FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WORCESTER,
Massachusetts
PO Box 804, Worcester, MA
01613
worcestercountypoetry.org
wcpaboard@yahoo.com
The Worcester County Poetry Association is pleased to announce the 2024 Rain Poets and their poems! This year’s project has expanded from our typical thirteen to include an additional twelve poems written by school-aged poets in Worcester County. A team of volunteers will paint these poems at bus stops around Worcester and at the schools of the winning student poets using Rainworks’ hydrophobic paint and stencils as large as 18 square feet. The poems will be visible to pedestrians in Worcester during inclement weather throughout the summer. We will prepare our stencils and paint over the last weekend of August, with a rain date of September 13th-15th.
2024 Rain Poets, in no particular order
Lea Bisceglia with “A Walk in the Woo”
Laura Solis-Matthew with “[tripping over cracks]”
JE. rome with “Dear Worcester,”
Lori Cornelius with “[Bumpy sidewalks]”
Emma Couillard with “Goldenrod”
Sarah Chestnut with “I turn back, umbrellaless”
Rosanna Garcia and Leticia Garcia Bradford with “Aging in Place”
Pamela Gemme with “Worcester Pouring Rain”
Edward Beale with “You Belong”
Maia Campbell with “When you asked me to go”
Elizabeth Bacon with “Cherry Blossom Snow”
Marissa Eleni Lourake with “[Bridges and benches – Elm Park]”
Fadi Yousef with “Quinsigamond Lake”
Grades 9-12
Asa Oywech with “The Divine Voices of Worcester”
Leandro Jean-Pierre with “[Growing up in Worcester’s embraces]”
Aidan Moon with “A place in my heart”
Grades 6-8
Isabella Frauches with “[I feel each drop of water soaking my clothes]”
Dylan Stankus with “The Summer Side”
Jaryn Hazard with “Nature of Spring”
Grades 3-5
Cyrus Acquista with “Busy days and relaxing nights”
Lily Joh Chestnut with “Peace”
Finn Horan with “[MCAS buy the gum]”
Grades PK-2
Carmyne Acquista with “Burncoat neighborhood”
Joel Cummings with “[Out my window I see birds;]”
Noah Cummings with “[I like nature camp]”
2024 Rain Poetry Honorable Mentions
Maia Campbell with “Bancroft’s Notes”
Elizabeth Bacon with “Treat Athlete”
Peter Horan with “[Cone Island’s hot dogs]” (6th Grade)
The selected poems will be painted around the City of Worcester on the sidewalks, primarily at bus stops distributed equitably throughout the city’s districts. This year’s locations will be posted on our website, on Facebook, and our Instagram account, so please consult these resources when organizing your rainy-day scavenger hunt to try to visit all twenty-five before the sun dries the pavement.
We encouraged submissions from poets of all ages, walks of life, and in any language, that spoke to the poets’ experience of Worcester. The poems were selected in blind readings by a panel of judges that included Worcester Poet Laureate Oliver de la Paz, WCPA Board Member and 2022 Rain Poet Tarique Cooper, Clemente Graduate Walter Molina, 2021 Rain Poet and Worcester Writers’ Collective director Brett Iarrobino, and 2023 Frank O’Hara Prize winning poet Rebecca Cross. The 2024 Rain Poets will be invited to read their poems at a ceremony open to the public this fall.
Should you wish to participate in painting these poems around Worcester and attend the reading later this fall, please contact our Rain Poetry Team at rainpoems@irenaworcestercountypoetry-org.
About the Worcester County Poetry Association
The Worcester County Poetry Association (WCPA) was founded in 1971 with a threefold mission:
celebrate the rich literary history and creative energy of Central Massachusetts through public
readings, workshops, festivals, scholarly conferences, and other programs; support the publication of
the literary journal, The Worcester Review; and collaborate with libraries, bookstores, colleges and
universities, museums, churches, schools, community centers, businesses, and a variety of cultural
organizations to promote poetry events. The WCPA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.