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.

The WCPA is happy to help the Thirsty Lab poetry reading go virtual for their 5th Tuesday reading. Please join a virtual Thirsty Lab on Tuesday, September 29, 2020, at 7:00 pm. Heather Macpherson will be the feature.

Register for the reading and Zoom will send you an e-mail with the meeting details and link.

Heather J. Macpherson is an essayist, educator, and PhD student at the University of Rhode Island. Her focus in Literature includes Creative Nonfiction, Essaying, and Human-Animal Relationships in Memoir and Autobiography. Her essays and poems have appeared in the Bennington Review, Doctor T.J. Eckleberg Review, 580 Split, and other fine places. Besides writing, teaching, and studying, Heather enjoys traveling and spending time with friends and family, especially her son.

Kundiman creates an affirming and rigorous space where Asian American writers can explore, through art, the unique challenges that face the new and ever-changing diaspora. They see the arts as a tool of empowerment, of education and liberation, of addressing proactively what legacy is left for future generations as individuals and as a community.

Kundiman offers a variety of educational programs and readings which have become virtual events. We’re looking forward to A Reading & Conversation with Aimee Nezhukumatathil & Ross Gay, moderated by Cathy Linh Che & Malcolm Tariq on Wednesday, September 30th. That reading will start at 6:00 pm EST and advanced registration is needed.

Visit their Facebook event for more details including a link to register.

The WCPA is happy to help the Thirsty Lab poetry reading go virtual for their 4th Tuesday reading. Please join a virtual Thirsty Lab tomorrow night (Tuesday, September 22, 2020) at 7:00 pm. Elizabeth McKim will be the feature.

Register for the reading and Zoom will send you an e-mail with the meeting details and link.

Elizabeth Gordon McKim is a poet, spoken word performance artist, editor, and teacher of poetry for people of all ages. She is the author of eight collections of poetry, and one teaching guide Beyond Words co-authored with Judith Steinbergh poet laureate of Brookline. Her poems and essays have appeared in many magazines, reviews, and journals including Ploughshares, Poetry and Drum Voices. She is the Poetry Editor of the international journal POIESIS published in Toronto Canada. Her book of poetry The Red Thread was published by Leapfrog Press edited by Marge Piercy and published by Ira Wood.

With increasing sorrow, the WCPA has decided not to hold in-person events this fall. This includes the Winners’ Reading for the Frank O’Hara Prize, the Gregory Stockmal Reading, and the rescheduled Bishop/Knight College Poetry Contest reading.

We are scheduling additional virtual poetry events during the next several months and will share them via our website when finalized.

We hope the COVID-19 situation will be better in 2021.