Take the WCPA Community Survey

by

The Worcester County Poetry Association is turning 50! As part of our 50-year celebration, we’re reaching out to our members and the community to collect information about what we’re doing well, where we could use some improvement, and how you’d like us to expand and change so we thrive for another 50 years!

This survey will take between 5-10 minutes to complete. We encourage you to be open and honest with us, so we can learn and grow. All of your answers will be held in complete confidence. The only person who will see the answers is our consultant, who will share the answers – without names — with the WCPA board in a summary format.  The survey closes on Friday, October 22, 2021.

Visit https://bit.ly/WCPA-survey to get started.

The WCPA is partnering with Sarah B. Lange on this process.

Clemente Worcester Viewing Party and Fundraiser

by

The Clemente Course in the Humanities is an award-winning college-level seminar for highly motivated low-income adults seeking to build better lives for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Clemente Worcester is 10% short of the money it needs to support its class of 2022.  To raise awareness and funds to support our program, we will be holding a virtual watch party of the award-winning documentary, A Reckoning in Boston, on Sunday, October 3 any time between 4 and 8 pm.

Please consider supporting this empowering program by joining their Viewing Party, and, if you are able, make a financial contribution.  Additional details can be found at https://www.clementeworcester.com/support/.

The WCPA proudly serves as the fiscal agent for Clemente Worcester.

Join us on Sunday, September 26, 2021, for the Winners’ Reading for the 2021 Frank O’Hara Prize

by

Join the winners of the WCPA’s 2021 Annual Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize for a reading of their work and the work of contest judge Pam Bernard. There will also be an opportunity to mingle over refreshments. The reading will start at 3:00 pm US/Eastern.

This year’s winners include First Prize – Dean Gessie, Second Prize – Rhett Watts, Third Prize – Tom Driscoll, and Honorable Mentions – Therese Gleason Carr, Jennifer Freed, and Joyce Schmid. Contest Chairperson Bob Gill will moderate the ceremony.

Contest judge Pam Bernard is a poet, painter, editor, and adjunct professor who received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Graduate Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and her BA from Harvard University. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships, and the Grolier and the Pablo Neruda Prizes in Poetry. She has published four books: three full-length poetry collections and, most recently, a verse novel entitled Esther, published by CavanKerry Press. Ms. Bernard lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.

Please join us for what is always a fun and inspiring event.

Announcing the Winners of the 2021 WCPA Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize

by

2021 contest winner Dean Gessie

The Worcester County Poetry Association (WCPA) is pleased to announce that Dean Gessie of Midland, Ontario, Canada, has won this year’s WCPA Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize. His poem “Diary of a Dead Eel Boy” was selected by contest judge Pam Bernard from the 191 poems submitted by 69 entrants.

Dean Gessie is a widely acclaimed author and poet who has won or placed in more than 80 international competitions. Gessie won the Enizagam International Poetry Contest in California and he was selected for inclusion by Black Mountain Press in both The Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2018 and 2019. In England, Gessie was shortlisted for the Anthology Poetry Award and the Latin Program Poetry Prize, and in Ireland, for the Fish International Poetry Contest. He was a finalist for the Seán Ó Faoláin Short Story Prize. He also won Third Prize in the Hungry Hill Writing Poets Meet Politics Competition. His short stories and poetry have appeared in numerous anthologies around the world. He has also published three novellas with Anaphora Literary Press: Guantanamo Redux; A Brief History of Summer Employment; and TrumpeterVille.

Additional winners:
Second Place – Rhett Watts of Auburn, MA for “Blues for Betty”
Third Place – Tom Driscoll of Framingham, MA for “This isn’t the first time”
Honorable Mention – Therese Gleason Carr of Worcester, MA for “Pee Wee Valley Kentucky: 1965”
Honorable Mention – Jennifer Freed of Holden, MA for “The Others”
Honorable Mention – Joyce Schmid of Palo Alto, CA for “Returning to Where I Grew Up”

The winning poems will be published in the next edition of The Worcester Review, the nationally recognized journal of the WCPA. The winners also receive a cash award. The WCPA will invite all the winners to read their work at the Winners’ Ceremony and Reading on Sunday, September 26, 2021, at 3:00 p.m.  The Winners’ Reading will be held at the First Unitarian Church, 90 Main Street, Worcester.  We hope that contest judge Pam Bernard will also be able to join us.

Contest judge Pam Bernard is a poet, painter, editor, and adjunct professor who received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Graduate Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and BA from Harvard University.  Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships, and the Grolier and the Pablo Neruda Prizes in Poetry.  She has published four books: three full-length collections of poetry, and most recently a verse novel entitled Esther, published by CavanKerry Press.  Ms. Bernard lives in Walpole, New Hampshire.

The contest, which was established in 1973, was renamed the Frank O’Hara Prize in 2009 and continues to be generously supported as a tribute to the late poet Frank O’Hara by the O’Hara family.

Call for Poems: “A Walk in the Woo”

by

light grey text on a wet sidewalk

As part of its 50th Anniversary Celebrations, the Worcester County Poetry Association is seeking short poems from Worcester residents that illustrate the poetry of the streets of Worcester.

Thirteen poems will be stenciled on sidewalks throughout Worcester using paint that is only visible when wet with rain.  A map and list of planned poem locations can be found on the program page.

To be considered for this project, submit up to 2 poems of max. 49 words, including the name of the poet.

Submission guidelines

The submitter must be a resident of the City of Worcester.

Each poem can contain no more than 49 words which will include the poet’s name and title if any.

Dual language poems are encouraged. (Please provide a translation into English for our judges.)

Submit via e-mail to this e-mail address: rainpoems@worcestercountypoetry.org

Include in submission e-mail your poem, your name, your address, e-mail, and contact information such as a phone number.  Poets of any age are encouraged to submit.

Poets selected will receive an honorarium of $20. Poems must be submitted by midnight of July 31st, 2021.

Announcing the 2021 Recipient of the WCPA’s Stanley Kunitz Medal

by

Worcester, Mass., poet, editor and teacher Eve Rifkah has been chosen to receive the 2021 Stanley Kunitz Medal awarded through a bequest from two-time Poet Laureate of The United States and Pulitzer Prize winning poet and Worcester native Stanley Kunitz.The medal, awarded annually since 2015, is the seventh awarded to a person with a strong Worcester County (Mass.) connection who best exemplifies Stanley Kunitz’s (born in Worcester in 1905) life-long commitment to poetry and poets. The award recognizes the total commitment to poetry as Kunitz lived it: Teaching poetry, mentoring poets, speaking poetry, publishing poetry, and supporting organizations which nurture poetry.
Poet and publisher of Tupelo Press Jeffrey Levine said of Rifkah’s poetry in Dear Suzanne, “[She] achieves what may be one of the contemporary artist’s most difficult purposes—to deliver moments of affirmation amid a tide of loss. In the doing, her lines come to us both in time and out of time, as with a nod to Virginia Wolf….”

RIFKAH co-founded Poetry Oasis, Inc. (1998-2012), a non-profit poetry association dedicated to education and promoting local poets. She was the founder and editor of Diner, a literary magazine and earned her MFA from Vermont College. She also teaches poetry with the WISE program at Assumption University.

Rifkah is the author of Dear Suzanne (WordTech Communications, 2010) and Outcasts: The Penikese Island Leper Hospital 1905-1921 (Little Pear Press 2010). Her next book Lost in Sight, will be coming out in 2021 from Silver Bow Publishing. Rifkah has published two chapbooks: Scar Tissue (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and At the Leprosarium, 2003 winner of the Revelever Chapbook Contest. Her single poems, flash fiction stories and essays have appeared in many journals.

Eve Rifkah will receive her medal at an event presented by the Worcester County Poetry Association at the Worcester Historical Museum on Thursday, August 19, 2021 at 6:30 p.m.

Please note:  Because the event is indoors, and the Covid-Delta variant is still about, masks will be required. 

Broadside – 2021 Kunitz Medal honoring Eve RifkahDownload
Press Release – 2021 Kunitz MedalDownload

Plan Update June 2021

by

In this second month of self-evaluation, the WCPA continues to reflect and reevaluate how we work. We believe this is a crucial step to develop an ongoing framework to promote and incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion in our membership and activities. So far, the board has taken the following actions:

ACTION:  Deepening understanding of unconscious bias through training, some of which has already occurred or will have happened before July 1:

  1. Five board members participated in Boston University’s National Anti-Racist Book Festival on April 2.
  2. The board will contract a local Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Specialist to conduct additional training in June for members about unconscious bias, sensitivity, and social identity.
  3. Four board members attended the Greater Worcester Community Foundation’s May 27 “Igniting Equity” program, where Valerie Zolezzi-Wyndham of Promoting Good, a Worcester-based company, spoke.

The program focused on how organizations can successfully reach their diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging goals when committing to a multistep process.

ACTION:  The board voted to replace the VP for Programming role with a programming committee composed of three board members and two at-large community members. The committee will call on interested community members to submit their names for service on the committee.

The programming committee’s first task will be to develop processes and guides for how the WCPA will develop its programming, including a fee scale for performing poets. The programming committee will also establish guidelines for how programming originating outside the WCPA can receive supporting funds.

ACTION:  The board voted to create a five-member Diversity Advisory Group. It will include representatives from underserved communities who will advise the board on concrete steps which will enable poetry to thrive within their communities.

Nominations to serve on the Diversity Advisory Group should be sent to Rodger Martin, President, by July 15, 2021, at wcpaboard@yahoo.com.

Members of the Diversity Advisory Group will meet with the WCPA board at least twice each year. They will recommend activities and engagements the WCPA could make with underserved communities.

ACTION:  The Worcester Review, the print journal of the WCPA, will institute the following changes:

  1. Offer free submissions (through Submittable or via email if necessary) for BIPOC writers.
  2. Offer a free submission option for those writers for whom the fee poses a barrier to submitting (recognizing that economic inequity disproportionately impacts BIPOC, disabled, immigrant, and LGBTQI+ communities).
  3. Ask contributors to wait one year from the publication of their issue before submitting again to increase our ability to hear from and feature new voices.
  4. Add an explicit statement to the submissions portal and website emphasizing our support and welcome for marginalized communities.

ACTION: The board will begin ongoing outreach to other non-profit organizations representing the many cultural voices of central Massachusetts to educate the WCPA about their missions. A goal of these connections will be to better foster relationships between groups.

Identified organizations include, but are not limited to the following:

  • African Community Education
  • Guardians of Tradition / Guardianes de Tradición
  • LGBT Asylum Task Force at Hadwen Park Church
  • Refugee Artists of Worcester
  • Southeast Asian Coalition
  • Worcester Black History Project

The WCPA board is committed to continuing this crucial work to improve engagement, including promoting and amplifying the voices of all members of our diverse community.

We expect to resume limited WCPA-organized programming in July.  Our support for community-organized events will also continue.

Previous Updates

Statement – April 2021

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Action Plan

by

April 19, 2021: In response to an ill-considered, offensive, and disrespectful public engagement on social media by a member of our board on April 16, 2021, the Worcester County Poetry Association is embarking on a strategic pause in programs and activities to begin our crucial work in developing a diversity, equity, and inclusion action plan. We can, and must, do better in engaging, including, promoting, and amplifying the voices of all members of our diverse community, particularly BIPOC, as creatives, collaborators, and audiences.

The WCPA Board has voted to immediately pause our programming for a minimum of three months so that we can reevaluate our practices, policies, and programs in a sustained and meaningful way. The WCPA intends to embark on a path of exploration to identify how to build the core values of diversity, equity, and inclusion into all our activities, as well as how to model those values as we advance our mission. We will be engaging in a professional evaluation by a third-party consultant experienced in assessing and facilitating diversity, equity, and inclusion plans to better engage diverse creatives in our programming, membership, and leadership.

We look forward to engaging in further discussions about combating inequity and building community through poetry. Please stay tuned for more information about concrete steps we will take in this effort, which will be ongoing and extend beyond this pause. We will communicate actions for which we will be transparent and accountable as an organization as they are developed during our evaluation process. Thank you again for your passion for poetry, your past service to the WCPA, and your commitment to making Worcester an inclusive and welcoming space for all.

2021 College Contest Results

by

Congratulations to the winners of the WCPA’s 2021 College Poetry Contest: the Elizabeth Bishop Manuscript Prize and the Etheridge Knight Performance Prize.

Christopher McClure of Anna Maria College and North Grosvenordale, CT won the Elizabeth Bishop Manuscript Prize for “All I Do is Wait” Christopher’s poem will be published in an upcoming volume of The Worcester Review, the WCPA’s print journal.

The winner of the Etheridge Knight Performance Prize is Isabella Sampino of the College of the Holy Cross and Bay Shore, NY.

Kat Gatto of Assumption University and Webster, MA received an Honorable Mention in the Manuscript Prize for “Where I Am” and an additional Honorable Mention in the Performance Prize.

McClure, Sampino, and Gatto were joined by finalist Marina Petrillo of WPI and Worcester, MA.

Many thanks to our contest judges, Nicole DiCello and Susan Roney-O’Brien. The 2021 College Contest was organized by Craig Blaise of Anna Maria College.