We’ve learned that the WCPA phone number is being used to call people for spam/scam purposes.  No one from the WCPA will ever call and ask for personal information.

We are working with our phone provider to try to resolve this issue.  Please accept our sincere apologies if you have been impacted by a spam call from our number.

Join West Boylston writer Loree Griffin Burns to reconsider and reconnect with the natural world through this seemingly simple poetic form. This group is for teenagers and adults, beginner to master, interested in exploring haiku in English. Join us monthly to wander indoors and out, to read, to write, and to share our poems.

Please email beaman @ cwmars . org at least 24 hours prior to this program to register.

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.

You can view the agenda at this link – 2022 Annual Meeting Agenda [link]

Dzvinia Orlowsky is a Pushcart Prize poet, translator, and a founding editor of Four Way Books.  She is also the author of six poetry collections published by Carnegie Mellon University Press including her most recent, Bad Harvest, named a 2019 Massachusetts Book Awards “Must Read” in poetry; Silvertone (2013) for which she was named Ohio Poetry Day Association’s 2014 Co-Poet of the Year; and Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones (2009) for which she received a Sheila Motton Book Award.  Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted in 2009 as a Carnegie Mellon University Classic Contemporary. Her translation from the Ukrainian of Alexander Dovzhenko’s novella, The Enchanted Desna, was published by House Between Water in 2006, and her poem sequence “The (Dis)enchanted Desna” was selected by Robert Pinsky as the 2019 co-winner of the New England Poetry Club Samuel Washington Allen Prize.  In 2014, Dialogos published Jeff Friedman’s and her co-translation of Memorials: A Selection by Polish poet Mieczysław Jastrun for which she and Friedman were awarded a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship.  Her co-translation with Ali Kinsella from the Ukrainian,  Eccentric Days of Hope and Sorrow:  Selected Poems by Natalka Biolotserkivets was published by Lost Horse Press in 2021.  Dzvinia is Writer-in-Residence at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and a contributing poetry editor to Solstice Literary Magazine and Agni.

Reminder – Submissions are open for the WCPA’s 2022 Poetry Contest: The Frank O’Hara Prize through Saturday, April 30, 2022. The 2022 contest is being judged by Pakistani-American scientist, poet, and educator Usman Hameedi.

The contest is open to WCPA members in good standing, residents of Worcester County, or students/employees of institutions within Worcester County.

There is no fee for WCPA members to enter. Non-members pay $8 to enter the contest.

Contest guidelines and a link to the online submission portal are available at
worcestercountypoetry.org/2022contest/

Update 04/03/2022 – we have filled the Administrative Assistant position.  Thank you to all who applied.

The WCPA is seeking someone to fill a contract position.  The Administrative Assistant works as an assistant to the board of directors by handling its technical, web, and direct mail requirements as needed.  The candidate will be responsible and self-motivated with good people skills, a commitment to WCPA’s mission, and the ability to work independently while getting the job requirements completed satisfactorily and on time.  The candidate will have good technical skills.

You can find further details, along with information on how to apply, at https://worcestercountypoetry.org/admin-position/.

Hi all – 4 WCPA (sponsored) events are coming up in the next month. 3 are virtual and 1 is in-person. Maybe we’ll see each other at one of them.

3/22 – Thirsty Lab w/JC Todd – virtual – more info at https://worcestercountypoetry.org/event/4352/

3/23 – Women’s Poetry Reading – virtual – more info at https://worcestercountypoetry.org/event/princeton-womens-poetry-reading-placeholder/

3/29 – Thirsty Lab w/Jenith Charpentier – virtual – more info at https://worcestercountypoetry.org/event/a-virtual-thirsty-lab-with-jenith-charpentier/

4/3 – WCPA Annual Meeting w/Dzvinia Orlowsky – in-person – more info at https://worcestercountypoetry.org/event/2022-wcpa-annual-meeting/

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.

Phone – 978-827-4115
Email – library@ashburnham-ma.gov
or Facebook DM the library

Join us via Zoom for an evening of poetry and hear two of the most gifted poets in contemporary poetry share their work.

Anselm Berrigan’s most recent book of poetry is Pregrets, published by Black Square Editions in 2021. Other books include Something for Everybody, Come in Alone, and the book-length poems Primitive State and Notes from Irrelevance. He’s the poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail, and co-editor of Get The Money!: Collected Prose of Ted Berrigan, forthcoming from City Lights this fall.

Maureen Owen, former editor and chief of Telephone Magazine and Telephone Books, is the author of Erosion’s Pull, a finalist for the Colorado Book Award and the Balcones Poetry Prize. Her title American Rush: Selected Poems was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize and her work AE (Amelia Earhart) was a recipient of the prestigious Before Columbus American Book Award. She has taught at Naropa University and co-edited Naropa’s online zine not enough night through 19 issues. Her newest title Edges of Water is available from Chax Press.

In honor of International Women’s Day we’ve uploaded the recording from last year’s Princeton Women’s Poetry Reading.  Each March, Susan Roney-O’Brien organizes the Princeton Women’s Reading with twenty women poets who read together to celebrate joy, creativity, and poetry.

You can view the video on our YouTube channel by visiting https://youtu.be/0QbHZzr7FRE.

The following poets are read – Pam Bernard, Polly Brown, Therese Carr, Devon Evans, Kathleen Fagley, Jennifer Freed, Joyce Heon, Emily Judkins, Maura MacNeil, Cheryl Perreault, Catherine Reed, Eve Rifkah, Rush Frazier, Francis Sterle, Nancy Strong, Beth Sweeney, Rhett Watts, Kate Zebrowski, and Susan Roney-O’Brien.

Join us for the 2022 reading via Zoom. Details can be found on the Women’s Poetry Reading event page.

Iternational Women’s Day is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women.

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 Black History Month page.

Who are the local Black poets whose words excite you?

There are so many more wonderful African American poets whose words have inspired and pushed us. Keep reading and learning by visiting some of these sites.

Poets.org “12 Poems to Read for Black History Month”
Poetry Foundation “Celebrating Black History Month”
TeamBonding.com “11 Inspiring Poems To Celebrate Black History Month”

Susan Conley writing in Ploughshares shares “Yusef Komunyakaa speaks in a gravelly Southern baritone, tinged with a Cajun flavor that reflects his childhood years in Louisiana. He is a man who chooses his words carefully, splicing his speech with long silences, until his conversation resembles something close to a jazz riff — very fitting for this acclaimed poet who says “oral language is our first music, and the body is an amplifier.”

We were honored to include Yusef’s poem “Gingkoes” in the 2012 issue of The Worcester Review which honored Chris Gilbert.  You can read Gingkoes at theworcesterreview.org.

Photo by David Shankbone. Komunyakaa at the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Awards in March 2012; his book The Chameleon Couch was nominated for the poetry award.

Douglas Kearney is a poet, performer, and professor of poetry at the University of Minnesota. Kearney favors a nontraditional layout in his poetry, what he calls “performative typography”. Here’s an example found on poetryfoundation.org.

You can also take Kearney’s free course, “Sharpened Visions: Poetry Workshop” on Coursera for an introduction to the elements of poetry, popular poems, and a chance to workshop your own poems with poets around the world.

Learn about Douglas Kearney at his website, https://www.douglaskearney.com/.
Visit Kearney’s Coursera free course at https://www.coursera.org/learn/poetry-workshop.
Check out the Poetry Foundation for other inspiration at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/152478/-a-ship-crashes-down-.

Click the image on the right to see the full-size image.

Despite spending much of her life enslaved, Phillis Wheatley is recorded as the first African American to publish a book of poems. Wheatley, (1753-1784) a Senegalese child kidnapped and sold into slavery when she was seven or eight years old, published “Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral” in London in 1773. Her work brims with gratitude, faith, and hope. She wrote a great many funeral pieces, requested by friends and patrons. Many poems allude to Greek and Roman myths, are based on religious teachings of the period, and refer to nature and the wonders it personifies.

Hymn to the Evening (excerpt)

Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main,
The pealing thunder shook the heavenly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats. (Wheatley 38)

In 2020 the American Antiquarian Society hosted a program with poet, writer, and essayist Honorée Fanonne Jeffers about her newest book of poetry, The Age of Phillis. It delves into the pre-slavery life of the African child renamed Phillis. A recording can be found at https://www.americanantiquarian.org/public-program-honor%C3%A9e-fanonne-jeffers-0.

Image – Statue of Phillis Wheatley, The Boston Women’s Memorial (from https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=53991)

Catherine Reed is a fixture in the poetry community. She has been the featured poet at area poetry readings for many years. Reed also served on the WCPA’s board of directors.

In her latest collection of poems, In Fire Goes Out Without Wood, Reed invites us to journey with her to where ministry and poetry meet. In their senior years, we will encounter a couple holding hands, laughing, and skipping down the street like two teenagers. A mother grieving her son in jail sits in a rest home waiting. The Intruder who does not discriminate. A child who stares and no longer recognizes grandmother who now wears a mask. We will hear the words of a six-year-old perched on her daddy’s shoulders, “my daddy’s going to change the world,” and moments later, her dying daddy pleading for his life with a knee on his neck.

SAHARA, Dark Horse, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, The Purple, and Windfall have published her poetry. She won the Barbara Pilon Poetry Contest and Dark Horse Third World contest. She is the author of four books of poetry: Crossing Boundaries, Between Midnight and Dawn, Sankofa, and Fire Goes Out Without Wood. She is the host of WCCATV’s A Journey of Words.

She is a graduate of Clark University, Worcester, MA, Kaleo School of Ministry, Woburn, MA, Hartford Seminary BMCP, Hartford, CT, Brigham and Women’s Chaplaincy Program, and attended Boston University School of Theology. She is an Associate Pastor of John Street Baptist Church of Worcester and retired Protestant Chaplain of The College of the Holy Cross.

Worcester’s Clemente Course in the Humanities Literature class will acknowledge Black History Month in two ways this month: 1) they will do an ekphrastic writing exercise using Otto Bettmann‘s photo I am a Man (March 1968).

The picture is from the 1968 Memphis Sanitation workers’ strike, which was supported by Dr. King and other civil rights advocates. King would be killed in Memphis that April.

In addition, we will do a ‘translation’ exercise. In other words, we will read Langston Hughes ‘Harlem’, and each student will ‘translate that into their personal language.

Thanks to Clemente Worcester faculty member Mark Wagner for the photo and context.

Mary Bonina wrote, “The 1970s and 80s were an exciting time for anyone interested in poetry living in Worcester.” She wrote this in an article about Chris Gilbert, who earned an MA in psychology from Clark University in 1975. Catherine Reed recalls that Gilbert chaired Worcester’s “Free People’s Poetry Workshop” for a time.

Of his poetry, Mark Doty writes: “No one else sounds quite like Christopher Gilbert… His voice feels timeless in its immediacy, and the poems startle in their almost uncanny ability to grant readers access to a mind at work.”

The Worcester Review dedicated the 2012 special section to the strong impression that Gilbert left on Worcester. You can read the introduction by the section editor Gene McCarthy at https://worcestercountypoetry.org/chris-gilbert-into-the-emerging-landscape/.

You can also learn more about Chris Gilbert at https://poets.org/poet/christopher-gilbert.

Mike True was a co-founder of the WCPA.  Since his passing Assumption College has hosted a poetry reading in his honor.  This year the event will be held on Thursday, February 17, 2022, at 7:30 pm.  Jonathan Blake will be the featured reader.

Details can be found in the event listing or on the Assumption College Facebook listing.

Lucille Clifton (1936 – 2010) was a prolific poet and children’s book author. Clifton’s work was easily identified by its purposeful lack of punctuation and capitalization. She served as Maryland’s poet laureate from 1974 until 1985 and won the National Book Award for her collection “Blessing the Boats.”

Her poetry ranged from social upheavals and the African-American urban experience to her role as a woman and poet.

On the anniversary of her death, we share her poem,

“sleeping beauty

when she woke up
she was terrible.
under his mouth her mouth
turned red and warm
then almost crimson as the coals
smothered and forgotten
in the grate.
she had been gone so long.
there was much to unlearn.
she opened her eyes.
he was the first thing she saw
and she blamed him.”
— lucille clifton, “sleeping beauty”

In December 2019, the City of Worcester selected the first youth poet laureate in Massachusetts, Amina Mohammad.  Over her two years in office, Mohammad, who grew up in Worcester’s Main South neighborhood, would move from live readings to a virtual world that included not just poetry but finishing her high school years and starting college.  

As her term was coming to an end, she shared, “… poetry comes in all shapes and forms, and this would be the best way to express how you feel about this certain situation that’s going on.”

You can read more in her discussion with Devy Forcina at https://worcesterculture.org/writing-expressing-and-healing-an-interview-with-amina-mohammed-worcester-youth-poet-laureate/.

You can also read her poem “Change” at https://www.uml.edu/Magazine/Summer-2021/amina-poem.aspx.  You will also find a selection of Mohammad’s poems on the City of Worcester’s poet laureate’s webpage (http://www.worcesterma.gov/cultural-development/poet – scroll to the bottom). 

Pushcart Prize-winning poet Terrance Hayes has published seven books of poetry, poems that examine culture, race, music, and masculinity. Hayes plays with formal constraints in his poetry and created the Golden Shovel poetic form to pay homage to admired poets. To write a Golden Shovel, take one word from each line of a pre-existing poem – these words will serve as the final word of each line of your own poem.

Check out Hayes’ Golden Shovel after Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool” here and try writing a Golden Shovel of your own.

In September 2020 Worcester’s Bedlam Book Cafe hosted a virtual poetry reading and discussion with (NYC poet and American Antiquarian Society Fellow) and Tim Seibles (former Poet Laureate of Virginia).  You can find a recording of the event on our YouTube channel – visit https://youtu.be/tvC57_yn8BI.

David Mills is the author of After Mistic (Massachusetts slavery poems), The Sudden Country, and The Dream Detective. He has received fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, Breadloaf, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Lannan Foundation. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Jubilat and Fence. The Juilliard School commissioned and produced a play by Mr. Mills. He has also recorded his poetry on RCA records and ESPN and lived in Langston Hughes` landmark Harlem home.

Tim Seibles is the author of several poetry collections including Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, Buffalo Head Solos, and Fast Animal, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award and winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize. Tim is a former NEA fellow and recipient of a fellowship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His latest collection, One Turn Around the Sun was released in 2017. He recently completed a two-year appointment as Poet laureate of Virginia.

Etheridge Knight (1931 – 1991) lived in Worcester and hosted his Free People’s Poetry Workshops for part of his life.  These workshops were free and were open to anyone who wished to attend. Those who wanted to learn bought Knight drinks throughout the night, and in return, he would look over their poetry and offer advice. Apocryphally, Knight explained that if someone ís reading poetry and can stop a drunk man with a bladder full of beer on his way to the bathroom, you know it ís a good poem.  A version of the Free People’s Workshop continues today with artists, poets, musicians, dramatists, and others meeting to discuss and share their work.

In September 2018, the WCPA honored Knight by renaming the performance portion of the WCPA’s Annual College Poetry Contest.  The “Etheridge Knight Performance Prize” is awarded to a single individual each year and includes a cash prize.  College and universities in central Massachusetts chose a participant to represent the school at the event.  Craig Blais of Anna Maria College is chairing the contest again this year.

You can find additional information about Etheridge Knight in the Literary Tour section of our website.

One of the celebrations that take place during February is Black History Month. It’s a time to celebrate the accomplishments of African Americans. While we should celebrate Black history every month, this dedicated time allows everyone to share, remember, and embrace the influence of Black heritage and culture.

To celebrate Black History Month, we’ll be sharing poems, forms, and history of local and not-so-local poets who occupy a special place on our bookshelves. Join us in celebrating these poets and their words.

Let’s start with poet Amanda Gorman. Ms. Gorman is an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. In 2017, she was appointed the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate by Urban Word – a program that supports Youth Poets Laureate in more than 60 cities, regions, and states.

You can watch a recording of Amanda Gorman sharing a poem to kick off 2022 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aCJhuDIirg.

Visit Amanda’s website at https://www.theamandagorman.com/.

On Thursday, February 17 at 7:30 PM in the Curtis Performance Hall, the Assumption University HumanArts Series presents the 2022 Michael True Memorial Reading, featuring poet Jonathan Blake. Jonathan has been a fixture of the Worcester County poetry scene for more than three decades. His voice, contemplative and liturgical, provides a needed antidote to the pell-mell world in which we are so often embroiled. Michael True was a professor in Assumption’s English Department for nearly four decades and was a co-founder of the Worcester County Poetry Association, which has been active for 50 years now, bringing poets and poetry to schools and venues across Worcester County, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United States, and Internationally.

Each year on Robert Burns’ birthday (January 25), Scots around the world pay tribute to the bard and his words that continue to inspire and challenge us all today.

Today at 2pm EST (7pm in Scotland), tune in to a “Big Burns Supper”, a free, virtual Burns Night celebration full of music, comedy, poetry, performance, and prose. This year’s event is described as a “cabaret-esque rollercoaster around the world. From KT Tunstall in LA to Dervish performing from lockdown in Dublin, this year’s Big Burns Supper takes Burns Night global once again.”

Eddi Reader’s Big Burns Supper is taking place live on Facebook. Visit https://www.facebook.com/events/3177152909275106 starting at 2:00 pm Eastern.

Renowned poet, painter, memoirist, and short story writer, Worcester’s own Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) rests within Hope Cemetery. On what would be her 111th birthday, we gather by her grave to read her poetry and summon the scenes so skillfully painted in her verse. Come celebrate with the WCPA and Beth Sweeney, director of the new Mapping Worcester in Poetry Project, on Tuesday, February 8, 2022, at 12:00pm.

Please wear appropriate attire, footwear, and a mask.

To find Bishop’s grave in Hope Cemetery at 119 Webster Street:
– Enter the cemetery’s main gate and drive along Curtis Avenue
– Take your fourth left onto Beech Street
– Proceed for one block until you see two trees next to each other on the left side of the road
– Bishop’s grave lies behind the first tree
– If you like you can use these coordinates: 42°14’08.7″N 71°49’43.2″W

If you have a bit of time that day you might wish to use this new downloadable, 20-minute do-it-yourself driving tour which will lead you past five Bishop sites on Main Street in Worcester to end at her grave in Hope Cemetery. Download the PDF at https://worcestercountypoetry.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Bishop-DIY-Driving-Tour.pdf.

Congratulations Adael Mejia, the newly named City of Worcester Youth Poet Laureate!

Along with the Worcester Poet Laureate, the Youth Poet Laureate serves as an official ambassador to the City’s historic and vibrant cultures of poetry and literature, both using their positions to promote local writers and the transformative qualities of poetry and the written word.

Mejia, a Burncoat High graduate, will begin his term as Youth Poet Laureate in 2022. Mejia assumes the role after the two-year term of the City and Commonwealth’s first Youth Poet Laureate, Amina Mohammed, came to an end on Dec. 31, 2021. Worcester Poet Laureate Juan Matos, whose own term continues through 2022, will serve as a mentor and guide to Meija.

Read more about Adael in the official City of Worcester press release or in this profile in Worcester Magazine. You can also follow the new youth poet laureate on Facebook.

The WCPA is thankful to receive a $10,000 Community Grant from the Greater Worcester Community Foundation! GWCF operating support will help us focus on our mission to celebrate the rich literary history and creative energy of Central Massachusetts through poetry.

An Evening of Poetry will be held on Saturday, November 20^th at the GB & Lexi Singh Performance Center at Alternatives’ Whitin Mill, 60 Douglas Road, Whitinsville, MA. A celebration of poetic excellence, this event features readings from four regional poets and an open mic segment following intermission.  Scheduled from 7:00 – 9:00 pm, the event is free and open to the public with donations welcome.

The poetry showcase will spotlight Candace Curran, Paul Richmond, Karen Warinsky, and Gerald Yelle, who will all read during the first hour. Curran has twice been named Western Massachusetts Poet’s Seat laureate, while Richmond was honored as Massachusetts Beat Poet Laureate (2017-2019) and National Beat Poet Laureate (2017-2019). Warinsky has been a finalist in the Montreal International Poetry Contest. Her debut collection, Gold in Autumn, was released last summer. Yelle’s publications include The Holyoke Diaries and No Place I Would Rather Be. He is a member of the Florence, Massachusetts Poets Society.

Following intermission, community poets from the audience will be able to participate in an open mic segment, with five minutes allotted to each poet. Participants will be able to sign up to read at the start of the event.

This event is being hosted by ValleyCAST, the arts and culture arm of Open Sky Community Services. Following Open Sky’s COVID safety protocol, all attendees are required to wear a mask regardless of vaccination status.

For further information about this program or to learn more about participating, email Karen Warinsky: karen.warinsky@gmail.com. To learn more about ValleyCAST and/or Open Sky Community Services, visit openskycs.org.

Plein air painter and Plein air writer Sam Lalos invites you to a retreat at the Marie Joseph Spiritual Center (10 Evans Road, Biddeford Pool, Maine  04005),

MAY 11-15. WEDNESDAY-SUNDAY 2022 FOUR NIGHTS arriving Wednesday 1ish leaving Sunday 15 after lunch

Contact Anne or Sister Kate at the Marie Joseph Spiritual Center directly 207 284 5671 and ask for Sam Lalos’ Worcester painters and poets group
or contact Sam. 508 753 4319 slalos@worcester.edu and mention dates.
100 per night with a private room and three meals included for 100 total per night.  Book other dates, an option you have.

COVID concerns? refunds up to a week or two before stay; that is Sam’s understanding. There is the possibility of eliminating the weekend days; check out the possibilities of booking your own or other dates. Separate sections for women. Religious services are optional and not required.

The Worcester Review publishes literary fiction and poetry by new and established writers, as well as critical commentary on aspects of Central Massachusetts literary culture and history. The Worcester Review is a print journal published by the WCPA.

We welcome and encourage contributions from under-represented writers. For Fall 2021/ Winter 2022 submissions, TWR will have a waived-fee option for BIPOC writers.

TWR does not want to miss out on submissions from any writer; if our submission fee is a barrier for you, please email the editor for options.

Submissions Periods:
We will open for submissions of poetry and fiction on October 1, 2021.

POETRY:
October 1, 2021 – January 31, 2022

FICTION:
October 2021 and January 2022

For more guidelines, please visit TWR’s Submittable page: https://theworcesterreview.submittable.com/submit

Image information – The cover of the 2020 volume of The Worcester Review features artwork by Abu Mwenye.