Calling all STUDENTS GRADES 4-12

POETRY CONTEST
The National Baseball Poetry Festival is a celebration of poetry whose themes focus on Baseball and/or Softball! The Festival takes place at Polar Park, May 2-4.  All grades 4-12 students and Little Leaguers are invited to submit poems with a baseball and/or softball theme, for example: opening day, ballpark food, Polar Park, first pitch, athletic heroes, uniforms, ball parks, Little League, dugout chatter, the season of the game, etc.

Teacher Resources:

Contest Flyer

Lesson Plan

Contest Rules
The contest is open to ALL 4th-12th graders..
Submit one poem only related to the theme of baseball.
Poem must not exceed 200 words.
Entry will be evaluated for creativity, originality, and style by members of the WCPA’s Clemente program.
Prizes
Winners attending the Festival at Polar Park have the opportunity to read their poems on Saturday, May 3, 2025.
Winners will receive a Certificate and National Baseball Poetry Festival t-shirt!
Winners will include up to 20 elementary school students, 20 middle school students, 20 high school students.

Guidelines for Submission
Deadline: All entries must be submitted by or before noon on Wednesday, April 16, 2025 (ET).

Submission: Please submit your poem in the body of your email to baseballpoetryfest@gmail.com (no attachments will be accepted).
Must Include: Category of Submission (Grades 4 – 12); Poet’s Name, School, Grade, Email (if applicable); Guardian Name & Email.
Winners Notification: Winners will be notified by or before Friday, April 25, 2025 via email.

Deadline March 28 @  12:00 pm

ALL ADULT POETS EVERYWHERE

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The National Baseball Poetry Festival invites submissions of poems that deal with any aspect of the gamesmanship, nature, and atmosphere of Baseball and/or Softball, for example: opening day, ballpark food, childhood memories, first pitch, athletic heroes, uniforms, ball parks, Little League, dugout chatter, the season of the game, etc.

No restriction on form. Poets may submit one (1) poem for consideration. Each poem should fit on a single page. Previously published work is acceptable. The thematic views of baseball/softball and the game will be given wide interpretation by the judge(s).

Categories

Adults 18+

Publication

Up to 20 winners will be published on BaseballBard

Prizes

In addition to publication on BaseballBard, winners will receive a Certificate and National Baseball Poetry Festival t-shirt!

Guidelines for Submission

Deadline: Noon, Wednesday, March 28, 2025 (ET).

Submit: one (1) poem in Word format to baseballpoetrycontest@gmail.com.

Must Include: poet’s name, address, phone number, and email address.

Winners Notification: Friday, April 11, 2025 by email.

For more information, visit their website.

C’mon. I know you’ve got a poem in you!

Melody’s plea and requirements are below and we thank you for your consideration.

Dear Poets,

WPL’s Poet’s Place webpage features poems and poets monthly. We have plenty of room and welcome more submissions.

To be accepted poems must:

Be fewer than 100 lines

Not be R or X rated.

For more information reach out to Melody Friedenthal, Reference Librarian at Worcester Public Library

508-799-1655 Ext. 35340

mfriedenthal@mywpl.org

Finally after a long hiatus, Governor Healey has announced that Massachusetts will be looking to instate a Poet Laureate this year!

We are so pleased to announce that the 2025 Dan Lewis Fellow is Worcester’s own Daniel Letona.

Daniel took the WCPA by storm this year, winning the inaugural FoxFest as well as the Lewis Fellowship.

José Daniel Letona Gonzales is a Honduran poet who, after graduating as a graphic designer, moved to the United States to pursue a career in software development. During this journey, he found himself confronting questions of culture and personal identity. In Cambridge, he discovered slam poetry, a medium that ignited a synesthetic exploration of self-discovery and meaning.

Through his poetry, Daniel delves into his cultural roots, memories, and trauma while also highlighting the transformative power of spoken word. He views spoken word as his heritage—a way of preserving knowledge across generations.

About the Fellowship:

After his death, Dan Lewis’s family created an endowment with the Worcester County Poetry Association to support an annual fellowship bequest in his name to provide an aspiring Worcester County poet the means to fulfill a need in that poet’s development that might otherwise go unmet. The 2025 Fellowship award will be $2,500.

The Worcester County Poetry Association (WCPA) is proud to host this Celebration of Curt Curtin’s Life and Poetry with Curt’s family and friends. In conjunction with this event, Curt’s wife (Dee O’Connor) has made a donation from his estate to establish an endowment to support an annual Curt Curtin Youth Poetry Award. This will further the mission of the WCPA by encouraging middle and high school students to pursue poetry. Should you wish to contribute to this endowment, please either mail your donation to WCPA, PO Box 804, Worcester, MA 01613 or make an online contribution at the WCPA website.

Copies of Curt’s poetry collections will be available for sale at the celebration, with all proceeds contributed to the endowment. The WCPA was founded in 1971 by Dr. Samuel Bachrach and Professor Michael True and incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1972. With over fifty years of service to
poetry, it remains one of the longest-running non-profit poetry organizations in the United States. The Mission of the Worcester County Poetry Association is to develop, cultivate, and steward an inclusive creative space for the literary arts in Worcester County and to celebrate the talent within it. Some examples of that effort include:

1. Celebrating the rich literary history and creative energy of Central Massachusetts
   through public readings, workshops, festivals, scholarly conferences, and other
   programs.
2. Publishing the literary journal, The Worcester Review.
3. Collaborating with libraries, bookstores, colleges and universities, museums,
   churches, schools, community centers, businesses, and cultural organizations to
   promote poetry events.

As a parent or caregiver of a Worcester Public School student, you have a unique understanding of how your children learn to read, how well they read, and their reading habits. Worcester Education Collaborative (WEC) is very interested in finding out more about your thoughts on this topic. 

We have created a short online survey to collect this information. Please take a few minutes to complete this survey before Wednesday, January 15, using the following link or QR code:

passed away on November 28th 2024. We share this news with the heaviest of hearts, and will mourn his loss for a long long time. Please visit his obituary to learn more about what an incredible human and poet he was.

Bold Magazine invites you to meet Bruja Thevillain

Local Artist Linda Littleton of Webster, MA is the featured artist of the month November 1st-30th at Booklovers’ Gourmet, 72 East Main Street, Webster, MA. Her show will feature 20+ small original ink block prints of scenes, animals, plants and boats found in and around water (fresh or salt) including Fish, Heron, Beaches, Boats, Lighthouses, Eagles and more to treat your eyes to bright impressions of inks pressed from carvings on blocks. A public meet and greet with the artist will take place on Saturday, November 9th from 2-4 p.m. The show may be viewed during normal business hours: Tuesday-Saturday 10-5, Wednesday 10-6. For more information call 508-949-6232.

Ink Block Printing has been traced back to 617 AD in China as a method to print designs, letters and art on paper, cloth, pottery and other surfaces.  Over centuries, this type of printing using a carved impression in a block of wood, linoleum, rubber etc. has evolved into a popular art for printing cards and art on paper and materials.

Linda Littleton is well known for her watercolors and acrylics, as the Webster Lake Artist with displays currently at Point Breeze and permanent work at Hometown Bank as well as numerous pieces in lake homes.  All of her sales at Point Breeze result in a donation to the Webster/Dudley Food Share through AJ Alkire.

She has a home studio, conducts paint nights and does commission work as well, working in all media, sizes and subject matter.  She is still an active member of the Rhode Island Water Color Society in Pawtucket having won 2 awards this year, one watercolor accepted into the National Show.

Linda previously taught for 36 years in Burlington and Framingham before retiring here and now lives with her forever partner John Lefebvre (and rescue dog Darla) on Webster Lake.  She has received numerous awards and recognition in Milford Ma where she resided for 26 years was head of the Arts Counsel there, Cultural Committee chair and president of the Milford Artist Guild, officer in the Blackstone Valley Artist Guild and displayed in many local restaurants/galleries in central Massachusetts in the past.  She was a member of the Cape Cod Artist Association, painting and displaying watercolors along the Cape/North Shore art venues and galleries.

###

A Poetry Book Signing & Open Mic with Alan Ira Gordon featuring “Pittsburgh and Other Poems”, will take place on Saturday, November 2nd at 2 p.m. at Booklovers’ Gourmet, 72 East Main Street, Webster, MA. To sign up for the Open Mic portion of the event, please call 508-949-6232 or email deb@bookloversgourmet.com.

About the book: Sometimes a sense of place is easy to identify and understand. In those instances, it can be a physical city, town, neighborhood or just a piece of property. Other times it can be a point in time, either past, present or future. And in yet other instances it can be a more exotic or alien sense of place, perhaps intergalactic, or multi-universe, even an alternate reality version of a well-known place and time, existing at a quantum point or merely within the minds of writers and readers.

All of the poems in this book explore in poetic form various ideas of sense of place, whether physical locations, points in time or ideas of place that could only exist (for now, at least) within the creative realms of science fiction, fantasy and/or horror.

Alan Ira Gordon is an urban planning professor at Worcester State University. His poetry publications include Analog Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and he’s a frequent contributor to Star*Line, the quarterly journal of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA). Alan’s poetry has received eight Rhysling Award nominations, two Dwarf Star Award nominations and an Analog Magazine year’s best nomination (Second Place Award). He has three published poetry collections, Planet Hunter, The Doggo Book, and the just-released Pittsburgh & Other Poems (Hiraeth Books). Planet Hunter was nominated for the SFPA Elgin Award.

Alan guest-edited Issue #24 of Eye To The Telescope, the online publication of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA). His poetry, short stories, and articles have been published in various genre magazines and anthologies, a list of which can be found on his website at www.alaniragordon.com.