Poetorium @ Starlite

Please join us for a special triple feature edition of our monthly open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium at Starlite hosted by Paul Szlosek and Ron Whittle. It will be a full evening of poetry, spoken word, and music starting with a brief interview on stage with our three featured poets Carolyn Oliver (Author of The Alcestis Machine, and Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble), Matthew E. Henry (Author of The Colored Page, and The Third Renunciation), & Irena Kaçi (2023 O’Hara Prize Third Place Winner) followed by readings by our 3 features, a 10-minute tribute to a dead poet by a guest reader, a short intermission, and then an open mic (with 5-minute slots for each reader). Admission is free, but a hat will be passed for donations to pay our features and compensate Starlite for the use of their space. For more information, please contact us at poetorium@mail.com or visit our website at https://poetorium.home.blog/2019/04/29/the-poetorium-at-starlite-2/

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of The Colored Page (Sundress Publications, 2022), Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020). He has three collections forthcoming in 2023 from NYQ Books (The Third Renunciation), Ghost City Press (Have You Heard the One About…?), and Harbor Editions (Said the Frog to the Scorpion). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes. MEH’s poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in Barren Magazine, Bending Genres, Cola Literary Review, The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Pangyrus, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Redivider, Relief Journal, Shenandoah, Solstice, Spiritus, The Windhover, The Worcester Review, and Zone 3 among others. His awards include being a Diode Editions 2022 chapbook contest finalist, the winner of the 2021 Fare Forward Poetry competition, the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award finalist, the 2020 MassPoetry.org’s “Poem of the Moment,” the 2019 Orison Chapbook Prize finalist, and the 2007 Relief Journal Editor’s Choice Award. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Pangyrus Literary Magazine, Porcupine Literary, Relief Journal, and 3 Elements Literary Review, and the Best of the Net by the Museum of Americana and 3 Elements Literary Review. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA from Seattle Pacific University yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. He writes about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground at http://www.MEHPoeting.com

Irena Kaçi is a poet currently residing in Worcester, with her spouse and two children. She grew up in Durrës, Albania & Hartford, CT.  Irena moved to Worcester to study at Clark University. Her work often touches on the immigrant experience and the divide that comes with raising a family outside the frame of her own childhood.