[Photo credit: Meredith Pugh]
City manager Batista announced the results of this year’s search for a poet laureate. The winner is Oliver de la Paz.
Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is forthcoming from Liveright Press in 2023. With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry,
American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.
Here is a write up done by Worcester Magazine about de la Paz, as well as a link to some of his poems.
Deborah Hall is CEO of YWCA Central MA. She is also the founder of 
Kimberly Toney is the Coordinating Curator for Native American and Indigenous Collections at Brown University Library. During her tenure at AAS as Head of Readers’ Services and Director of Indigenous Initiatives, Kimberly worked with the Brown Family Collection. She created a 
Ashely Wonder has been writing and performing Spoken Word for over a decade with dynamic passion all over Massachusetts. She teaches workshops to various age groups hoping to inspire audiences around her to know that healing and liberation is possible.
Rev. Dr. Catherine H. Reed is the author of four books of poetry. Crossing Boundaries, Between Midnight and Dawn, Sankofa, and Fire Goes Out Without Wood. She was the former Associate Pastor of John Street Baptist Church and a retired Chaplain of The College of The Holy Cross.
Xaulanda Thorpe is a spoken word poet from Worcester, Massachusetts. She graduated from Boston University with a degree in biological anthropology in January 2020. During her time at BU, when she was not examining primate samples, she wrote short stories for Charcoal Magazine, a student-led publication. In 2021, Xaulanda’s poem was chosen for the African Burial Ground National Monument’s Still I Rise tribute to Maya Angelou.
After five years at the Sprinkler Factory, the WCPA has moved our offices. We’ll share more about our new office space in the next newsletter; however, today, we are looking for help from our members and lovers of poetry in exiting our old office.
PO Box 804, Worcester, MA
This year’s commencement ceremony, held for the first time at American Antiquarian Society, was especially joyful. It came after a year of unique challenges and unprecedented commitments for all of us. W
Proclaimed a “Slam Poet Legend” by Poetry Slam International, Worcester poet Tony Brown has been selected as the 2022 Stanley Kunitz Medal recipient.
Join the Worcester County Poetry Association for our Annual Meeting on April 3, 2022! The afternoon consists of a short Business Meeting, a chance to mingle with friends, and a poetry feature by Dzvinia Orlowsky. We’ll start at 2:00 pm in-person at the First Unitarian Church, 90 Main Street, Worcester.
Sharing on behalf of the Stevens Memorial Library in Ashburnham, MA. Join them for a Zoom poetry reading on March 16 at 6:30 pm. Two of the most gifted poets in contemporary poetry, Anselm Berrigan and Maureen Owen, will read their work. Please contact the library to get on the list for the Zoom link.
In honor of 
Over the month of February, we’ve shared poems, forms, and history of local and not-so-local poets as part of Black History Month. We’ve saved a list of the articles we published for future reference on a 
