A Virtual Thirsty Lab with Paul Szlosek

The Thirsty Lab poetry reading, normally based out of Princeton, Mass., continues to meet virtually. On Tuesday, July 29th, 2025 Paul Szlosek will be the featured reader. Please Click Here to register.

Paul Szlosek is a poet, photographer, blogger, magician, and “cranial fermenter” (a term he has personally coined) born in Southbridge, Massachusetts, but currently residing in the nearby metropolis of Worcester. A recipient of the 2001 Jacob Knight Award for Poetry, the 2023 Stanley Kunitz Medal, and the 2024 Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize, he has served as co-founder and co-host of both the Poet’s Parlor and Poetorium at Starlite open mic & reading series. His poetry have appeared in numerous local & national print & online publications including The Worcester Review, Worcester Magazine, Radius, Sahara, Concrete Wolf, Soul-Lit, Diner, Poetry as Promised, & Silkworm. Paul is probably best known in the Central Massachusetts poetry community for his fanatical obsession with obscure poetry forms, and has invented his own including the ziggurat, the streetbeatina, the hodgenelle, the lux, and the singsangsong which he often shares with readers on his poetry blog Paul’s Poetry Playground. He has also gained a legendary reputation, for some inexplicable reason, as a poet whom no one wants to follow in an open reading. Paul’s first collection of poetry tentatively titled Pretense, Portents, & the Farmer’s Son will be published by Metaphysical Fox Press in the hopefully not-too-distant future.