“The Worcester County Poetry Association has been celebrating Worcester’s rich literary history since its incorporation in 1971. At almost 30 years, it must stand as the Commonwealth’s longest-ongoing literary party. Worcester County has been particularly active in the last two years. A week does not pass without its poetry-related event, often many. This publication both acknowledges and springs from this dynamic. The contributors represent just about every current poetry venue, as well as a cross-section of our loyal and dedicated membership. Our aim is to reflect, in a casual and occasional manner, the excitement of these times.”
Robert Steele wrote the above as the Editor’s Note in the Autumn 1998 inaugural edition of The WCPA’s The Issue literary journal (Robert was then and is still a WCPA board member). Launched in 1998, The Issue was a “periodic publication,” as coined by a former guest editor and Paul Szlosek. It ran for seven issues between 1998 and 2001, with special issues released in 2009 and 2021.
The WCPA is bringing this journal back to Worcester County with a new name — Three Decker — but with the same vision and mission: promote poetry in Worcester County and fill a gap in our growing and vibrant local literary scene. The name, which we decided on through engaging our members in a brief contest to provide suggestions, is inspired by the iconic building structure for so many local homes within Worcester, giving a local nod while also speaking to a sense of neighborhood and community.
The WCPA already publishes the annual Worcester Review, a renowned journal open to submissions from anywhere. The organization also supports The Poet’s Cauldron and The Worcester Writer’s Collective as their fiscal sponsor, with members from those organizations on our board and WCPA members regularly attending their events. Smaller journals such as HexLiterary out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute give local writers, focusing primarily on short fiction. We’ve also worked with The Dirty Gerund and support what they bring to spoken word poetry, locally and nationally.
Where Three Decker fits in this amazing literary landscape is as a bi-annual and informal space for poetry for only Worcester County poets. Three Decker is designed to be a smaller, more frequent, and more relaxed publication that complements the annual and more formal style of The Worcester Review.
Over the past several months, we have met to discuss the structure with previous editors and the editors for other journals to understand how best to re-introduce this journal to Worcester County poets. We proposed our ideas to the complete WCPA board, and they were accepted. We have digitized all previous issues of The Issue to include them in our new website, which will host accepted pieces and manage our process. We intend to launch the site in March and open it for submissions, with our first publication released in June 2025.
For over fifty years, the WCPA has supported poetry in Worcester County. This journal is another means to further our mission and contribute to everything the city contributes to the arts and humanities.
Check out Three Decker today at its own website, threedecker.org, and please consider submitting some poetry for our inaugural issue!