Archives for October 2020

Earlier this month the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to poet Louise Glück. Read, and listen to, a sampling of her work at https://poets.org/poems/louise-gluck.

A quick reminder that A virtual Thirsty Lab with Jamie Samdahl is taking place tomorrow night (Tuesday, October 27th) at 7:00 pm.

You can find a Zoom sign-up link in our event calendar.

Jamie Samdahl is a poet and naturalist from Princeton, Massachusetts. Her poems have appeared in Rattle, Washington Square Review, Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioners’ Journal, and elsewhere. In 2013 John Yao, Mary Jo Salter, and Cleopatra Matthis named Jamie winner of the 90th Annual Glascock Poetry Contest. An environmentalist as much as a writer, Jamie has worked as a park ranger in New Hampshire, Colorado, Nevada, and California. She currently resides in Reno, Nevada.

It is with sadness that we share the passing of J. Philip O’Hara.  For over a decade Phil, and his wife Pat, have supported the WCPA’s Annual Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize.  The contest was renamed in 2009 in honor of Phil’s brother, poet Frank O’Hara.  Their support has allowed the Association to recruit talented judges and attract 1000s of submissions.  We will miss his presence at our annual Winners’ Reading, his advice, and his friendship.

Below are a few photos of Phil from the past few years.  You can read his obituary here.

 

 

The Worcester Review, the nationally recognized print journal of the WCPA, will soon release its 2020 volume. In addition to poetry and fiction, the feature section, titled “Stubborn Hope”, looks at South African activist and poet Dennis Brutus.

Cover art is by Abu Mwenye is a Tanzanian-American artist living in Worcester. His areas of specialty are acrylic paintings, oils, commission works, and anything that challenges his creative mind. View more of his work online at visionaryafrica.com.

Members of the WCPA receive The Worcester Review as one of the benefits. Anyone who renews or starts a membership with the WCPA by October 31, 2020, will receive a copy. Visit our membership page to renew or start a membership today.

P.S. – The Worcester Review is now on Twitter – check them out at @WorcesterReview.

Join the collective known as Poets who are artists, Artists who are poets on October 22, 2020, for a virtual reading with Philosopher Courtney Dorian Schlosser.  Other readers include Michel Duncan Merle, Paul Lavallee, Sotirios Evangelos Lalos “Sam”, Prakash, Sue Coles, Elaine Reardon, Holly Lynn Lavallee, Robert Steele, and Jeffrey Ferrara.

The virtual event will start at 3:00 pm via Zoom. A link for joining can be found on our calendar.

The organizers thank the WCPA for Zoom access and Robert Steele for facilitating.

We’ve added a new video to our YouTube channel. This one features Oliver de la Paz from his August 12, 2020, reading via our Zoom into Poetry series.

https://youtu.be/xHopPCzPiMs

We hope you’ve been enjoying these videos and find them a balm during these times. Leave us a comment and let us know what you heard that you liked.

While you are there please consider subscribing to our channel. If we get to 100 subscribers we can give our YouTube channel a name instead of the incredibly not useful “UCZw3ZotKcZtnSUGKk_F___A” it has now.

The Worcester-born poet Elizabeth Bishop died on this day in 1979. Upon her gravestone in Hope Cemetery is inscribed the quote we share here.

Learn more about how the quote was finally added as Bishop requested on our Elizabeth Bishop page.

We are continuing our virtual poetry readings through the fall and the next event is next Sunday afternoon. Join on October 11 at 3:00 pm with Zoom into Poetry with Doug Holder.

Holder was our judge for our 2020 Annual Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize. In a normal year we would have enjoyed hearing him read at a Winners’ Reading late in September. Alas, this is far from a normal year and so we’re taking the opportunity to hear him read via Zoom.
To join the event, please visit the Zoom registration page and fill in the form. A meeting link will be e-mailed to you.

Doug Holder is a recipient of the Allen Ginsberg Award, teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and Endicott College in Beverly, MA. Big Table Publishing published Holder’s recent poetry collection, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur. Holder is the Arts Editor for The Somerville News, the director of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series, the producer of Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer on Somerville Community Access TV, and the co-founder of the Bagel Bards, a Somerville-based literary group. Holder’s poetry and prose have appeared in Rattle, The Boston Globe Magazine, the new renaissance, Istanbul Literary Review, Hazmat, Toronto Quarterly, Long Island Quarterly, Wilderness House Literary Review, and many others. Holder resides in the Boston area with his wife and his skittish and Yiddish kitty, Ketz.