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Call for Poems: “A Walk in the Woo”

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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

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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.

The medal ceremony will be the second of the summer following the 2020 Covid-postponed Susan Roney-O’Brien ceremony on July 22, 2021, at Broad Meadow Book Reservation in Worcester. 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.


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

Action Plan

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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

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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.

Gather in Poems on Tuesday, April 13

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Join organizer and host Eve Rifkah for a virtual poetry reading on Tuesday, April 13, 2021, at 7:00 pm. In this time of pandemic, poets lack a regular forum for performing, and we lack the ability on our parts to see/hear what poets are writing.

In the virtual reading, each poet will read one poem of his/her own and one of another Worcester area or Worcester connected poet. The reading will be aired live and recorded and available through the WCPA archive to preserve our voices and a link that will have the poems read in print.

Registration is needed to join the event. Visit the Zoom registration link and fill in the form. A meeting link will be e-mailed to you.

This program is supported in part by a grant from the Worcester Arts Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Zoom into Poetry with Charles Coe – tomorrow!

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The next Zoom into Poetry virtual reading will take place on Sunday, April 11, 2021, at 7:00 pm.  Host Christopher Reilley welcomes Charles Coe to our virtual stage.  Register via Zoom to join the virtual audience or view the reading on Facebook Live.

Charles Coe is the author of three books of poetry: All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents, Picnic on the Moon, and Memento Mori, all published by Leapfrog Press. He is also the author of Spin Cycles, a novella published by Gemma Media. Charles was selected as a Boston Literary Light by the Associates of the Boston Public Library and is a former artist fellow at the St. Botolph Club in Boston and a current artist-in-residence at the Manship House in Gloucester.

Join us Saturday for the College Poetry Contest

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Join us on Saturday, April 10, 2021, at noon for the WCPA College Poetry Contest where we will award the Elizabeth Manuscript Prize and the Etheridge Knight Performance Prize.  In its thirteenth year, area colleges send representatives to compete for bragging rights, complimentary membership in the WCPA, and the publication of a poem by the manuscript winner in The Worcester Review.

We are excited to hear the poetry of Kat Gatto (Assumption College) and Marina Petrillo (Worcester Polytechnic Institute) with additional readings by this year’s judges (Susan Roney-O’Brien and Nicole DiCello) and the contest chair (Craig Blais).

Registration is needed to join the event. Visit the Zoom registration link and fill in the form. A meeting link will be e-mailed to you.

Join our e-mail list (and help wanted)!

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One of the challenges of the past year is keeping connected with our members.  Our traditional method of sending periodic postal mailings with a few flyers became near-impossible with social distancing.  As a volunteer organization, we also struggle with burdening any one person with the effort needed to create flyers, make sufficient copies, collate, fold, seal, and organize a bulk mailing.

So we’ve created an e-mail mailing list that we’ll use to send out periodic updates on events and happenings of poetic interest.  You can join it today by filling in the short form below.

The fine print – we will never share the information you share with us with others. We may, on rare occasions, use the mailing list to cross-promote an event by another organization.

Help Wanted – if you are interested in helping to promote poetry in central Massachusetts, and are comfortable with Facebook, Twitter, and websites, then we’d love to chat with you.  Coordinating postings on our website and Facebook takes a bit of work.  Adding a mailing list is a new wrinkle, and an extra hand would help spread the burden.  Drop an e-mail wcpaboard at yahoo dot com if you are interested in chatting.

Here’s the e-mail mail list sign-up form.

 

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