC Board of Directors.
Please note that advance registration is required for this event. After you register here, you will receive a personalized Zoom link.
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she works as a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. She is Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate, currently serving a term from 2021 to 2026, and is the author of three poetry collections: the forthcoming Death Fluorescence (Sundress Publications, 2025), Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018), and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). Honors include a 2024 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and two Maine Literary Awards. Her work can be found in various publications, including Ecotone, Green Mountains Review, Kenyon Review, Plume, and Poetry Daily. Bouwsma has taught in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington, serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and works as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME.
Antoinette Brim-Bell (Antoinette Brim), Connecticut’s 8th State Poet Laureate, is the author of three full-length poetry collections: These Women You Gave Me, Icarus in Love, and Psalm of the Sunflower. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, magazines, textbooks, and anthologies, as well as in Poetry Magazine and Poem-a-Day. Brim-Bell has also published critical works, including “The Myopic Eye in Alice Walker’s ‘Flowers’” (Critical Insights: Alice Walker, Salem Press) and “Juxtaposed Dichotomies: the idealized white suburban pastoral, the surrealist tableau of Black Poverty & the Women in between” (The Whiskey of Our Discontent: Gwendolyn Brooks as Conscience and Change Agent, Haymarket Books). Brim-Bell was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for both poetry and essay. She is a Cave Canem Foundation Fellow and an alum of Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). A sought-after speaker, editor, educator, and consultant, Brim-Bell is a Professor of English at Capital Community College in Hartford, CT. www.antoinettebrimbell.com
Colin Channer is the State Poet of Rhode Island. Born in Jamaica, he was educated there and in New York. His most recent book is Console (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023). A book of allusive links between photography, music, sea mammals, mistranslation, and the universal ritual of “the walk,” Console was a New Yorker Best Book of 2023 and a Finalist for the New England Book Award; it was also listed for the PEN/Voelcker. Colin’s honors include a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library, a Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers, and a Henry Merritt Wriston Fellowship from Brown University, where he is Associate Professor & Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Literary Arts. His poems have appeared in Agni, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, Harvard Review, The New Yorker, The Poetry Review, and other venues.
Jennifer Militello is the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. She is the author of the forthcoming hybrid collection Identifying the Pathogen, The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books, 2021), 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, Best New Poets, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Poetry, and Tin House. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College.
Bianca Stone is a poet, born and raised in Vermont. She is the author of over five books, including the poetry collections What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022), winner of the 2022 Vermont Book Award; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014) and a collaboration with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Antigonick (New Directions, 2012). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poets and Writers, The Nation, and elsewhere. She co-founded the poetry-based nonprofit Ruth Stone House, where she teaches classes on poetry and poetic study, hosts the Ode & Psyche Podcast, and is editor-at-large for ITERANT magazine. She is the current Vermont poet laureate (2024-2029).

Pour Me a Poem Open Mic
2024-12-12 19:00 - 21:00 | MA
NEPC member Matthew E. Henry will be the featured poet at the Pour Me a Poem open mic on Thursday, December 12, at 7:00 p.m. ET, hosted by Wayne-Daniel Berard and NEPC member Sara Letourneau. Pour Me a Poem is held at Wayne-Daniel’s home at 51 Park Street in Mansfield, MA. (The PMAP sign will be on the front porch.) The event is free, but please bring a few dollars for the Pass The Hat in support of Matthew’s reading.
Poets are welcome to bring a poem or two and read during the open mic. Please park on the even-numbered side of the street, opposite from Wayne-Daniel’s house. Also, please note that the venue and its restrooms may not be accessible to everyone. You can RSVP for Pour Me a Poem here: https://www.facebook.com/events/879446966387508/1164148654584003/

NAV Arts Open Mic
2024-12-11 17:00 - 19:00 | The Bookery, 844 Elm Street, Manchester, NH, 03101, United States
NEPC member Sara Letourneau will be the featured poet at the NAV Arts Open Mic on Wednesday, December 11, at 5:00 p.m. ET, hosted by Julie Marie Hoey. The open mic is held at the Bookery, 844 Elm Street, Manchester, New Hampshire.

This event is free, but you’re welcome to purchase copies of Sara’s poetry collection, Wild Gardens, while you’re there. Poets are welcome to bring a poem or two and read during the open mic. You can RSVP for the event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1262786054844777
The Bookery and its restrooms are accessible to everyone. You can information about parking here: https://www.bookerymht.com/parking

Poetry Reading by Elaine Reardon
2024-12-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Greenfield Public Library, 412 Main St., Greenfield, MA, 01301, United States
Join NEPC Member Elaine Reardon and the Friends of the Greenfield Public Library for a reading from her new Chapbook Stories Told in a Lost Tongue from Finishing Line Press. The book is now available on Amazon or can be ordered from any bookstore. It’s available both as a hardcover and a softcover book. You can learn more about Elaine at https://elainereardon.wordpress.com/. The event is free and open to the public at the Greenfield Public Library, 412 Main St., Greenfield, MA, on December 11 at 2 PM.

Poetry the Art of Words: Mike Amado Memorial Series
2024-12-08 13:15 - 15:45 | Plymouth Center for the Arts, 11 NORTH STREET, PLYMOUTH, MA, United States
Please join Linda Carney Goodrich & Matthew Porto for Poetry the art of words: Mike Amado Memorial series
December 8, 2025, 1:15 to 3:45 at
Plymouth Center for the Arts, 11 North Street, Plymouth, MA
Free & open to the public
No registration required, though Zoom attendees must request access by contacting poetrytheartofwords6@gmail.com
Venue is completely handicapped accessible

Peekskill Art Alliance Poetry Salon
2024-12-03 18:00 - 20:00 | The Bean Runner Cafe, 201 S. Division St., Peekskill, NY, 10566, United States
NEPC member James K. Zimmerman will participate—along with Mary Newell and Jared Harel—in a Poetry Salon at The Bean Runner Cafe, 201 S. Division St., Peekskill, NY, on Tuesday, December 3, at 6 p.m. EST. The event will include readings followed by a conversation among the poets, hosted by Carla Rae Johnson, about their writing process. Admission is free.

Online: An Evening With Luisa A. Igloria, Aileen Cassinetto, Diane Seuss, and Martha Silano
2024-11-11 19:00 - 21:00 | Online
Please join the New England Poetry Club, as we feature poems from Dear Human at the Edge of Time, and new books by Luisa A. Igloria and Martha Silano.
The poetry anthology, Dear Human at the Edge of Time, responds to the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) and features work by over 70 poets and scientists. Alongside the language and methodology of science, the collection presents the language of poets, of witness and community. This reading will highlight poems from this anthology as well as newly released books: Luisa A. Igloria’s Caulbearer, and Martha Silano’s This One We Call Ours, with Diane Seuss reading for Martha Silano.
Luisa A. Igloria is the author of 14 poetry books and five chapbooks, most recently, Caulbearer, winner of the 2023 Immigrant Writing Series Prize from Black Lawrence Press. She is lead editor of Dear Human at the Edge of Time (2023) and The Nature of Our Times (2025). Various national and international literary awards include the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition Award for Poetry; the 2018 Center for the Book Arts Letterpress Chapbook Prize; the 2015 (inaugural) Resurgence Poetry Prize (the world’s first major ecopoetry award), the 2014 May Swenson Poetry Prize; and the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize, among others. Luisa is the recipient of a Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas Lifetime Achievement Award in Poetry from the National Union of Writers in the Philippines, and an eleven-time recipient of The Palanca Award, the Philippines’ highest literary prize, and its Hall of Fame distinction. She is Poet Laureate Emerita of the Commonwealth of Virginia (2020-2022), a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and a Louis I. Jaffe Professor of Creative Writing and English at Old Dominion University. https://www.luisaigloria.com https://linktr.ee/thepoetslizard
Aileen Cassinetto is a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow and co-founder of Paloma Press. She is also co-editor of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023), a companion to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, and The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders (2025), a companion to the First National Nature Assessment. Her poems have appeared in Anthropocene, Poetry, Rust & Moth, and West Trestle Review. aileencassinetto.com
Diane Seuss is the author of the poetry collections frank: sonnets (2021), winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (2018), finalist of the LA Times Book Prize Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Four-Legged Girl (2015), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open (2010), winner of the 2009 Juniper Prize for Poetry; and It Blows You Hollow (1998). Her most recent book, Modern Poetry, was released by Graywolf Press in March 2024. She is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and the 2021 recipient of the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She currently lives in Michigan.
Martha Silano has authored seven poetry books, including The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, winner of the 2010 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and a Washington State Book Award finalist, and most recently, This One We Call Ours, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize. Acre Books will release Terminal Surreal, her book about living with ALS, in September 2025. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Paris Review, AGNI, North American Review, American Poetry Review, New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kenyon Review Online, ​Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “Love” appears in The Best American Poetry 2009. https://marthasilano.net/index.html
Advance registration is required. After registering here, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the Zoom session.

Red Letter Live!
2024-11-09 13:00 - 15:00 | Robbins Library, 700 Massachusetts Ave, Arlington, MA, 02476, United States
Steven Ratiner, NEPC member and publisher of the weekly Red Letter Poems, is announcing the fifth annual RED LETTER LIVE! poetry event featuring poets:

Danielle Legros Georges
Indran Amirthanayagam
Heather Treseler
Steven Ratiner

And a musical performance by clarinetist Todd Brunel
The event will be held on Saturday, November 9th 2024, 1-3 p.m with a reception to follow at the Robbins Library, Community Room, 700 Mass Ave, Arlington.
The reading is free, wheelchair accessible, and all are welcome!

Poetry and Music at Medford Brewing Company
2024-11-03 14:00 - 16:30 | Medford Brewing Company, 30 Harvard Ave., Medford, MA, 02155, United States
Join the New England Poetry Club for poetry, music, and a touch of surrealism, at the Medford Brewing Company! Regie Gibson will headline the afternoon, which will also highlight NEPC member poets based in Medford. We’ll have original songs from Max Heinegg. And be prepared for the game of Exquisite Corpse …
Literary Performer, poet, and educator, Regie Gibson has lectured & performed in the United States, Cuba, and Europe. Representing the U.S. in Italy, Regie competed for and received both the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone and The Europa in Versi Award in LaGuardia di Como. Himself and his work appear in love jones, a film based on events in his life. He is a National Poetry Slam Champion, has featured on HBO, several TED X events, and various NPR programs including On Point and Radio Boston. He’s served as consultant for both the National Endowment for the Arts “How Art Works” initiative and “The Mere Distinction of Color”: an exhibit at James Madison’s Montpelier, examining the legacy of slavery. Regie has performed with and composed texts for The Boston City Singers, The Mystic Chorale, and the Handel+Haydn Society. His volume of poems, Storms Beneath the Skin, received the Golden Pen Award and his work appears in Poetry Magazine, Harvard’s Divinity Magazine, and The Iowa Review, among others. He’s received the Walker Scholarship for Poetry from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, a YMCA Writer’s Fellowship, a Mass Cultural Council Poetry Award, a Lexington Education Foundation Grant, a Brother Thomas Fellowship, two Live Arts Boston Grants to develop his first play, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae, two commissions to create texts for the World Bank regarding racism and climate justice, and an Eliot Norton Theatre Award for “Best Ensemble” for the play Black Odyssey, Boston. He performs regularly with Atlas Soul: a world music ensemble, Shakespeare to Hiphop, and is co-creator of the Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy: A multi-media performance focusing on the influence of William Shakespeare. He teaches for Clark University & lives in Lexington, Massachusetts. www.convergenceensemble.org/artists/regie-ohare-gibson
Max Heinegg is the author of Good Harbor (2022), which won the inaugural Paul Nemser Prize, Going There (2023), and Keepers of the House (forthcoming 2025), all published by Lily Poetry Review Books. His work has appeared in 32 Poems, The Cortland Review, Thrush, Nimrod, and Crab Creek Review, among others. He will perform some classic poems (from Keats to Frost) that he adapted into song, giving a brief talk about each poem and the way in which a great lyric can be read or sung. He is the Medford Brewing Company’s co-founder, co-owner, and brewmaster.
Julia Lisella’s books include Our Lively Kingdom (Bordighera Press 2022), named a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Book Prize 2023, Always, and Terrain both from WordTech Editions, and a chapbook, Love Song Hiroshima. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly, The Common, Nimrod, Pangyrus, The Rupture, and many others. She has received writing residencies at MacDowell, Millay and the Vermont Center for the Arts. She teaches at Regis College and co-curates the IAWA Literary Reading Series in Boston. For more, see www.julialisellapoetry.com.
Marlena Merrin is a playwright, songwriter, poet, and sometimes actor. She was an invited writer/performer in the 2021 “teXt moVes” dance-poetry event at the Starlight Square Theatre in Cambridge, MA for her piece “The Careful Line” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkRdRJfaRzM ) . She’s performed as an improviser at Brandeis University and as devised theater actor at Mobius (https://vimeo.com/34201973) . Her poems have been published in Ibbetson Street and The Somerville Times. A selection of her songs can be found on collegeboundthemusical.com. Her soon-to-be-live website is marlenamerrin.com.
Leticia Priebe Rocha (she/her) is a poet, visual artist, and editor. She is the author of In Lieu of Heartbreak, This is Like (Bottlecap Press, 2024). Leticia earned her bachelor’s from Tufts University, where she was awarded the 2020 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she immigrated to Miami, FL at the age of 9, she currently resides in the Greater Boston area. Her work has been published in Salamander, Rattle, Pigeon Pages, Protean Magazine, and elsewhere. Leticia is also a Reader for Yellow Arrow Journal and served as Guest Editor for the EMBLAZON issue. For more information, visit her website: leticiaprieberocha.com/
Vijaya Sundaram (she/he/hers) is the current Poet Laureate (2023-2025) for the City of Medford, Massachusetts. Originally from India, she lived in Arlington, MA, for ten years, and has been living in Medford since 2001. She has written short stories, plays and a short novel (not yet published). She is also a guitarist, sitarist, songwriter, singer, amateur digital artist, and educator. Her poetry and short pieces have appeared in publications like The Rising Phoenix Press, the Stardust Review, and TELL Magazine, among others. Her first collection of poems, Fractured Lens, was published in 2023 by Červená Barva Press.

Poetry at the Manse: Toni Bee, Jesse Mavro Diamond, Therese Gleason
2024-10-27 14:00 - 15:00 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
Please join us at The Old Manse in Concord, Mass., for this free event! The reading will be held under a tent outdoors, and the venue is accessible.
Toni Bee is a poet, educator, and photographer hailing from Boston, MA. She is a 2024-2025 GrubStreet Teaching Fellow as well as a workshop facilitator for Writers Without Margins and IWWG: International Women’s Writing Guild. Bee made history as the first woman to hold the esteemed position of Poet Populist of Cambridge and was also the Inaugural Cambridge Poetry Ambassador. Toni’s journey as a poet began in high school and after gaining her BA at Simmons University, she self-published her first poetry book, “22 Again.” Bee is a community builder who founded and curates Poets In The Garden currently in residence at The Longfellow House-Washington Headquarters in Cambridge, MA. The program amplifies the voices of BIPOC and all poetic and artistic individuals, welcoming them into public green spaces. Find out more about this poet’s journey at tonibee.org
Jesse Mavro Diamond has been writing poetry since childhood. Throughout the next six decades, her writing has explored issues of deep interest to her, including identity, gender politics and the diverse societal influences that shape our lives. Mavro Diamond’s experiences as a Jewish woman, lesbian feminist, martial artist, and teacher of English Language Arts at the secondary and college levels have informed every aspect of her writing. She is the author of four plays and six volumes of poetry, including American Queers, published in 2023 by Červená Barva Press. and Swimming the Hellespont, whose title poem was chosen to be honored by the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival. Most recently, she developed and taught the first Creative Writing Course in Boston Latin School’s 364-year History. Her work has been published and performed within the United States and internationally. Forthcoming, Aeolian Harp will publish her four linked sonnets, Ode For A Lute.
Therese Gleason‘s poetry, prose, and hybrid work have appeared in 32 Poems, America, Atticus Review, Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, Lunch Ticket, New Ohio Review, Notre Dame Review, Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. She is author of three chapbooks: Hemicrania (forthcoming, Chestnut Review, 2024), about living with chronic migraine; Matrilineal (Finishing Line, 2021; Honorable Mention, Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, New England Poetry Club); and Libation (co-winner, 2006 South Carolina Poetry Initiative Competition). Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she currently lives with her family in central Massachusetts, where she teaches English language and literacy to multilingual learners in the Worcester Public Schools. She has been as an adjunct creative writing instructor at Clark University, and has an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University. https://theresegleason.com/.

Online: 2024 Contests Reading
2024-10-06 15:00 - 17:00 | MA
Please join us on Zoom for our annual reading, featuring:
Poems from winners of the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize contests;
Winning and honorable-mention poems from our single-poem 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.

Advance registration is required. After registering here, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the Zoom session.

Longfellow Summer Festival: Sarah Audsley and George Kalogeris
2024-09-29 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
(Please note: this event was originally scheduled for July 14, 2024.)
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. She is the Writing Program Director at Vermont Studio Center.
George Kalogeris’s most recent book of poems is Winthropos, (Louisiana State University, 2021). He is also the author of Guide to Greece (LSU), a book of paired poems in translation, Dialogos, and poems based on the notebooks of Albert Camus, Camus: Carnets. His poems and translations have been anthologized in Joining Music with Reason, chosen by Christopher Ricks (Waywiser, 2010). He is the winner of the James Dickey Poetry Prize, the Stephen J. Meringoff Award, and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize.

Poetry at the Manse: Mary Bonina, Patty Crane, Thomas Olivieri
2024-09-22 14:00 - 15:00 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
Please join us at The Old Manse in Concord, Mass., for our first 2024-25 season events hosted by The Trustees!
Mary Bonina was finalist for the Goldfarb Fellowship from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and awarded several residencies, including at the VCCA retreat, Moulin a Nef, in Auvillar, France. Her newly released poetry collection, Lunch in Chinatown, includes Bonina’s poem, “Drift,” winner of the Boston Contemporary Authors Prize, which is engraved on a granite monolith, a permanent public art installation outside a busy subway station. Previous publications include My Father’s Eyes: a Memoir and two other poetry collections—Living Proof and Clear Eye Tea, all from Červená Barva Press, which will also publish her novel, My Way Home in 2025. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Lowell Review, Hanging Loose, Poets and Writers, Salamander, Mom Egg, Ovunque Siamo, Adelaide, and many other journals, and her work has been included in several anthologies, including Entering the Real World: VCCA Poets on Mt. Angelo from Wavertree Press.
Patty Crane is the author of BELL I WAKE TO (Zone 3 Press First Book Award, 2019) and something flown (Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award, 2018), and translator of THE BLUE HOUSE: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and BRIGHT SCYTHE (Sarabande Books, 2015), her selected translations of the Swedish Nobel laureate. Her poems have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in 32 Poems, Poetry Daily, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Vox. Her translations have recently appeared in American Poets, Poetry, Five Points, and Guernica. Her work has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell and Hedgebrook. A third generation Cape Cod native, she divides her time between the hilltowns of western Massachusetts and the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
Thomas Olivieri is a flâneur who is a lifelong resident of Massachusetts. His two books, Swords Snakes & Shipwrecks: a Slight Collection of Hallowe’en Tales and Miscellanea and Kings, & Saints, & Knights have been published by Oldstyle Tales and Alien Buddha Presse respectively.

Poetry at Magazine Beach Park: Jane Attanucci, Charlot Lucien, Lawrence Kessenich
2024-09-01 15:00 - 17:00 | Magazine Beach Park Nature Center, 668 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
Please join the NEPC as we continue our summer at Mass Audubon’s Magazine Beach Park Nature Center in Cambridge! The event is free of charge and the venue is accessible.
Jane Attanucci grew up as one of eight children in an Irish Catholic family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She moved to Boston to attend college and graduate school. Upon retirement from college teaching, she studied poetry at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Attanucci is the author of a chapbook, First Mud (Finishing Line, 2015) and a full-length collection, A River Within Spills Light (Turning Point, 2021). Her poems have appeared in Off the Coast, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Third Wednesday, Thrush Poetry Journal and Writer’s Almanac among others. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
Lawrence Kessenich won the 2010 Strokestown International Poetry Prize in Ireland. His poetry has been published in Sewanee Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry Ireland Review and many other magazines. He has two poetry chapbooks, Pearland Strange News, and three full-length poetry books, Before Whose Glory, Age of Wonders, and Hard Times Require Furious Dancing. Three of his poems were read on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac. Kessenich has also published essays, including one read on NPR’s This I Believe, and has had plays produced at festivals in Boston, New York and Durango, Colorado. He has published one novel, Cinnamon Girl, and his second novel, The Further Adventures of Daisy Miller will be published in the fall of 2024.
Charlot Lucien is a storyteller, poet, and visual artist who resides in Massachusetts. His writings have been published in various anthologies and publications, including This Land, My Beloved (A Trilingual Anthology of Contemporary Haitian Poetry), Liberation Poetry, Compost Magazine, Revolution, Regard, Anthologie des poètes français 2022, Poètes à la Une, and Tanbou Magazine. His poetry book La tentation de l’autre rive (The Temptation of Other Shores) was released in 2013 by Trilingual Press. As the founder of the Haitian Artists Assembly of Massachusetts, he has prefaced the art anthology Migrating Colors: Haitian Art in New England, released in 2018.
Several of his poems express his grappling with expressions of multiple identities as a Haitian living in the US, while acknowledging the influences of his motherland and a poetic education initially influenced by Haitian and French literature. Other poems or writings reflect his attempts at giving meaning, through poetry, to the historical roots of the struggles for civil rights and racial harmony.
In his regular line of work, Charlot Lucien is a public health manager for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a history lecturer at the OLLI Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Longfellow Summer Festival: Poetry in Translation with Kymm Coveney and J. Kates
2024-08-25 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Kymm Coveney was born in Boston, raised in Scituate, and has lived in Spain since the 1982 World Cup. The pandemic caught this free-lance writer and translator sheltering in Jamaica Plain, where she now spends the summer months, far from Barcelona’s heat. History of Milk, Kymm’s translation of award-winning novelist Mónica Ojeda’s poetry collection, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2026. Several poems have been published online, and Section V “De Quincey’s Botany” is forthcoming in The Georgia Review‘s fall issue. Her non-fiction translations include Forest Bathing, by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, and Tokyo Sketchbook, by Amaia Arrazola, both with Tuttle Publishing.
J. Kates, a minor poet and a literary translator, has published three chapbooks of his own poems and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents Publishing). 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, has translated a dozen books of Russian and French poetry, and edited two anthologies of Russian translations. A former president of the American Literary Translators Association and a co-director of Zephyr Press, he is also the co-translator of six books of Latin American and Spanish poetry.

FAWC + NEPC: New England Poetry Club at the Fine Arts Work Center
2024-08-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Fine Arts Work Center, 24 Pearl Street, Provincetown, MA, 02657, United States
The NEPC teams up with the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown to present Cynthia Bargar, Elizabeth Bradfield, and Christine Jones. The reading will take place in the Stanley Kunitz Common Room, 24 Pearl Street., Provincetown, Mass. 02657. A Q&A session will follow.
Cynthia Bargar is the author of Sleeping in the Dead Girl’s Room (Lily Poetry Review Press), selected as a Massachusetts Book Awards 2023 Honor Book. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals online and in print, and in Our Provincetown: Intimate Portraits by Barbara E. Cohen (Provincetown Arts Press). Cynthia is associate poetry editor at Pangyrus. She lives and writes in Provincetown, Massachusetts. (www.cynthiabargar.com)
Writer/Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield’s (she/her) recent books are Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, and the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, co-created with CMarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield and winner of the 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, co-created with Alexandra Teague and Miller Oberman. Her poems have appeared in The Slowdown, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry and a Stegner Fellowship. Liz works as a naturalist and field assistant at home on Cape Cod, teaches creative writing at Brandeis University, and is Editor-in-Chief of Broadsided. www.ebradfield.com
Christine Jones lives in Orleans, MA where she and her husband can be found swimming in their shark mitigating wetsuits all year round. She’s the author of Now Calls Me Daughter (Nixes Mate Review, 2022) and Girl Without a Shirt (Finishing Line Press, 2020), also co-editor of the anthology, Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Lily Poetry Books, 2020). She’s the associate editor of Lily Poetry Review and co-founder of the Lily on the Cove Manuscript Clinic and Retreat. Her poetry can be found in numerous anthologies and journals in print and online.

Longfellow Summer Festival: Elizabeth Bradfield and Kevin Goodan
2024-08-18 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
Writer/Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield’s (she/her) recent books are Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, and the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, co-created with CMarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield and winner of the 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, co-created with Alexandra Teague and Miller Oberman. Her poems have appeared in The Slowdown, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry and a Stegner Fellowship. Liz works as a naturalist and field assistant at home on Cape Cod, teaches creative writing at Brandeis University, and is Editor-in-Chief of Broadsided. www.ebradfield.com
Kevin Goodan was born in Montana and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation where his stepfather and brothers are tribal members. Goodan earned his BA from the University of Montana and worked as a firefighter for ten years with the U.S. Forest Service before receiving his MFA from University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2004. He has taught at the University of Connecticut and has served as Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University. He currently lives in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire.

Sam Cornish Poetry Award: Gloria Mindock
2024-08-11 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.
Gloria Mindock is editor of Červená Barva Press. She is an award-winning author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her poems have been published and translated into eleven languages. Her recent book, Grief Touched the Sky at Night (Glass Lyre Press, 2023), won the International Impact Award, the Speak-up Talk Radio International Firebird Award, the Independent Press Award, the Book Fest Book Award, and the Outstanding Creator Award in the following categories/Awarded: First Place in Current Events, First Place in War & Peace Literature, Second place in Poetry, Second Place in Grief and Coping, Third Place in Best Non-Fiction and two Honorable Mentions in Best Writing Non-Fiction and Best Quote. Gloria’s book ASH (Glass Lyre Press, 2021) won several book awards and was translated into Serbian by Milutin Durickovic and published by Alma Press in Belgrade in 2022. Gloria’s work has appeared in numerous publications including Gargoyle, The James Dickey Review, Growth: Journal of Literature, Culture, & Art (Macedonia), and KGB Lit, to name just a few. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018. For more information about Gloria Mindock, visit gloriamindock.com.
The program will include brief readings by a group of area poets published by Červená Barva Press.
In case of inclement weather, the reading will be held in an accessible, nearby indoor location.

James Baldwin: One Hundred Years
2024-08-02 18:30 - 20:30 | The Little Crêpe Café, 102 Oxford Street, Cambridge, 02138
Please join Cambridge Arts, the Little Crêpe Café, and the New England Poetry Club for a celebration of the life and work of James Baldwin, on the occasion of his centennial! Free of charge and open to all: please come to read excerpts from Baldwin’s work and share your thoughts. Hosts: Denise Provost and Jean Dany Joachim.
Photo Credit: Kate True & Steven Flyte

Celebrating Amy Lowell: Garden Poetry from a Poet Gardener
2024-07-20 16:00 - 17:30 | MA
Somerville Growing Center, 22 Vinal Ave, Somerville, MA 02143
Come to the Somerville Growing Center to gather, listen, and celebrate the garden poetry of Amy Lowell. This special event will focus on poetry by and in connection to Amy Lowell, with readings from Jennifer Clarvoe, Lloyd Schwartz, and Denise Provost. Conversation and an open mic will follow, where all are welcome to share poems from, in, or about the garden.
The Growing Center is fully accessible.
(In case of rain, the event will be rescheduled to July 21st from 6 to 7 pm.)
Jennifer Clarvoe’s first book, Invisible Tender (Fordham, 2000), won the Poets Out Loud Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. The Rome Prize in Literature supported writing for her second book, Counter-Amores (University of Chicago, 2011). She has held fellowships from the Sewanee Writers Conference and the James Merrill House. Retired from Kenyon College, where she taught for almost thirty years, she lives in Somerville, Massachusetts. She has completed a new manuscript of poems, PIANO PIANO.
Lloyd Schwartz is Somerville’s Poet Laureate, Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at UMass Boston, editor of Elizabeth Bishop, and music and arts critic for NPR’s Fresh Air and WBUR’s website. He’s been awarded NEA, Guggenheim, and Academy of American Poets fellowships and the Pushcart and Daniel Varoujan Prizes in poetry, and the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. His poems have been selected for The Best and The Best of the Best American Poetry. His latest book is Who’s on First? New and Selected Poems.
Denise Provost Besides long service in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Denise Provost has published two poetry collections: Curious Peach (2019) and City of Stories (2021). Her poems have appeared in such journals as Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, Light Quarterly, qarrtsiluni, and Poetry Porch. Provost received the Maria C. Faust Sonnet 2012 Competition Best Love Sonnet award, and New England Poetry Club’s 2021 Samuel Washington Allen Prize. She was elected co-president of the New England Poetry Club in 2022.

Poetry at Magazine Beach Park: Maru Colbert, Hilary Sallick, Mark Stevick
2024-07-07 15:00 - 17:00 | Magazine Beach Park Nature Center, 668 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA, 02139, United States
The NEPC is delighted to be invited back to Mass Audubon’s Magazine Beach Park Nature Center in Cambridge. The event is free of charge and the venue is accessible. Registration is required (https://www.massaudubon.org/programs/magazine-beach/92363-nature-poetry-readings). Please join us!
Maru Colbert is an engineering professor and performer. Her collegiate research and teaching span three engineering fields and she has a K12 STEM focus on chemistry and mathematics. Her spoken, written and choreographed works were featured in Denver, Los Angeles, Toronto, Windsor, Montreal, Amsterdam, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit and Boston. Her African and Native American culture, intrinsic motivation and daily reflection inform her writing, singing, acting, instrumentation and design. Being a double winner with her Ekphrastic entries for the MA Poetry Festival in 2021 was a great honor. Whatever she presents in any art form is, ultimately, “what her soul releases”.
Hilary Sallick is the author of three poetry collections: love is a shore (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023), which is on the long-list for the Massachusetts Book Award in poetry; Asking the Form (Cervena Barva Press, 2020); and Winter Roses (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her poems appear in appear or are forthcoming in Permafrost, Potomac Review, Jet Fuel Review, Notre Dame Review, Ibbetson Street, Small Orange, and other journals. A teacher with a longtime focus on adult literacy, she lives and works in Somerville, and she serves on the Board of the New England Poetry Club. (www.hilarysallick.com)
Mark Wacome Stevick grew up in Amish country, Pennsylvania. He came north for college and got his master’s in creative writing from BU. Now he teaches at Gordon College and produces the Five Ponds Creative Writing Festival and the Princemere Poetry Prize. His poems have won awards from Wundor Editions, Literal Latte, The Shine Journal, SWINK, Wild Plum, and The Baltimore Review. A chapbook, Local Habitations, won the Wil Mills Award and was published by Moonstone Press (2022). His plays include Cry Innocent and Goodnight, Captain White, which run seasonally in Salem, and The Sheep Mysteries, which is performed in Orvieto, Italy, where he sometimes leads a month-long workshop on ekphrasis. He’s a recent-ish StorySlam winner at The Moth in Boston, and he lives with his wife and kids in Salem.

2024 Golden Rose Award with Gail Mazur
2024-06-09 15:00 - 17:00 | Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138
(Note: in the event of rain, this event will be held in the Longfellow Carriage House AND livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/@LONGNPS/streams.)
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gail Mazur grew up in Auburndale, MA. Since the 1960s she has lived primarily in Cambridge and Provincetown, with periods in New York City, Houston and Los Angeles. In 1973, she founded the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Harvard Square which became, with its weekly readings, a center of poetry life, bringing national and international writers to read in a lively informal atmosphere.
As an activist with her late husband, the artist Michael Mazur and others Massachusetts writers and artists, she co-founded, in 1968, Artists Against Racism and the War, and later they were activists for a Nuclear Freeze. Blacksmith House presented benefit readings for, among other issues, the fight for AIDS research.
Her first collection, Nightfire (David Godine Publishers) was published in 1978, followed by The Pose of Happiness (Godine, 1986), The Common (University of Chicago , 1995); They Can’t Take That Away from Me (Chicago, 2001) finalist for the National Book Award; Zeppo’s First Wife: New and Selected Poems (Chicago, 2005), winner of The Massachusetts Book Prize and finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize; Figures in a Landscape (2011); and Forbidden City (Chicago, 2016). Land’s End: New and Selected Poems was published in 2020. Her poems have been widely anthologized, including in several Pushcart Prize Anthologies, the Best American Poetry, Robert Pinsky’s Essential Pleasures. A graduate of Smith College, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College, and the Radcliffe Institute. She was for 20 years Distinguished Senior Writer in Residence in Emerson College’s graduate program and now teaches in Boston University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing and at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown where she has served for many years on the Writing Committee.

Longfellow Student Poetry Awards 2024
2024-06-02 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 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.
The reading will be held on the East Lawn, which is wheelchair accessible via gravel pathways. Accessible parking spaces are located at the end of the driveway. Learn more about site accessibility here.
In the case of inclement weather, the reading will be moved indoors.

Sophie Cabot Black Geometry of the Restless Herd. Poetry
2024-05-28 19:00 - 20:30 | Brookline Public Library, Coolidge Corner, 31 Pleasant Street, Brookline, MA, 02446, United States
Poet Sophie Cabot Black visits Boston with her recent book; Geometry of the Restless Herd from which she will offer a reading of poems.
“In Geometry of the Restless Herd Sophie Cabot Black stages a powerful allegory for the social and political realities of our human world. Through hauntingly metaphysical poems set within a sheepherder’s domain, Black conjures fields of harvest and resurrection, of wagers and outcomes—animals to keep, and those to send to slaughter. Here, both singular voices and polyvocal choruses ask, Who has the real power, and how are we to survive the violence we do to one another?
Cooper Canyon Press
Sophie Cabot Black has three poetry collections from Graywolf Press, The Misunderstanding of Nature, which received the Poetry Society of America’s First Book Award, The Descent, which received the 2005 Connecticut Book Award, The Exchange. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines, including The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. Cooper Canyon Press publishes Geometry of the Restless Herd in 2024.

Poetry at the Manse: Sara Epstein, Denise Provost, Gary Whited
2024-05-26 14:00 - 15:00 | Old Manse, 269 Monument St, Concord, MA, 01742
(L to R: Gary Whited, Sara Epstein, Denise Provost)
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.
May poets:
Dr. Sara Epstein is a clinical psychologist who integrates mindfulness practices, including writing, in her psychotherapy work with children and adults. She also facilitates and teaches generative writing groups and classes. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly, Amethyst Review, Chest Journal, Nixes Mate Review, Plainsongs, museum of americana, among others. Her book reviews have been published in Mom Egg Review. Bar of Rest is her first book of poetry.
Denise Provost has published two poetry collections: Curious Peach (Ibbetson Street Press, 2019) and City of Stories (Červená Barva Press, 2021). Her poems have appeared in such journals as Ibbetson Street, Constellations, Muddy River Poetry Review, qarrtsiluni, Quadrille, Poetry Porch, Red Eft, Sonnet Scroll, Sanctuary, Light Quarterly, and in Bagel Bards anthologies. Twice Pushcart-nominated, Provost received the 2012 Best Love Sonnet award from the 2012 Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition, and the New England Poetry Club’s 2021 Samuel Washington Allen Prize. She was elected co-president of the New England Poetry Club in 2022. Provost served from 2006-2021 in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
Gary Whited is a poet, philosopher and psychotherapist. His first book titled, Having Listened, won the 2013 Homebound Publications Poetry Contest. In 2014 it received a Benjamin Franklin Silver Book Award, and in 2015 was translated into Russian and a bilingual edition was published. His new book, Being, There includes new poems along with his translation of the ancient Greek fragments of Parmenides from the 5th century BCE. This book dances between the poetic voice of Parmenides and the poetic remembrances of a young life on a prairie cattle ranch. His poems have appeared in journals, including Salamander, Plainsongs, The Aurorean, Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, The Wayfarer, Poetry Daily and The Red Letters.

Meet Our Poets: Somerville Poets Reading Their Own Poems & Poems They Love
2024-04-28 17:30 - 19:00 | Somerville Poet Laureate Lloyd Schwartz, Somerville Armory 191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA, 02143, United States
Meet Our Poets: Somerville Poets Reading Their Own Poems and Poems They Love
This once-in-a-lifetime reading includes the largest array of Somerville poets ever assembled. More than 30 Somerville poets will each be reading one of their own poems and a poem they love by a poet of their choice. The poets include Jennifer Badot, Simeon Berry, David Blair, Zack Bond, Elizabeth Callahan, Parama Chattopadhyay, Jennifer Clarvoe, Linda Conte, Linda Haviland Conte, Donna Donna, Gary Duehr, Kirk Etherton, Michael Franco, Bridget Seley Galway, Seth Garcia, Doug Holder, Katherine Hollander, Lucy Holstedt, Gloria Mindock, Tam Lin Neville, Pat Peterson, Denise Provost, Andrea Read, Hilary Sallick, Lloyd Schwartz, Michael Steffen, Janaka Stucky, Patrick Sylvain, Gilmore Tamny, Christie Towers, Anna Warrock, and Dan Wuenschel.
This free event, organized by Somerville Poet Laureate Lloyd Schwartz with the Somerville Arts Council, will take place at the Somerville Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, on Sunday, April 28, at 5:30 PM.
It is free and fully accessible.

Poetry at the Manse: Martha Collins, Merryn Rutledge, Timothy Gager
2024-04-28 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.
April poets:
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. She has co-translated five volumes of Vietnamese poetry, most recently Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ, with Nguyen Ba Chung (Milkweed, 2023), and co-edited, with Kevin Prufer, Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (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. Her website is marthacollinspoet.com.
Bestselling author Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his latest novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over one thousand works of fiction and poetry published, eighteen nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work also has been nominated twice for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology and has been read on National Public Radio. In 2023, Big Table Publishing published an anthology of twenty years of his selected work, with 150 pages of new material: The Best of Timothy Gager. Timothy served as the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review for ten years, and was the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.
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.

Medford Historical Society & Museum: Denise Bergman, Kevin Gallagher, Max Heinegg, Scott Ruescher
2024-04-04 19:00 - 20:30 | Medford Historical Society & Museum, 10 Governors Avenue, Medford, MA, 02155, United States
Join Medford High School English teacher and poet Max Heinegg and three other New England Poetry Club poets for a night of poetry and song. Please note that seating is limited: register here for free tickets.
Max Heinegg is the author of Going There (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2023) and Good Harbor (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022), winner of the Paul Nemser Poetry Prize. He has won the Sidney Lanier Poetry Award, the Emily Stauffer Poetry Prize, and his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Max will perform some classic poems (from Keats to Frost) that he adapted into song, giving a brief talk about each poem and the way in which a great lyric can be read or sung.
Denise Bergman is the author of five poetry books. The Shape of the Keyhole is about a woman falsely accused and hanged for murder. Three Hands None unravels assault and its aftermath. A Woman in Pieces Crossed a Sea dismantles the symbolism of the Statue of Liberty. The Telling unfolds a child refugee’s lifelong secret. Seeing Annie Sullivan explores the early life of Helen Keller’s teacher.
Kevin Gallagher, a poet, publisher, and political economist living in Greater Boston, will present poems from his recent books And Yet it Moves and The Wild Goose. Gallagher edits spoKe, a Boston-based annual of poetry and poetics.
Scott Ruescher is the author of Waiting for the Light to Change (Prolific Press, 2017) and Above the Fold (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming). His recent poems appear in About Place, Ohio Today, Pangyrus, and the Common Ground, Latin-American Literary, and Naugatuck River reviews.
