Green Monster Poetry Submissions Deadline!
2025-07-02 00:00 (America/New_York) | MA
The Green Monster Poetry Challenge is accepting submissions of poems that can be read/recited out loud in no more than ONE MINUTE. As a guideline, if your poem exceeds 20-24 lines and has more than 8-10 beats per line, it probably won’t cut the contest’s one-minute limitation. Of course, prior to submitting, you should clock the piece (out loud) several times in order to make sure it complies.

Guidelines:

· Must be written in tight meter and rhyme

· When read/recited out loud, must not exceed one minute in length

· Must respond to the following prompt: Bring to life the spirit of the Green Monster at Fenway Park, and communicate what it means to the team, fans, and Boston community

· Please make your submission by or before Wednesday, July 2nd at noon ET, and include your full name, town/state, email address, and phone number

· Please submit only a single poem

· Please submit your poem in the body of an email, and not in an attachment (poems submitted in attachments will be deleted)

· Please note: if you make a submission, you agree that NESN TV maintains the right to utilize your poem (or any portion of it) in any way NESN chooses, including (but not limited to) television, radio, print, outdoor signage, digital media, premium items, etc.; please note that you, as the poem’s author, will maintain ownership of the copyright)

Please submit your poem to the National Baseball Poetry Festival’s contest email: baseballpoetrycontest@gmail.com; and, please note, we are unable to respond to inquiries.

Poems on Parts of a Wondrous Whole
2025-07-10 13:00 - 14:00 | Cantor Art Gallery, Prior Performing Arts Center, College of the Holy Cross, 1 College St, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01610-2322
Mapping Worcester in Poetry has teamed up with Cantor Art Gallery’s current exhibit, Room of Wonders: A Worcester Wunderkammer, to host a poetry reading that explores collective experiences of the city’s public spaces. All the poems were composed for MWiP’s 2023 “Poems in and out of Places” contest, and like many works in the exhibit, they explore how parts relate to a whole. Poets will include Joe Fusco Jr., Anna Gold, Kate Gregoire, Carla Morrissey, Nancy Baillie Strong, Paul Szlosek, Cathy Taylor, Jerry Waller, Jill Watts, Ashley Wonder, and D Zeutas-Broer.

An open book, or part of the Room of Wonders? Photo: Christina An

Slightly Off-Beat Poets
2025-07-13 13:00 - 16:00 | Steve Veilleux’s Home, 112 Fabyan-Woodstock North Road, Grosvenordale, CT, 06255, United States
WHAT: Slightly Off-beat Poets Presents: KAT PIHL & BARBARA THOMAS

WHERE: Lil’s Barkyard Stage at Steve Veilleux’s house 112 Fabyan-Woodstock Road N Grosvenordale, CT

RAIN LOCATION: Indoors

WHEN: Sunday July 13, 2025 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

WHAT HAPPENS: Our feature poets of the month will each read for 20 minutes. Then we will take a quick break for book sales, snacks, and the raffle before starting the open mic. Open mic will be round robin, one poem at a time until 4 PM.

COST: There will be a 50/50 raffle, split between the feature and the winner. 5$ to enter.

SIGN-UPS: There is room for 20 POETS. To reserve a spot please email: roberteugeneperry@gmail.com

Tales from Poetry Town (and Poetry Bazaar!)
2025-07-15 18:00 - 19:30 | Museum of Worcester, 30 Elm Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01609, United States
Join us to learn about the founding, and flourishing, of legendary organizations, venues, and open mics during the last five decades of poetry in Worcester. With Bob Gill as emcee, Jonathan Blake, Stephen Campiglio, Lea Deschenes, Rush Frazier, John Hodgen, Cowboy Matt Hopewell, Bill MacMillan, Dave Macpherson, Rodger Martin, and Eve Rifkah will swap stories about Noh Place, Poets’ Asylum, Dirty Gerund, the Little “a,” the Hangover Hour, Poetry Oasis, and more. Bring your own memories to share with us!

There will be a reception and a chance to browse our Poetry Bazaar, where you’ll discover the newest additions to the local poetry scene, including Booklovers’ Gourmet, Mapping Worcester in Poetry, National Baseball Poetry Festival, Openest Mic, Poetry Extravaganza!, Poetorium, Rain Poets, Slightly Off-beat Poets, Thirsty Lab, Three-Decker, Worcester Writers Collaborative, and more!

Listen! A Poetry Reading! at Nick’s in 2019; photo by Sam Fuller

This event, organized by Mapping Worcester in Poetry, accompanies Museum of Worcester’s new exhibit “The Poem Next Door,” which will be open for viewing at 5:30 pm before the program. The event is FREE as part of Museum of Worcester’s 150th anniversary. To attend, please register here.

A Virtual Thirsty Lab with Rodger Martin
2025-07-22 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Online Meeting, United States
The Thirsty Lab poetry reading, normally based out of Princeton, Mass., continues to meet virtually. On Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025 Rodger Martin will be the featured reader. Please Click Here to register.

This year, Nature/Culture Books brought out Rodger Martin’s fifth book, The Sleeping Dogs of Lubec along with a new & revised edition of his first book, The Nemo Poems. For All The Tea in Zhōngguó was released in 2019. It follows The Battlefield Guide, and the selection of The Blue Moon Series, (all by Hobblebush Books) by Small Press Review as one of its bi-monthly picks of the year. Most recently he has been a major contributor for NatureCulure’s “Writing The Land” anthologies.

He is a touring artist for the New England States Touring Foundation administered by the New England Foundation for the Arts. He received the 2024 Stanley Kunitz Medal for his lifelong commitment to poetry. He’s also received an Appalachia award for poetry, a New Hampshire State Council on the Arts award for fiction, fellowships from The National Endowment for the Humanities to study T.S. Eliot and Thomas Hardy at Oxford University, and John Milton at Duquesne University. Meg Kearney chose one of his poems for permanent trail mounting at Cathedral of The Pines.

His work has been published in literary journals and anthologies throughout the United States and China where he also wrote a series of essays on American poetry for The Yangtze River Journal. He and six colleagues, as part of The Monadnock Pastoral Poets , have been featured in a book On the Monadnock: New Pastoral Poetry released in China

In 2007. In 2012, he represented the United States as one of twelve international poets participating in the City of Hangzhou’s literary festival on West Lake, China. In 2015 he was a visiting poet at Nanjing University and Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, where in 2017 his poem “The Anchor” has been mounted at the reflecting pool where it was inspired. He returned to Yancheng with six other American poets as part of the Poetry Bridging Continents III Conference. In addition to his writing, he teaches journalism and creative writing at Keene State College, plus co-advises The Equinox, the college’s national award-winning student news organization.

He was managing editor of The Worcester Review for almost three decades. He helped found and direct New Hampshire’s Poetry Out Loud Project. 2013 marked the completion of a decade long project with Dr. B. Eugene McCarthy to adapt all twelve books of the epic poem Paradise Lost for dramatic reading. His critical work “The Colonization of Paradise: Milton’s Pandemonium and Montezuma’s Tenochtitlan” [TAY-nosh-TIT-lan] published in Comparative Literature Studies broke new ground in Milton studies.

He was born in the amish country of Pennsylvania, lived in England as a child, and served as a combat engineer in Vietnam. You can find him in the woods of New Hampshire.

New Dawn Writers' Group Presents Tom Laughlin
2025-07-22 19:00 - 21:30 | New Dawn Center, 84 Main St., Ashburnham, MA, 01607, United States
The New Dawn Writers’ Group is excited to have Tom Laughlin as our July visiting author. He will be reading Tuesday, July 22 starting at 7:00 p.m.. And the open mic starts at 8:00 p.m. We’d love to see you.

Tom Laughlin is a Professor of English and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Middlesex Community College in Massachusetts where he coordinates the MCC Visiting Writers Series; open readings for students; and the publication of the online literary magazine Dead River Review. He was a volunteer staff reader for many years for Ploughshares and has taught literature classes in two Massachusetts prisons. His poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Ibbetson Street, DrunkMonkeys, Sand Hills, Blue Mountain Review, Pensive, The Main Street Rag, Superpresent Magazine, The Lowell Review, Molecule, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, The Rest of the Way, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2022. His website.

Inside the Kunitz Family
2025-07-24 18:00 - 19:30 | Museum of Worcester, 30 Elm Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01609, United States
Join us for a probing discussion of how life relates to art and the challenges of writing a biography. We’ll focus on one of Worcester’s best-known poets, Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006), who summed up the family dynamic that shaped his identity in the opening lines of “The Portrait”: “My mother never forgave my father/ for killing himself,/ especially at such an awkward time.” Kunitz’s mother, who was then pregnant with him, suppressed all traces of his father’s existence — leading to his lifelong yearning for his other parent and his estrangement from Worcester itself, until a friendship late in life helped him to heal.

James Dempsey, a journalist, novelist, poet, and author of The Tortured Life of Schofield Thayer, will share his findings from his research on a biography of Kunitz. Judith Ferrara, a painter, poet, and scholar, recently published A Feast of Losses: Yetta Dine and Her Son, the Poet Stanley Kunitz.

Kunitz’s entry in the 1922 Classical High School Argus, courtesy Museum of Worcester

This event, organized by Mapping Worcester in Poetry, is part of the new Poem Next Door exhibit at the Museum of Worcester — which features Kunitz — as well as a celebration of the poet’s birthday that culminates in awarding the annual Stanley Kunitz Medal on July 31. The exhibit will be open for viewing at 5:30 pm before the program.

This event is FREE as part of Museum of Worcester’s 150th anniversary. To attend, please register here.

Slightly Off-Beat Poets with Michael McAfee & Karen Elizabeth Sharpe
2025-07-27 13:00 - 16:00 | Steve Veilleux’s Home, 112 Fabyan-Woodstock North Road, Grosvenordale, CT, 06255, United States
IMPORTANT: PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN CHAIR FOR THIS OUTDOOR EVENT

WHAT: Slightly Off-beat Poets Presents: MICHAEL Michael McAfee & KAREN ELIZABETH Karen Elizabeth Sharpe

WHERE: (Donna Lange’s house 59 Chase Road Thompson, CT (exit 50 off RTE 395)

RAIN LOCATION: Steve Veilleux’s house 112 Fabyan-Woodstock Road N Grosvenordale, CT

WHEN: Sunday July 27, 2025 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm

WHAT HAPPENS: Our feature poets of the month will each read for 20 minutes. Then we will take a quick break for book sales, snacks, and the raffle before starting the open mic. Open mic will be round robin, one poem at a time until 4 PM.

COST: There will be a 50/50 raffle, split between the feature and the winner. 5$ to enter.

SIGN-UPS: There is room for 20 POETS. To reserve a spot please email: roberteugeneperry@gmail.com

Michael McAfee is a software quality assurance engineer living in Millis, MA. Though he’s been writing poetry since childhood, he only started going to open mics about ten years ago while working on his collection, “Tarot Poems.” His use of random card drawings to determine what to read at shows has since become a hit with audiences. Along with poetry, he is active in the Boston-area audio theater community, having most recently written and directed “Townies and Dragons: A Barrel Full of Peril” for the Post Meridian Radio Players’ spring show of 2025. He is constantly working on project ideas, and being an extrovert, will gladly talk about them with anyone who’ll listen, and will in turn gladly listen to others talk about theirs.

Karen Elizabeth Sharpe is from Rutland, Massachusetts, where she lives with her partner and two pandemic rescue dogs. Karen is a poetry editor at The Worcester Review and author of Prayer Can Be Anything, (Finishing Line Press) and This Late Afternoon (Dunn & Co.). Her poems have or will soon appear in Whale Road Review, On the Seawall, The MacGuffin, SWWIM Fourth River, Split Rock Review, Mom Egg Review, and Halfway Down the Stairs, among others.

Worcester Writers' Collective
2025-07-29 18:00 - 21:00 | JMac/Brickbox Theater, 20 Franklin Street, Worcester, MA, 01608, United States
Come one, come all to the weekly meetings of the WWC:

6-7 Free Writing Time

7-9 Reading and Workshop

Building a small community of local writers of all genres is our priority and we are so thrilled to invite anyone interested to drop in and participate.

It’s FREE and open to all. 🙂

A Virtual Thirsty Lab with Paul Szlosek
2025-07-29 19:00 - 20:00 | Zoom Online Meeting, United States
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.

Worcester Writers' Collective Showcase
2025-07-31 18:00 - 19:30 | Prior Performance Arts Center, 1 College Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01610, United States
The Worcester Writers’ Collective is thrilled to present our second public showcase. The event features a powerful collection of poetry, playwriting, and prose created by our members. Come and experience a whirlwind of stories across all ranges of emotions, mediums, and backgrounds, written and performed by lifelong Worcester creatives. The performance is supported by imagery, sounds, and scenescapes that transport audiences and serve as a true celebration of our city’s tenacity for moving storytelling.

The event will take place at the Boroughs Theatre at the Prior Performing Arts Center, College of the Holy Cross. Free parking is available directly in front of the theater.

Kunitz Medal Award Ceremony
2025-07-31 18:30 - 20:30 | Museum of Worcester, 30 Elm Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 01609, United States
Join us at the Museum of Worcester as the Stanley Kunitz Medal is presented to this year’s winner, Victor D. Infante. The museum’s new Poem Next Door exhibit — which features “My Mother’s Pears,” Kunitz’s poem about his boyhood home at 4 Woodford Street — will be open for viewing at 6 pm before the program begins.

This award is presented annually to honor a poet with a strong Worcester County (Mass.) connection who best exemplifies Stanley Kunitz’s life-long commitment to poetry and poets. The award recognizes the total commitment to poetry as Kunitz lived it: teaching poetry, mentoring poets, speaking poetry, publishing poetry, and supporting organizations that nurture poetry.

Victor D. Infante is a poet, fiction writer and journalist living in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of the recent poetic novella, Suffer For This, from Moon Tide Press and the full-length poetry collection, City of Insomnia, from Write Bloody Publishing. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Chiron Review, The Collagist, Barrelhouse, Pearl, Spillway and The Banyan Review. He is currently the features editor of the Telegram & Gazette and the editor of Worcester Magazine. He’s an Aquarius, with all that entails.

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