Poetorium Too Poetry Reading & Open Mic Featuring Dee O’Connor & Belén Atienza

Please join us for another special Worcester Wednesday double feature edition of our monthly open mic and featured poetry reading series The Poetorium (formerly held at the Starlite in Southbridge) at TidePool Bookshop on September 24th from 5 pm to 7 pm hosted by Ron Whittle and Paul Szlosek. It will be a full two hours of poetry and spoken word starting with a brief interview on stage with our two featured poets Dee O’Connor (reading the poetry of her late husband Curt Curtin) and Belén Atienza (reading her own poetry in the original Spanish) followed by poetry readings by our two features, a short intermission, and then an open mic (with 5-minute slots for each reader if time permits).Books by both featured poets will be available for purchase in the store that evening. For more information, please get in touch with us at poetorium@mail.com or visit our website.

Dee O’Connor is a poetry lover who married her favorite poet, Curt Curtin, over 40 years ago. She loves reading his work in public. Dee eventually became the curator of Curt’s work, helping him to get seven full-length collections published. Dee’s professional career was in public policy, aging, and disability where she developed policies to support elders and people with disabilities needing long-term supports in the community. She also wrote and produced a short play, “Talking with Dolores,” which explores end-of-life decisions and suicide. The play was performed in multiple settings across the state, in English and Spanish, and at state and national conferences.

Curt Curtin (1930-2024) authored seven full-length poetry collections, three chapbooks, and many other poems yet to be published. In 2010, he received the Frank O’Hara Poetry award from the Worcester County Poetry Association. In 2019, he won second place in the annual contest of the Connecticut Poetry Society. He was twice nominated for a Pushcart prize. Curt was a featured reader in many poetry venues in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and twice in Ireland. He taught college English and creative writing for over 20 years at Westfield State College following several years teaching younger students. In 2023, he won grants from both the Worcester Arts Council and the Mass Cultural Council to support his work.

Belén Atienza is one of twelve bilingual (Spanish/English) writers who participated in the 1995 creative writing seminar taught at Princeton by Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez. She is the author of the poetry collection entitled Tierra de noches inmensas, a lyrical and erotic evocation of her native Andalucía, inspired by Lorca. Her poetry has been translated to English and Chinese and has appeared in magazines such as Rattle and Poetry East/West. She is also a poetry translator and author of a collection of short stories entitled Saltaparedes, and a monograph “El loco en el espejo: locura y melancolía en la España de Lope de Vega.” She teaches at Clark University and holds a PhD in Romance Languages from Princeton University and a B.A in Spanish Literature from the Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona.