Arts in The Garden

On August 10th we will be featuring musician Ron Carlson, and poet Oliver de la Paz. Admission is FREE and patrons are encouraged to bring non-alcoholic beverages and snacks to this family friendly event. Join us for an awesome time at Arts in The Garden!

Ron Carlson has been performing in Central Massachusetts and beyond for much of the last four decades, singing traditional and contemporary folk music, as well as many original songs. He’s been told that his original songs sound like traditional material, something in which he takes great pride. Many of his compositions are centered in and around Worcester and the surrounding area, where he was born, raised and continues to live to this very day. They are songs of love, sorrow, pain and joy, filtered through his eyes; sometimes whimsical, sometimes philosophical, hopefully with compassion and empathy. in 2004 Ron’s song When Fortune Rosins the Bow was a runner up in the WUMB songwriter’s competition. In 2011, Ron was the winner of the Rose Garden Coffeehouses’ competition for performing songwriters. The songs performed that evening Ford Taurus and A Task Undone can be found on YouTube along with many others at Ron Carlson’s musical channel.

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is forthcoming from Liveright Press in 2023. With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member, Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board and on the board for Poetry Daily.

A recipient of grants and awards from the NEA, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Artist Trust, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, his work has appeared in journals like Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Poetry, and in anthologies and periodicals such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation and in the New York Times. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.