Congratulations to NEPC poet Denise Bergman on the publication of her new book!

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The Shape of the Keyhole by Denise Bergman

In 1650, in Massachusetts, a woman was falsely accused of killing her friend’s child. She was immediately tried and soon hanged. The Shape of the Keyhole examines a community’s fear-driven silence and envisions the innocent woman’s days as she awaits execution.

Praise for The Shape of the Keyhole

Denise Bergman’s compelling new collection, The Shape of the Keyhole, gives testimony to prejudices, false rumors, mutable scraps of damning evidence that wrongly condemn a woman to die by hanging. Here there is no restorative justice, only questions that singe through to a hushed past: “Why does no one ask why//she killed a child/would want to kill/ a child/that child//cold she not stop herself.” In a style reminiscent of cubism and Stein, Bergman’s fractured, repetitive language and succinct imagery recreate a sequence of voicings that imprint indelibly on the consciousness of the reader where “Silence snatches the best view of the finish line.” The Shape of the Keyhole shines a clarifying light into the dark, unsparing nature of humanity. —Dzvinia Orlowsky

Denise Bergman is the author of four other books of poetry: Three Hands None, A Woman in Pieces Crossed a Sea, The Telling, and Seeing Annie Sullivan. See denisebergman.com.

Black Lawrence Press, November 2020 ISBN: 978-1-62557-824-2 blacklawrencepress.compage1image33686336

This stunning book-length poem creates, from a brief account in colonial American history, an expansive collage of “dislodged sentiment, fragmented scenes, churned-up voices.” Bergman renders the arrest, trial, and execution of a falsely accused woman in cinematic slow motion and spare lyrical language, heightened by recurrent metaphor and contrapuntal word-play. A rush of voices speeds up the motion before the final scene, inviting questions of guilt and culpability that are disturbingly relevant to the injustices of our own time. —Martha Collinspage1image33696112

POET IN THE HOUSE with Wendy Drexler, December 5, 3 pm (NEPC member event)

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Free-Writing Your Way into a Poem

This will be a generative workshop for NEPC members based on a technique I’ve been using for 20 years that I learned from my mentor and dear friend, Babara Helfgott Hyett. Many (most?) of my poems begin as free-writes generated during a weekly (now virtual) session with poet-friends.Come with whatever notebook or journal you like to write in, a pen or pencil, and three phrases, sentence fragments, or sentences you’d like to use as prompts. These can come from any source: an encyclopedia entry, a single line of a poem (please use the full line), a Victorian novel you picked up at the library sale and have never read. Pick lines that are open ended and evocative. Some lines I’ve used recently: “Tell yourself, maybe it’s true. Maybe your name was . . .” (Nick Flynn); “I missed the storms that stopped there” (Carl Phillips); “and break forever– (unknown); “Are they born knowing?” (The How and Why Program: Little Questions that Lead to Great Discoveries, copyright 1947). We will take turns providing prompts, writing for an amount of time that will likely surprise you, and reading what we’ve written back to one another.

Wendy Drexler’s third poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Sugar House, The Atlanta Review, The Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and WBUR’s Cognoscenti; and in numerous anthologies. 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.Members can email info@nepoetryclub.org for the link.
*If you’re not a member, joining is easy!
https://nepoetryclub.org/membership/

Congratulations to NEPC poet, Len Krisak!

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Len Krisak has just won the Able Muse Poetry Book Award for 2020. His work Say What You Will should appear in April, 2021.

The past recipient of the Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur, and Robert Frost Prizes, he has had work in the Hudson, Sewanee, Antioch, Southwest, and PN Reviews, and is a four-time champion on Jeopardy!


			


					
			





	

					

				
Congratulations to NEPC poet Lynne Schmidt, winner of the 2020 New Women’s Voices Award from FLP!
		

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Lynne Schmidt’s manuscript, The Unaccounted for Circles of Hell, was a finalist for the 2020 New Women’s Voices Award from Finishing Line Press, while her manuscript, Dead Dog Poems, a collection about the grief that comes with a terminal cancer diagnosis of a beloved emotional support animal, won the prize.  





About Lynne












Lynne Schmidt is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, and a mental health professional with a focus in trauma and healing. She is the author of the chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press) which was listed as one of the 17 Best Breakup Books to Read in 2020, and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West), which was featured on The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed for PTSD Awareness Week. Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor’s Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne was a five time 2019 and 2020 Best of the Net Nominee, an honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski, and Doug Draime Poetry Awards. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.  



			


					
			





	

					

				
Introducing POET IN THE HOUSE!
		

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As the cold and darkness of winter approaches, many of us will be spending more time in our homes. As our Advisory Member Regie Gibson observed, “NEPC members have a wealth of knowledge about all things related to poetry. Why not tap that wealth and share it?”

We are moving forward with his vision and are offering a space for our members to educate and enrich the intellectual and artistic life of our NEPC community. This new series of events for our membership only is called Poet in the House! It will be an occasional event with our members as teachers and learners. 

We would like you to consider offering a presentation, workshop, interview, or panel discussion on any poetry-related topic. What is your deep interest? What theme, process, form, language, poet, history have you delved into? What is your unique expertise? What do you want to learn more about and share with fellow members?

We encourage presenters to include slides, sound and video elements, writing exercises, etc. to make these sessions engaging and interactive.

If you would like offer a session, please send a brief description of the topic(50-100 words), a bio, and a preferred date and time (plus one backup in case there’s overlap) to president@nepoetryclub.org. 

We will provide the Zoom link and publicize the event and support you in whatever way you need. 

Regie Gibson has generously offered to kick off the series with the first offering on Saturday, November 21, 3 pm. 

23 and the Strangeness of Me: A Chromopoem

In this presentation and writing workshop, Regie Gibson will lead us on an original exploration into the “genetics” of what makes each of us unique or “strange” as poets and poetry lovers (those who have no choice but to observe the absurd in us and listen). Be prepared to write, be challenged, and discover!
(An earlier version of this was presented at the New Hampshire Poetry Festival.)