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.