Poetorium Too Poetry Reading & Open Mic Featuring Candace R. Curran, Janet MacFadyen, & Steven Bizel

Please join us for a special Wednesday triple feature edition of our monthly open mic and featured poetry reading series  Poetorium Too at TidePool Bookshop (located at 372 Chandler Street in Worcester, MA) on July 29th from 5 pm to 7 pm hosted by Paul Szlosek and (hopefully) Ron Whittle.  It will be a full two hours of poetry and spoken word featuring 20 minute readings each by poets Candace R. Curran,  Janet MacFadyen, & Steven Bizel, followed by the passing of a hat to pay our features, a short intermission, and then an open mic with 5-minute slots for each reader if time allows (in order to fit everything planned into our allotted time, if the event runs too long, readers may be restricted to one poem).

Candace R. Curran was raised alongside Wachusett Mountain in rural Princeton, MA by a coyote and Ford mechanic doing the best they could. Publications include, Bone Cages and Playing in Wrecks, by Haleys Press;  and the Elyse Wolf prize winner The Sound of Her Good Name, Slate Roof Press, 2025.

Janet MacFadyen is the author of four full-length collections—most recently Love Letters to the Wild (Dos Madres) and State of Grass (Salmon Poetry)—and four chapbooks, including two photo-poetry collaborations with the photographer Stephen Schmidt. Honors include a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, a Cill Rialaig residency, and a 7-month Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellowship. Her poems appear widely, most recently in SWIMM, Slant, Osiris, Dark Matter, and Scientific American. She is the managing editor of Slate Roof Press, a collaboratively-run chapbook publisher: www.slateroofpress.com.

Steven Bizel is an extremely talented poet living in Pittsfield, Massachusetts who has been a regular attendee of The Poetorium Too at TidePool Bookshop since August.