Mapping Worcester in Poetry

Worcester has long been a hotbed of poetry, and Mapping Worcester in Poetry (MWiP) is literally putting the city’s poems on the map! Below, you’ll find events and do-it-yourself tours to follow in the footsteps of Worcester’s best-loved poets, including Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Bishop, Charles Olson, Mary Fell, Etheridge Knight, and Christopher Gilbert. MWiP identifies, documents, and marks sites in the city related to these poets while nurturing brand-new poetry about Worcester and Central Massachusetts.

Holy Cross students embark on the first Kunitz tour. Learn more here.

THE POEM NEXT DOOR

MWiP’s groundbreaking guest-curated exhibit at Museum of Worcester ran from May 16 to Dec. 31, 2025. If you missed it, you can view this video tour filmed by Anna Claire Pritchett (about 2 min. long).

The Poem Next Door was accompanied by a bevy of special events. View this slide show of the exhibit and affiliated programs (click on “Slide Show” to start), or scroll down to “Press” for reviews, interviews, and news stories.

MAPPING URBAN POETRY IN THE WORCESTER REVIEW

Volume 45 of The Worcester Review includes a feature section guest-edited by MWiP director Susan Elizabeth Sweeney. It combines innovative scholarship on major Worcester poets, spatial poetics, and urban studies with new poems that connect with those earlier writers “across the mutual landscape” of the city, in Christopher Gilbert’s phrase.

Watch for the sequel — a guest-edited feature coordinated with MWiP, tentatively titled “Intersections” — in Volume 46 of The Worcester Review.

POEMS IN AND OUT OF PLACES

In 2023, nearly 100 Worcester residents wrote new poems about the city’s public spaces for a MWiP contest judged by Worcester Poet Laureate Oliver de la Paz. Selected poems will receive a $75 honorarium and be displayed, recorded, and published. Here’s a list of winners and honorable mentions as well as information about the contest and related events.

On Tuesday, June 17, 2025, the winning poets read their work as part of The Poem Next Door at the Poems in and out of Places Winners’ Reading!

Perseus with Hermes Winged Sandals by PichiAvo, 1 Sever Street, photo courtesy of Halopigg

NEW POEMS ABOUT WORCESTER SPACES

Read Cheryl Breslin’s “The Poets in Elm Park,“ which she wrote about MWiP’s “Poems in Parks” reading during the actual event!

Read Susan Roney-O’Brien’s “Elizabeth Bishop’s Birthday Bash, Hope Cemetery, Worcester, Massachusetts,” in which she imagines attending the annual MWiP celebratio

Read Susan Elizabeth Sweeney’s “A Cento for the City,” constructed out of lines from poems by Bishop, Fell, Kunitz, Olson, Gilbert, and O’Hara for the opening of The Poem Next Door.

Read a collaborative poem about “The White Room,” created at an MWiP workshop on “Writing Poems about Worcester’s Changing Neighborhoods” and now displayed by the proprietors.

The audience at Poems in Parks in Elm Park, Aug. 23, 2025. Photo: Evan Plante

QUESTION

Do you know a place in Worcester that is worthy of a poem?

SELF-GUIDED TOURS

Download a free driving, walking, or virtual tour for a fun date with a friend! Each tour is packed with images, information, anecdotes, and quotes from poems. We welcome test-drivers and photos from tours (submit feedback and images here). But you don’t have to go on a physical tour — armchair traveling is highly recommended!

“In Worcester, Massachusetts”: Elizabeth Bishop Tour, revised March 2022
(5-minute read, 20-minute drive, or 85-minute walk along Main Street from City Hall Plaza to Hope Cemetery)

The Home Run: Stanley Kunitz Tour 1, revised July 2022
(5-minute read, 20-minute drive, or 40-minute walk from Polar Park to Green Street and up Vernon Hill to 4 Woodford Street)

Stanley Kunitz Boyhood Home, completed July 2022
(5-minute read; virtual tour of 4 Woodford Street in a brochure with photos, reminiscences, archival material, and excerpts from Kunitz’s Worcester poems)

The Spoils of Grafton: Frank O’Hara Tour 1, completed July 2024
(5-minute read, 20-minute drive, or 75-minute walk around Grafton Common and beyond)

Coming soon:

  • Mary Fell 1 and 2 (from Kelley Square to Main South and beyond)
  • Chris Gilbert 1 and 2 (from Pleasant Street to Park Avenue and beyond)
  • Etheridge Knight (Free People’s Poetry Workshop venues and beyond)
  • Stanley Kunitz 2 (from Elm Park to Hope Cemetery)
  • Frank O’Hara 2 (downtown Worcester)
  • Charles Olson 1 and 2 (from Norman Avenue and Newton Square to the Blackstone River)

UPCOMING EVENTS

Elizabeth Bishop’s Motley Menagerie
March 7, 2026, 2-4 pm, Hope Cemetery

Due to February’s extreme cold and snow, we had to put off our annual birthday celebration at Elizabeth Bishop’s grave for a few weeks. Now, please come join us to hear local poets read her poems about cats, roosters, armadillos, horses, giant toads, sandpipers, dogs, lions, loons, moose, and more.

Readers include Elizabeth Bacon, Rob Baker, Lisa Connelly Cook, Judith Ferrara, the Rev. Daniel Gregoire, Kate Gregoire, John Hodgen, Ann Lewis, Evan Plante, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, and of course Bishop herself. Animal costumes, tiger stripes, leopard spots, kitten heels, pigtails, cowbells, and plush toys are welcome! Sign up to read here.

Bishop’s cat Minnow, from The Art Part blog

MEET MWiP STUDENT RESEARCHERS

Anahi, Anna Claire, Beth, Ava, and Tessa. Photo: Stella Forrester.

Thanks to Scholarship in Action at Holy Cross, MWiP has benefited from the work of five wonderful students: Weiss Summer Research grantee and research associate Katie Knippler ’22; research associates Ava Marenna ’26, Anna Claire Pritchett ’26, Anahi Paulino Rumaldo ’27; and Weiss Summer Research grantee and research associate Madeline (Tessa) Zafon-Whalen ’26.

Here’s a profile of Katie, who wrote an honors thesis on concepts of “home” in poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Mascha Kalécko, then interviewed Mary Fell about growing up in Worcester for The Worcester Review. As described in this article, Tessa pursued independent archival research on how Frank O’Hara’s friendships with painters in the New York School influenced his poetry.

Tessa at St. Paul’s Cathedral near St. Paul’s Grammar School, setting of O’Hara’s “Autobiographia Literaria.” Photo: Michael Ivins.

Tessa’s poster at the Weiss Summer Research Symposium at Holy Cross, September 6, 2024.

CELEBRATION

Kya Roumimper Ascani designed this poster to celebrate MWiP at a Scholarship in Action symposium, October 30, 2023.

PRESS

PAST EVENTS

“Rainbow, Rainbow, Rainbow!”
Saturday, Oct. 4, 2025, 2-4 pm, Hope Cemetery. In our annual anniversary reading at Elizabeth Bishop’s grave, we shared her poems about rainbows as well as poems featuring every color imaginable, arranged in order of the spectrum and illustrated by someone wearing that color.

A spectrum of poetry folk show their true colors after the reading. Photo: Robert Steele.

Poems as Parts of a Wondrous Whole
Thursday, July 10, 2025, 1-2 pm, Cantor Art Gallery. In a special program in collaboration with the Room of Wonders: A Worcester Wunderkammer exhibit, MWiP presented a reading of original poems that describe specific settings in the city as parts of a larger human context. Featured poets included Joe Fusco Jr., Anna Gold, Kate Gregoire, Carla Morrissey, Nancy Baillie Strong, Paul Szlosek, Jerry Waller, Jill Watts, Ashley Wonder, and D Zeutas-Broer.

Left to right: poets and artists D Zeutas-Broer, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Cendya Rodrigues, Jill Watts, Ashley Wonder, Kate Gregoire, and Cathy Weaver Taylor mingle after the event. Photo: Christina An.

A Tropical Getaway with Elizabeth Bishop
Friday, Feb. 7, 2025, 3-4 pm, Hope Cemetery. Thirty people, many of them students, celebrated Bishop’s birthday by listening to her poems about the Amazon rainforest, accompanied by Brazilian hot chocolate and pastries. Readers included Therese Bre, Clair Degutis, Judith Ferrara, Claire Mowbray Golding, Daniel Gregoire, Kate Gregoire, John Hodgen, Eve Rifkah, Susan Roney-O’Brien, Robert Steele, and Susan Elizabeth Sweeney.

Bishop’s largest painting, Brazilian Landscape, undated, from Exchanging Hats: Paintings.

Elizabeth Bishop: Paintings in Poems
Friday, Oct. 11, 2024, 2-3 pm, Hope Cemetery. On a day filled with color and light, we marked Bishop’s visual imagination and the anniversary of her death by performing her poems about drawings, paintings, or scenes sketched with a painter’s eye.

Left to right: Kate, Grace, Beth, Daniel, Paul, Ann, Michael, Sam, Eve, Tessa, John, and Mary. Photo: Judith Ferrara.

Opening Reception: Correspondence (for Elizabeth Bishop)
Friday, Oct. 4, 2024, 6-8 pm, Worcester Art Museum. Heather Treseler, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, and Elizabeth Bacon represented Elizabeth Bishop, Mapping Worcester in Poetry, and the Worcester County Poetry Association, respectively, at the opening reception for the installation of Crystalle Lacouture’s new wall painting, Correspondence (for Elizabeth Bishop) at the Worcester Art Museum.

Our table had the best view of the painting in the whole museum! Photo: Heather Treseler.

Elizabeth Bishop’s Love Poems & Valentines
Wednesday, February 7, 2024, 10-11 am, Hope Cemetery. At our annual graveside birthday reading, a dozen local poets performed Bishop’s dry, sardonic valentines and tender, intimate love poems, many of them unpublished during her lifetime.

Literary Social and Valentine Workshop
Tuesday, February 6, 2024, 4-5 pm, Dinand Library, College of the Holy Cross. Susan Elizabeth Sweeney spoke about the significance of valentines for Massachusetts poets, especially Elizabeth Bishop, and participants crafted their own valentines. Learn more about it here. This popular event was repeated on Monday, February 4, 2026, 4-6 pm, Dinand Library, College of the Holy Cross, with an extra hour to make more valentines!

The Memorable Monsoon Elizabeth Bishop Graveside Reading
Friday, October 6, 2023, 10-11 am, Hope Cemetery. Despite the kind of “equinoctial” rain described in Bishop’s “Sestina,” Kate Gregoire’s daughter Grace listened raptly to several poems — including a choral reading of “Twelve O’Clock News” with a dozen participants — from beneath an umbrella. Pictured: Irena, Beth, Ann, Grace, and Daniel. Photo: Evan Plante.

Free Poems in and out of Places Workshop
Thursday, April 27, 2023, 7-9:30 pm, Salisbury House, 61 Harvard Street. Writers came to draft a poem for the contest or get feedback before the deadline.

Free Poems in and out of Places Workshop
Saturday, May 20, 2023, 2-4 pm, Salisbury House, 61 Harvard Street. Writers came to draft a poem for the contest or get feedback before the deadline.

A Closer Look: Worcester’s Three Deckers
Wednesday, May 3, 2023, 5:30 pm, Park View Room, 230 Park Avenue. Preservation Worcester, a community partner with MWiP, presented an illustrated talk by docents Jan Parent and Marilyn Polito on Worcester’s triple-deckers, featuring our research on buildings associated with poets Stanley Kunitz, Charles Olson, Christopher Gilbert, and Mary Fell. Pictured: Olson’s home at 4 Norman Street in Worcester. Photo: Katie Knippler.

Elizabeth Bishop Edible Birthday Graveside Reading
Tuesday, February 8, 2023, 10-11 am, Hope Cemetery. We were joined by Bishop scholar Heather Treseler and Worcester Poet Laureate Oliver de la Paz, who brought flowers for Elizabeth. Susan Roney-O’Brien couldn’t attend so she wrote a poem about the event. Claire Mowbray Golding baked a delicious birthday cake, complete with sprinkles and animal candles! Photo: John Gaumond.

Writing about Worcester’s Changing Neighborhoods
Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022, 2-5 pm at the White Room, Crompton Building. Tony Brown, founder of the Duende Project and 2022 Kunitz Medal recipient, led a workshop at which we wrote a collaborative poem, heard from a few Rain Poets, conducted field research around the Canal District, and shared our feelings about the old and new Worcester.

Laura Menides and Elizabeth Bishop Memorial Reading
Tuesday, October 10, 2022, 10-11 am, Hope Cemetery. We gathered to read poems in conversation with each other by Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) and by Laura Menides (1937-2022), a poet, Bishop scholar, WPI professor, and past WCPA president. Photo: John Gaumond.

Stanley Kunitz Medal Ceremony
Thursday, July 28, 2022, 6:30 pm, Worcester Historical Museum. As part of the annual Kunitz medal ceremony, we released a six-panel brochure that surveys Kunitz’s career, his home at 4 Woodford Street, and his relationship with Gregory and Carol Stockmal. MWiP produced it in collaboration with the Stanley Kunitz Boyhood Home; it offers a virtual tour with photos, anecdotes, and excerpts from Kunitz’s Worcester poems. Download the brochure here!

Writing about History in Place
Saturday, May 7, 2022, 2-5 pm, Worcester Pop-Up. In a lively workshop led by Susan Edwards Richmond, author of Purgatory Chasm and Increase, we discussed evoking the past in poems about present places and conducted field research at historic Worcester Common.

Poems in and out of Places: The City in Motion
Thursday, April 21, 2022, 7-8:30 pm at TidePool Bookshop, 372 Chandler Street. A large audience listened to poems set all over Worcester — Plantation Street, Coes Pond, Vernon Hill, Main South, Tatnuck Square, and downtown — at an open mic and a reading of featured poems about our city by Wootown poets past and present. This special event launched the Poems in and out of Places workshops and contest.

Elizabeth Bishop Birthday Graveside Reading
Tuesday, February 8, 2022, at noon in Hope Cemetery. Poetry appeared for the first time ever on the front page of the Worcester Telegram with a photographic essay about the event.

Installation Ceremony for Holy Cross President Vincent Rougeau
Friday, October 22, 2021, Hart Center, College of the Holy Cross. Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, director of MWiP, recited Stanley Kunitz’s poem “My Mother’s Pears” from memory, accompanied by a cinematic montage of images of Kunitz, 4 Woodford Street, and Worcester, as part of the inauguration of Holy Cross’s first Black and first lay president.

MWiP NEWSLETTERS

Here’s the annual newsletter of our accomplishments:

THANKS

Christina An, Kya Roumimper Ascani, Elizabeth Bacon, Vanessa Bumpus, Mary Conley, Judith Ferrara, Oliver de la Paz, Richard Duckett, Karen Durlach, Wendy Essery, Meredith Fidrocki, John Gaumond, Robert Gill, Claire Mowbray Golding, Daniel Gregoire, Kate Gregoire, John Hodgen, Eleanor Houbre, Victor D. Infante, Isabelle Jenkins, Irena Kaci, Katie Knippler, AJ Leto, Ingrid Mach, Ava Marenna, Rodger Martin, Juan Matos, Maureen O’Hara, Carolyn Oliver, Deborah Packard, Evan Plante, Anna Claire Pritchett, Eve Rifkah, Susan Rodgers, Anahi Paulino Rumaldo, Elise Saad, Melissa Shaw, Margaret Smith, Carol Stockmal, Heather Treseler, Bill Wallace, Stephanie Yuhl, Tessa Zafon-Whalen, and all poets and supporters of poetry in Worcester!

Mapping Worcester in Poetry is a project supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, developed in collaboration with the Worcester County Poetry Association (WCPA), and directed by Susan Elizabeth Sweeney under the auspices of Scholarship in Action at the College of the Holy Cross. Kate Gregoire coordinates related programming with WCPA. Other stakeholders include Main IDEA, Museum of Worcester, Pow! Wow! Worcester, Preservation Worcester, Stanley Kunitz Boyhood Home, Worcester Cultural Coalition, and The Worcester Review. To get involved or to ask a question, please contact us here.