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Slightly Off-Beat Poets
May 4, 2025 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
WHAT: Slightly Off-beat Poets Presents: KAREN DURLACH & KATE GREGOIRE
WHERE: Deb Horan’s Backyard 15 Eddy St Webster, MA
RAIN LOCATION: Steve Veilleux’s house112 Fabyan-Woodstock Road N Grosvenordale, CT
WHEN: Sunday May 4th, 2025 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm
WHAT HAPPENS: Our feature poets of the month will each read for 20 minutes. Then we will take a quick break for book sales, snacks, and the raffle before starting the open mic. Open mic will be round robin, one poem at a time until 4 PM.
COST: There will be a 50/50 raffle, split between the feature and the winner. 5$ to enter.
SIGN-UPS: There is room for 25 POETS. To reserve a spot please email: roberteugeneperry@gmail.com
KAREN DURLACH is a visual artist/craftsperson, both by vocation and avocation, having made a career in the graphic arts, photography, ceramics, and various media. She writes off and on when the muse strikes, most often when the early dawn insists. Most of her poems strive to paint a picture of a precious moment, place or experience—something odd, exciting or wondrous—that begs to be remembered and shared. She only started sharing her poems aloud at open mics after discovering the encouraging local poetry communities in Putnam, Southbridge and Webster. Her poems have appeared in the online Virtual Poetorium and in Nancy Weiss’s column in the Thompson Villager newspaper during April poetry month. Three of her poems appear in the anthology Many Voices-One Stage by Slightly Off-beat Poets. Brooklyn born, schooled in New York, then Michigan, she’s straddled the border between Massachusetts and Connecticut for decades, living in the woods of Northeast Connecticut for close to four decades, where she still struggles to grow unusual vegetables and entertains pollinators.
KATE GREGOIRE is a poet and mother. It feels like a lifetime ago when she was teaching German language and literature full-time at university. Now she is raising her little girl, supporting her husband’s ministry, and volunteering for the Worcester County Poetry Association. She attended some 30+ weddings in this post-covid era with her husband and wrote a collection of poems about this experience called “Plus One”. Another volume on motherhood grew with her daughter in her first year of life. What feels most pressing now, however, is her work towards a collection of alchemical incantations in poetic form that will contribute to healing the relationship between man and nature.