Poetry Readings
2nd Thursday Poetry Readings
Fall 2023 / Winter 2024
In person at the MAC.
All readings are free and open to the public.
Series coordinated by Linda Carney-Goodrich:
poetry@hpaa-mac.org
https://lindacarneygoodrich.com
Thursday, May 9, 2024, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Amanda Shea and Safari
Amanda Shea is the 2022 Boston Music Awards Spoken Word Artist of the Year. Shea is an artist, performer, educator, artivist, co-founder, publicist, host, and curator. She has hosted and produced numerous intergenerational poetry/hip hop events as well as performed at festivals; including Boston Calling, BAMSFest (Boston Art & Music Soul Festival), and the Jos Literary Festival in Nigeria. Her work can be found in the Museum of Fine Arts, The Boston Globe, TEDX, TEDXRoxbury, Netflix, Prime Video, BBC News, and much more. Shea will be releasing her first book, “Pieces of Shea” and her first EP titled, “God, Again” in the Fall of 2023. Amanda’s work examines her personal life experiences, social justice issues, and healing through trauma utilizing art as the tool. Visit her online at https://www.amandashea.com.
Safari is a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and rapper hailing from Roxbury, MA With a range of musical abilities, he can create and produce music in any genre. He finds the most enjoyment in creating music in genres such as Hip-hop, African beats, and Jazz. John Coltrane, Stevie Wonder, Prince, and his father Peter Handy Sr. have all had a significant influence on Safari’s development as a musician. He has performed in some of the hottest spots around New England, as well as in New York, Los Angeles, Orange County, and New Jersey. Safari has produced and played for several successful Boston-based artists, including Oji Collective, Brandi Blaze, Kazi Did-it, Cake Swagg, Frank Vocals, Red Shaydez, Savvy Cnote, LG Sai, Joseph James, Sassy, Terry Borderline, Ugo Boy, Kasio, and many more.
Thursday, June 13, 2024, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Monique Adelle, Vivian Eyre, and Margot Wizansky
Monique Adelle is an associate professor and chair of the English, Writing, and Communication department at Emmanuel College where she teaches courses in literature and poetry writing. Her first collection—Anonymous (Jacar Press)–won the New Voices Award and her second collection, Rupture (Codhill Press),was a finalist for the Perugia Press Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry. Her poems appear in a number of journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Evergreen Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. She holds a BA in English and Africana Studies from Wellesley College and a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard. Her book Between the Lines: Literary Transnationalism and African American Poetics (Oxford UP) is the first to juxtapose Cuba, Brazil and the United States in a study of nineteenth-century women’s poetry, and the first to include the Lusophone literary tradition in a comparative study of African descendants in Latin America, the U.S., and the Caribbean. She loves being a wife and mother and lives in Framingham with her husband and three children.
Vivian Eyre is the author of Ishmael’s Violets (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Bellingham Review, One Art, Pangyrus, Quiddity, Spire, The Fourth River and other journals. The “Brunch Poems” series, founded by Vivian in 2013, continues its monthly poetry discussions at Floyd Memorial Library (Greenport, NY). She has served as guest curator for the Whale House at the Southold Historical Society Museum (Southold, NY) and as a cold stunned sea turtle rescue volunteer for NY Marine Rescue. Vivian lives in Warren, RI.
Margot Wizansky’s manuscript, The Yellow Sweater, was published by Kelsay Press, 2023. Lily Poetry Review published Wild for Life, chapbook memoir of her near-death experience, in 2021. Her poems are in many journals: New Ohio Review, Spillway, Cimarron, Missouri Review, Bellevue Literary Review. She edited Mercy of Tides, Rough Places Plain, What the Poem Knows, Tribute to Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Carlow University awarded her a residency—Isle of Innisfree, Ireland, Writers@Work, a fellowship in Salt Lake City. She transcribed the oral history of her friend, Emerson Stamps, his grandparents, enslaved, his parents, sharecroppers. Missouri Review featured her poems about him. She lives on the Southcoast of MA where she writes and watches climate change turn her front yard into a pond.
Previous Readings in the Series:
Thursday, October 12, 7 – 9 pm
Quintin Collins, Jade Kleiner, and Denise Washington
Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, assistant director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program, and a poetry editor for Salamander. He is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival and Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal’s 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Quintin’s other awards and accolades include a Pushcart Prize, a BCALA Literary Award honor, the 2019 Atlantis Award from the Poet’s Billow, and Best of the Net nominations. https://www.qcollinswriter.com
Jade Kleiner writes poetry and fiction. She has lived in New England her whole life. Her poems can be found in Gingerbread Ritual, New Note Poetry and The Orchards Poetry Journal. As a regular guest instructor at the NITEO Program at BU, she introduces students to flash fiction and free-range, nonsyllabic haiku. She also facilitated a short story workshop with DIY MFA in 2021, the organization which brought her into poetry. Healing, history, and religious experience are common themes in her poems, which often take structural elements from tanka and the Petrarchan sonnet. She has always been fascinated with the lives of everyday people in the past, and her writing often reflects a yearning to be bored three millennia ago, as well as to feel somewhen else.
Denise Washington is the Founder, CEO and Curator of #Pop-Up Poetry Series, A Denise Plays Hard Event. She is a certified Kemetic Yoga Practitioner and a Boston Public Schools teacher, nurturing students, teaching academics, mindfulness, yoga and Zumba. She was born and raised in Roxbury, MA, and was a METCO student who graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. She is an Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts Alum, a mentee of the esteemed Playwright, Ed Bullins and is a New England Poetry Board Member. She has an MS in Early Childhood Education from Wheelock College and a BS from Emerson College in Television Production/Creative Writing. She has a love for writing television scripts, plays, poetry, children’s literature and she was a television writer on a show produced by HBO. More on Denise at https://sites.google.com/otakuservice.com/denise?pli=1
Thursday, November 9, 7 – 9 pm
Art Collins, Krysten Hill, and David Surette
Art Collins is a Boston native and the District wide Restorative Practices Coach in Boston Public Schools. He is a poet who has competed on multiple Lizard Lounge National Poetry Slam teams. Art creates socially conscious poetry that he hopes will motivate and inspire his listeners. More on Art at https://www.artcollinspoet.com.
Krysten Hill is the author of How Her Spirit Got Out (Aforementioned Productions, 2016), which received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize. Her work has been featured in The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day Series, Poetry Magazine, PANK, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Winter Tangerine Review, and elsewhere. She is recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award, a 2020 Mass Cultural Council Poetry Fellowship, and a 2023 Vermont Studio Center Residency. She received her MFA in poetry from University of Massachusetts Boston, where she currently teaches. More on Krysten at https://www.krystenhill.com. Photo by Jon Beckley.
David R. Surette’s new book of poems is published by Moon Pie Press. He is the author of six other collections of poetry, including Stable which was named an Honor Book at the 2016 Massachusetts Book Awards. His poems have been featured in the anthologies French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets, Cadence of Hooves: A Celebrationof Horses, 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers, and From the Farther Shore: Discovering Cape Cod and the Islands Through Poetry. The first three chapters of his novel Favors are included in the 2022 March edition of The Lowell Review. David has been a contributing editor at Salamander, an instructor at the Cape Cod Writers’ Conference, a keynote speaker at New England Young Writers’ Conference at Bread Loaf, and a contributor and scholarship recipient at the Bread Loaf Writing Conference.
Thursday, December 14, 7 – 9 pm
Holly Guran, Sarah Kersey, and Mary O’Melveny
Holly Guran is author of Twilight Chorus, River of Bones and two chapbooks. Now Before and Ever was released by Kelsay Books September 2023. Her poems have been widely published. Selections from narrative poems, based on a 19th century correspondence between a mill girl and the editor she married, have been performed in Boston and at the Lowell National Park.
Sarah Kersey is a poet and x-ray technologist originally from New Jersey and now in the Boston area since March 2023. Her debut chapbook Anacrusis is forthcoming with Newfound. Sarah’s work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Account Magazine, Columbia Journal, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She tweets at @sk__poet.
Mary K. O’Melveny turned to writing poetry after retiring from a successful career as a labor rights lawyer. Her award-winning poems have appeared in numerous print and on-line literary journals, anthologies and blog sites. Her just-released fourth poetry collection, Flight Patterns, has earned praise for its “fresh imagery that welcomes readers,” its “appreciation for the natural world,” its “accessibility” and its “keen eye for the connection of nature to sound, wisdom and character.” Mary’s work is also featured in two recent anthologies of writings by New York’s Hudson Valley Women’s Writing Group. Her other volumes are Dispatches From the Memory Care Museum, Merging Star Hypotheses and A Woman of a Certain Age. More on Mary at https://www.marykomelvenypoet.com.
Thursday, January 11, 2024, 7 – 9 pm
Daniel Bouchard, Shari Caplan, and Jennifer Martelli
Daniel Bouchard is completing his fourth full collection of poems, titled Razor ZigZag. His books include Spider Drop, Some Mountains Removed, and a chapbook from Ugly Duckling Presse, Art & Nature. Recent poems have appeared in The Arts Fuse and The Brooklyn Rail. He works in academic publishing.
Shari Caplan (she/her) is the artist behind “The Red Shoes; a phantasmagoric ballet on paper” (Lambhouse Books, Sept 2023) and ‘Advice from a Siren’ (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her poems have swum into Gulf Coast, Grimoire, Painted Bride Quarterly, Angime, Lily Poetry Review, Tinderbox, Sinister Wisdom, Drunk Monkeys, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in Poetry at Lesley University. Shari’s work has earned her a scholarship to The Home School, a fellowship to The Vermont Studio Center, nominations for a Bettering American Poetry Award, a Rhylsing Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She proudly serves as Madam Betty BOOM for The Poetry Brothel in Boston. Find her work, workshops, monthly love letter to creative endeavor, and upcoming events at ShariCaplan.com.
Jennifer Martelli is the author of The Queen of Queens, winner of the 2023 Italian American Studies Book Award and named a “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and My Tarantella, also named a “Must Read” and awarded Finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Martelli’s chapbooks include All Things are Born to Change Their Shapes, After Bird, and In the Year of Ferraro. Her work has appeared in Poetry, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Tahoma Literary Review, Folio, Jet Fuel Review, The Northwest Review, Tab: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants for poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. http://www.jennmartelli.com
Thursday, February 8, 2024, 7 – 9 pm
Penny Callan Partridge, Toni Bee, and Tom Laughlin
Penny Callan Partridge has been called the Poet Laureate of the Adoption Community. Of her five collections of poems, four are centered on her experience as an adopted person. She has also collected stories about the people she has met through her poetry, and she has taught poetry to women at a halfway house after their release from prison. Penny has been the Poet in Residence at many adoption trainings and conferences and has had her poems published in social work and adoption publications. She was the Co-Founder of Adoption Forum in Philadelphia and a President of the American Adoption Congress. She received an Angel in Adoption Award from the US Congress. She is also a parent of two, both in open adoptions. She lets her (adult) children tell their own adoption stories. Her most recent collection is What We Said.
Toni Bee is a poet, educator, and photographer raised and educated in Boston. She was elected Poet Populist of Cambridge—the first woman to grace that position. Toni is also the Inaugural Cambridge Poetry Ambassador and was a teaching artist and storyteller at the former Wang Theatre. She raised her daughter while receiving her BA from Simmons University and self-published her first poetry book, 22 Again. Toni is the founder of Poets In The Garden and Finding Mrs. Phillis – programs that elevate BIPOC voices, green spaces, and history. She’s been published in Boog City and local literary journals and was a on the board of the New England Poetry Club. She has been featured at Lizard Lounge, The Cantab (Boston Poetry Slam),the New England Poetry Club, Boston National Poetry Month Festival, the Menino Art Center, Stone Soup, the Boston Poetry Marathon, and with Voices of Poetry at the Cambridge Public Library. Toni served as a panelist at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and she has been granted The Woman of Distinction award by YWCA Cambridge. Visit her online at tonibee.org
Tom Laughlin is a Professor and Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program at Middlesex Community College where he coordinates a visiting writers series, open readings for students, and publication of the student-run literary journal Dead River Review (http://deadriverreview.com). He was a volunteer staff reader for many years for Ploughshares, and he has taught literature classes in two Massachusetts prisons. His poetry has appeared in Green Mountains Review, Ibbetson Street, Drunk Monkeys, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Blue Mountain Review, Superpresent Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, Molecule, and elsewhere. His poetry chapbook, The Rest of the Way, was released by Finishing Line Press in August 2022. Visit him online at www.TomLaughlinPoet.com.
Thursday, March 14, 2024, 7 – 9 pm
Tatiana Johnson-Boria, Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, and Chad Parenteau
Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is an educator and expert facilitator who uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, and to cultivate healing. She’s an award-winning writer who has received distinguished fellowships from Tin House, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, The MacDowell Residency, and others. Tatiana completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College and teaches at Emerson College, GrubStreet, Catapult, and others. Find her work in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and Pleiades, among others. She’s represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary. Visit her online at http://johnsonboriacreative.com.
Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah is a Ghanaian American poet, editor, and educator living out the diaspora in Boston, Massachusetts. They are both Black & alive. Born in 1993, Emmanuel is the newly appointed school librarian at the Joseph Lee School in Dorchester, and in the past has served as a teaching artist at organizations such as the Massachusetts Literary Education and Performance Collective, the Cambridge Arts Council, Northeastern University, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Emmanuel’s poem, “kra-din” (Kweli Journal), is a past recipient of the Pushcart Prize (XLIII). In his free time, Emmanuel enjoys hot carbs, brightly colored chapbooks, and the long sigh at the end of a good book. You can purchase Emmanuel’s own brightly colored chapbook, not without small joys, at Game Over Books Press. Visit Emmanuel online at https://www.emmanueloppong-yeboah.com.
Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His latest collection is The Collapsed Bookshelf. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Molecule, Ibbetson Street, Pocket Lint, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, The Skinny Poetry Journal, The New Verse News, dadakuku, Nixes Mate Review and anthologies such as French Connections and Reimagine America. He serves as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. Visit Chad online at http://www.chadparenteaupoetforhire.com.
Thursday, April 11, 2024, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Sarah Audsley, Mary Buchinger Bodwell, and Maureen McElroy
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press, 2023). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. Visit Sarah online at sarahaudsley.com.
Mary Buchinger Bodwell is the author of seven collections of poetry; her most recent books are The Book of Shores (2024), Navigating the Reach (2023) and Virology (2022). Her work has appeared in AGNI, Maine Review, Plume, Salamander, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, and elsewhere. She teaches at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences and serves on the board of the New England Poetry Club. Visit her online at https://www.marybuchinger.com.
Maureen McElroy grew up in Boston as one of seven children. She attended Boston University and holds an MFA from Emerson College. She is the author of For Crying Out Loud (Kelsay Books 2023). Her chapbook Car Poems (Finishing Line Press) came out in March of 2020. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Nixes Mate, Mothers Always Write, Trampset, Fickle Muses, Literary Hatchet, and Io. She is a committee member of the reading series Rozzie Reads Poetry sponsored by the Roslindale Public Library. She taught English and Latin for a number of years before entering a career in real estate. She owns Jamaica Hill Realty in Jamaica Plain. She lives in Milton, MA with her husband and son.
2nd Thursday Poetry Readings
April – June 2023
In person at the MAC.
All readings are free and open to the public.
Series coordinated by Linda Carney-Goodrich:
lindacarneygoodrich@yahoo.com
https://lindacarneygoodrich.com
Thursday, June 8, 7 – 9 pm
Frances Donovan, Anastasia Vassos and Trisha Zembruski
Frances Donovan’s chapbook Mad Quick Hand of the Seashore was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Donovan’s poems have appeared in Lily Poetry Review, Solstice, Heavy Feather Review, SWWIM, and elsewhere. Her interviews of other poets can be found at The Rumpus and on her website, www.gardenofwords.com. Donovan holds an MFA in poetry from Lesley University and is a certified Poet Educator with Mass Poetry. In 2019, Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola selected one of her poems to be displayed at Boston City Hall. Donovan’s work deals with themes of home, family, intergenerational trauma, and sexual and gender identity. She remembers fondly the summer of 1998, when she drove a bulldozer in a Pride parade while wearing a bustier.
The poems of Anastasia Vassos have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. She is the author of Nike Adjusting Her Sandal (Nixes Mate, 2021) and Nostos (Kelsay Books, 2023.) Nostos was named a finalist in Two Sylvias’ and Headlight Review’s Chapbook Contests. Her poems appear in Thrush, SWWIM, RHINO, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere. She speaks three languages, reads for Lily Poetry Review, and lives in Boston.
Trisha Zembruski has lived in Roslindale for over 23 years and loves Rozzie, especially the french feta at the local Greek market. For over 30 years, she’s practiced and performed improvisational theater. The poetry gods reeled her into writing poems and open zoom mics during the pandemic. Currently, she is working on 3 visual poetry books—You Can’t Dance With The Accordion Player, Next, and Fry It Up With Eggs in the Morning. Trisha teaches and directs Theater for Kids, a theater program for all ages. She is a graphic artist, primarily for children’s publications with a BFA in painting. She delights in a good backyard party—here, there, in Italy, anywhere—with neighbors, family and friends.
Previous Readings in the Series:
Thursday, April 13, 7 – 9 pm
Tom Daley, Danielle Legros Georges and Matthew Henry
Recipient of the Dana Award in Poetry, Tom Daley’s poetry has appeared in North American Review, Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, Fence, Denver Quarterly, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Witness, and elsewhere. FutureCycle Press published his first full-length collection of poetry, House You Cannot Reach—Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems. His chapbook, Far Cry, was published in 2022 by Ethel Zine & Micro Press.
Danielle Legros Georges is a writer, translator, academic, and the author of several books of poetry including The Dear Remote Nearness of You, winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motten prize. She was appointed the second Poet Laureate of the city of Boston, serving in the role from 2015 to 2019. She is the creative editor of sx salon, a digital platform for Caribbean literature, a professor of creative writing at Lesley University, and an avid hiker. Her most recent work is the book of translations, Island Heart: The Poems of Ida Faubert (Subpress Books, 2021). Visit her online at daniellelegrosgeorges.com.
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022), Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020). The editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, MEH’s poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in periodicals including Baltimore Review, Barren Magazine, Bending Genres, Fahmidan Journal, The Florida Review, Frontier Poetry, The Main Street Rag, Massachusetts Review, New York Quarterly, The New Verse News, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Rhino, Shenandoah, Solstice, Tahoma Literary Review, and Zone 3. MEH is an educator who received his MFA at Seattle Pacific University yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology at Andover Newton Theological School and a PhD in education at Lesley University. You can find him at http://www.MEHPoeting.com and @MEHPoeting writing and tweeting about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.
Thursday, May 11, 7 – 9 pm
Christine Jones, Deborah Leipziger and David P. Miller
Christine Jones lives in Orleans, MA and is the author of the recently published Now Calls Me Daughter (Nixes Mate Review, 2022) and Girl Without a Shirt (Finishing Line Press, 2020), and also co-editor of the anthology Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2020). She is the founder/editor-in-chief of Poems2go and associate editor of Lily Poetry Review. Her poetry can be found in numerous journals and anthologies in print and online. Visit her online at https://cjonespoems.com.
Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and advisor on sustainability. Four of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on sustainability and human rights. Her poems have been published in eight countries, in such magazines and journals as Pangyrus, Salamander, Lily Poetry Review, and Revista Cardenal. She is the co-founder of Soul-Lit, an on-line poetry magazine. Her new collection of poems, Story & Bone, was published through Lily Poetry Review Books in early 2023. Her chapbook, Flower Map, was published by Finishing Line Press. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems. Visit her online at https://deborahleipziger.com/poetry/.
David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Denver Quarterly, Blue as an Orange, subTerrain, Muddy River Poetry Review, Constellations, Lily Poetry Review, and Nixes Mate Review, among others. His poem “Add One Father to Earth” was awarded an Honorable Mention by Robert Pinsky for the New England Poetry Club’s 2019 Samuel Washington Allen Prize competition. He lives with his wife, the visual artist Jane Wiley, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
2nd Thursday Virtual Poetry Readings
November 2022 – March 2023
Thursday, November 10, 7 – 9 pm
Wendy Drexler and Carla Schwartz
Wendy Drexler is a 2022 recipient of an artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, was published by Terrapin Books in September 2022. Previous collections include Before There Was Before (Iris Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, J Journal, Lily Poetry Review, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, South Florida Poetry Review, Sugar House, The Atlanta Review, The Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and The Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and in numerous anthologies. Wendy has been the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, since 2018, and she is the programming co-chair for the New England Poetry Club. Visit Wendy online at https://wendydrexlerpoetry.com.
Carla Schwartz is a poet, filmmaker, photographer, and blogger. She lives half the year on an unbridged island in Lake Winnipesaukee, and the other half in the Boston area. She’s a long distance swimmer, paddleboarder, cross-country skier, cyclist, hiker, and haphazard gardener. Carla has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University. Her poems, which reflect life, love, family, death, the natural world, social issues, and the environment, have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Aurorean, Eastern Iowa Review, Fourth River, Fulcrum, Channel, Common Ground, Glassworks, Gyroscope, Ibbetson Street, Leon Literary Review, Leveler, Lost River, The MacGuffin, Mom Egg, Naugatuck River, Oyster River Pages, Silkworm, Solstice, Soul Lit, Submittable, Sunlight Press, The EAR, Triggerfish Critical Review, WCAI Poetry Sunday, and Zingara Review, among others. Her books include “Signs of Marriage” (2022), “Intimacy with the Wind” (2017) and “Mother, One More Thing” (2014). Visit Carla online at https://carlapoet.com.
Photo credits: Debi Milligan and Mark Ostow.
Thursday, December 8, 7 – 9 pm
Letta Neely and Hailey Tran
Letta Neely is an Earthling; she is also a Black Dyke, an Artist, an Activist, a Feminist, and a Mother. In addition to Juba and Here, Letta is the author of the chapbooks When We Were Mud and gawd and alluh huh sistuhs. Her plays: “Hamartia Blues”, “Last Rites”, and “Shackles & Sugar” have been produced in Boston, Philly, and Los Angeles. She is a co-artistic director for Fort Point Theatre Channel and the editor of Ife Franklin’s book, “The Slave Narratives of Willie Mae”. She is also an actor and director. She believes in the interconnectedness of both the struggle and the liberation. Her newest poetry project Geographies of Power will be available in the Spring 2022. Visit her online at https://lettaneely.com.
Hailey Tran (they/them) is a queer Latinx-Asian American spoken word artist from Lowell, MA. They are currently a high school history teacher passionate about decolonizing the classroom. They are Simmons University graduate of Political Science and Social Work. They are a researcher on the connection between art, community building, wellness, and advocacy. Hailey has competed in MassLEAP’s Louder Than a Bomb with FreeVerse! In 2017, Hailey served as a Youth Spoken Word Leader for the Boston cohort. They’ve also competed in the Brave New Voices competition on the Boston team, ranking 4th internationally. Besides poetry, Hailey enjoys cooking, interior design, collecting action figures, and reading memoirs.
Thursday, January 12, 7 – 9 pm
Sam Cha and Anne Pluto
Sam Cha was born in Korea. He earned his MFA at UMass Boston. A Pushcart Prize winner, and a recipient of the St. Botolph’s Club Emerging Artist Award, he’s been published and anthologized widely, including a chapbook, American Carnage (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs), and a full-length collection of cross-genre work, The Yellow Book ([PANK] Books). He lives in Cambridge with his family.
Anne Elezabeth Pluto grew up in Brooklyn, NY before it was cool. She is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA where she is the artistic director of the Oxford Street Players. She is an alumna of Shakespeare & Company and was a member of the Worcester Shakespeare Company 2011 – 2016. She was a member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s and is one of the founders and editors at Nixes Mate Review and Nixes Mate Books. Her publications include chapbooks: The Frog Princess, White Pine Press (1985), eBook Lubbock Electric, Argotist ebooks (2012), Benign Protection Cervena Barva Press (2016), the edited print edition of Lubbock Electric Nixes Mate Books (2018), and full length collection The Deepest Part of Dark, Unlikely Stories Press, NOLA (2020).
Thursday, February 9, 7 – 9 pm
Marge Piercy
Click HERE to read the chat from the Zoom reading.
Marge Piercy is the author of 20 poetry collections, the most recent OH THE WAY OUT, TURN OFF THE LIGHT from Knopf. She has published 17 novels, including SEX WARS and a recent short story collections, THE HIGH COST OF LUNCH, ETC.. Her memoir is SLEEPING WITH CATS. She has out 5 nonfiction books. She has given readings, workshops, lectures at over 575 venues here and abroad. Piercy won a National Endowment on the Arts award and has served as a judge for NEA on both poetry and fiction panels. Visit her online at https://margepiercy.com.
Thursday, March 9, 7 – 9 pm
Eileen Cleary, Heather Frankland, Dianne Silvestri and Jessica Simon
Eileen Cleary is the author of ‘Child Ward of the Commonwealth’ (2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and ‘ 2 a.m. with Keats’ (Nixes Mate, 2021). She founded and is EIC of Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books; she co-edited the anthology Voices Amidst the Virus, the featured text at the 2021 Michigan State University Filmetry Festival. Recent work is included in “Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poetry” just out through Grayson Books. Visit her online at https://eileenclearypoet.com.
Heather D. Frankland lives in Silver City, New Mexico where she teaches at Western New Mexico University. Although Heather has lived in New Mexico for many years, she grew up in Indiana, and has lived in various landscapes from Chicago to Peru. She holds both a Masters of Fine Arts and a Masters of Public Health from New Mexico State University, and she was a Peace Corps and Peace Corps Response Volunteer in Peru and Panama. She has been published in the ROAR, Plane Tree Journal, Sin Fronteras Press, Sweet Lit, and others. She attended the Marge Piercy Poetry Intensive Poetry Workshop in Summer 2022. Her poetry chapbook, “Midwest Musings,” will be published by Finishing Line Press.
Author of But I Still Have My Fingerprints, recently released from CavanKerry Press, Dianne Silvestri is a graduate of Butler University and Indiana University of Medicine. She was Associate Professor of Dermatology at UMass Chan Medical School until acute myeloid leukemia and a stem cell transplant forced her retirement. For years she has written poetry, studying in Tupelo, Colrain, PoemWorks, and Tom Daley workshops. Her poetry chapbook Necessary Sentiments was published in 2015. Her poems have appeared in JAMA, Barrow Street Journal, The Main Street Rag, Naugatuck River Review, The Healing Muse, Evening Street Review, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she co-founded the Morse Poetry Group in Natick, where she resides with her husband. Visit her online at www.diannesilvestri.com.
Jessica Genia Simon began writing poetry at age seven. As a teenager, she attended the University of Virginia’s Young Writers Workshop, competed and won a spot on the Brave New Voices 2001 D.C. National Youth Poetry Slam Team. She earned a B.A. in English and Textual Studies and Policy Studies at Syracuse University and her M.S. in Education from University of Pennsylvania. She spent a year in Jerusalem, Israel, studying at Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies, and volunteering with LGBTQ+ and middle east peace organizations. She works at a gun violence prevention nonprofit in D.C. and lives with her wife and orange short-haired tabby cat, Zahav, in Silver Spring, Maryland.
2nd Thursday Virtual Poetry Readings
February – June 2022
Series coordinated by Linda Carney-Goodrich:
lindacarneygoodrich@yahoo.com
https://www.homescholarsofboston.com/
All readings feature an open mic before
the featured speakers.
Thursday, June 9, 7 – 9 pm
Tzynya Pinchback and Lynne Viti
Click HERE to read the chat from the Zoom.
Tzynya Pinchback writes the Black woman body in nature, in illness, and in joy as a deliberate act. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, The Best of the Net, and appears in Deaf Poets Society, Lily Poetry Review, Mom Egg Review, the 2021 Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest issue and others. She was a finalist for 2020 Plymouth Poet Laureate and served as 2020 Cordial Eye Gallery & Artist Space writer-in-residence. Tzynya is currently participating in the 2022 Writing the Land project that connects writers to conserved landscapes across the Northeast. Visit her online at www.tzynyapinchback.com.
Lynne Viti’s poetry, nonfiction and fiction have appeared in journals, newspapers and anthologies, including The Wire: Urban Decay and American Television, The Baltimore Sun, Welcome to the Neighborhood, You Can Hear the Ocean, att. She is the author of Dancing at Lake Montebello: Poems (Apprentice House Press 2020), two poetry chapbooks, Baltimore Girls (2017) and The Glamorganshire Bible (2018) and a short fiction collection, Going Too Fast (2020), all from Finishing Line Press. A lecturer emerita in the Writing Program at Wellesley College, she currently teaches writing and literature classes in community programs in Westwood and Dover, MA, and leads poetry workshops in the Boston area. Visit her online at https://lynneviti.wordpress.com.
Previous Readings in the Series:
Thursday, February 10, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Toni Bee and Ed Meek
Toni Bee is a poet, educator, and photographer raised in Boston, MA, educated in Roxbury. In 2011, she was elected Poet Populist of Cambridge, the first woman to grace that position. Bee led the Black Lives Matter march of Cambridge in 2015 and the following year she was selected as the Cambridge Inaugural Poetry Ambassador. Toni was a teaching artist and storyteller at The Wang Theatre and in 2017 she received her BA from Simmons University. The next year, she self-published her first poetry book 22 Again, and she currently is on the Advisory Board of The New England Poetry Club. Toni has been featured at: The Lizard Lounge, The Cantab (Boston Poetry Slam), The New England Poetry Club, The Boston National Poetry Month Festival, The Boston Poetry Marathon. She has been a panelist at The Massachusetts Poetry Festival and she has been awarded by YWCA Cambridge. Visit Toni online at https://www.tonibee.org.
Ed Meek is the author of four books of poetry and a collection of short stories. His latest book of poems is called High Tide. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Boston Review, The Paris Review, The Baltimore Review, The Sun. He writes book reviews for The Arts Fuse. He taught creative writing at Austin Prep School and Curry College and helped adults in Mission Hill prepare for the High School Equivalency Exam. He lives in Somerville, MA with his wife Elizabeth and dog Mookie. Visit Ed online at https://www.edmeek.net.
Thursday, March 10, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Charlot Lucien and Gloria Monaghan
Click HERE to read the chat from the Zoom.
Charlot Lucien, founder of the Haitian Artists Assembly of Massachusetts, is a Haitian storyteller, poet and visual art artist. He has released 5 CDs featuring stories and poetry that draw from his observations of Haitian lifestyles and interactions in Haiti and in the Diaspora. His poetry has appeared in various magazines including Regards (Paris), Compost Magazine, Revolution, Tambou Magazine, Poètes à la Une, etc. His first poetry book “La tentation de la traversée / The temptation to cross the bridge” (In French and Haitian Creole) was released by Trilingual Press in 2013. His translated poems are set to be released in “This Land, My Beloved” scheduled for September 2022. Visit him online at http://charlotlucien.com/ and https://www.nestorytelling.org/charlot-lucien/.
Gloria Monaghan is a Professor of Humanities at Wentworth University in the School of Sciences and Humanities. She has published five books of poetry: Flawed (Finishing Line Press),Torero (Nixes Mate), The Garden (Flutter Press), False Spring (Adelaide), and Hydrangea (Kelsay Books). Her sixth book is due out in 2023 with Lily Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared in Alexandria Quarterly, NPR, Poem-a-Day, Adelaide, Aurorean, Chiron, Nixes-Mate, Mom Egg Review, and Lily Poetry Review, among others. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and the Massachusetts Book Award. Her book False Spring was nominated for the Griffin Prize. Visit her online at https://monaghang.wordpress.com.
Thursday, April 14, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Regie Gibson and Mary Pinard
Click HERE to read the chat from the Zoom.
Literary performer Regie Gibson has lectured & performed widely in the U.S., Cuba & Europe. He has served as a consultant for the NEA’s “How Art Works” commission & the “Mere Distinction of Color”, a permanent exhibit focusing on American slavery & the U.S. Constitution at James Madison’s Montpelier home. He’s a Brother Thomas Fellow & has received two Live Arts Boston Grants to develop his first play, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae. He works with Unite America, a non-partisan organization dedicated to reforming the political system and bridging the partisan divide, and with the Red Cross Red Crescent to bring art and science together to craft messages regarding the urgency of climate change and disaster preparedness. He serves on the boards of the New England Poetry Club & Grub Street Writers. He teaches in the English department at Clark University. Visit him online at http://www.regiegibson.com.
Mary Pinard teaches literature and poetry courses in the Arts & Humanities Division at Babson College. Her poems have appeared in a variety of literary journals, and she has published critical essays on poets, including Lorine Niedecker and Alice Oswald. Portal, her first collection of poems, was published by Salmon Press (2014), and her second book, Ghost Heart, won the 2021 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Book Contest and will be published by the press in Fall 2022. She is especially proud of the poems she has created over the last ten years for collaborative performances and exhibits with Boston-area musicians, painters, and sculptors. Born and raised in Seattle, she has lived in Roslindale for over 25 years. Visit her online at http://www.marypinard.com.
Thursday, May 12, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Alexis Ivy and Sarah Dickenson Snyder
Register HERE to receive the Zoom Link.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks (BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. A Boston native, her poems have been displayed in City Hall and featured by Mass Poetry aboard the red line subway. Her poems have recently appeared in Saranac Review, Poet Lore and Sugar House Review. She works as an advocate for the homeless in Cambridge and teaches in the PoemWorks community. Visit her online at www.alexisivypoet.com.
Sarah Dickenson Snyder has written poetry since she knew there was a form with conscious line breaks. She has three poetry collections, The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), and With a Polaroid Camera(2019). Her new book will be published in 2023. Recently, poems appeared in Rattle, Lily Poetry Review, and RHINO. She has been a 30/30 poet for Tupelo Press, nominated for Best of Net and a Pushcart Prize, and was the Poetry Prize Winner of Art on the Trails 2020, and a 2021 Finalist in the Iron Horse Literary Review’s National Poetry Month contest. Visit her online at sarahdickensonsnyder.com.
2nd Thursday Virtual Poetry Readings
March – June 2021
All readings feature an open mic before
the featured speakers.
Thursday, June 10, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Anthony Febo and Daniel Johnson
Register here to receive the Zoom Link.
Anthony Febo is a Puerto Rican poet, artist, and new dad living in Malden, MA. Febo has been performing and teaching poetry and theatre for over a decade in the greater Boston area. He was featured as part of WBUR’s The ARTery 25 as an artist to watch. In the classroom, Febo treats each workshop as it’s own celebration. He draws on his experiences from his time in theatre spaces, museums, non-profits, and art centers. On the stage, he has toured the country individually and as half of Adobo-Fish-Sauce: a cooking and poetry collaboration. His work examines what it means to actively choose joy in the face of what is trying to break you. Weaving performance into his writing, he examines issues such as toxic masculinity, family, culture, identity, and the role representation plays into a person’s development. His first full length book of poetry, Becoming an Island, can be purchased at Game Over Books. Visit him online at https://www.thisisfebo.com and https://adobofishsauce.com.
Daniel Johnson is the author of How to Catch a Falling Knife, published by Alice James Books. In 2018, he was commissioned to compose lines of poetry for the twin memorials honoring those killed and wounded in the Boston Marathon bombings. His writing has appeared in Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Best American Poetry, Boston Review, jubilat, and elsewhere. He recently completed his second volume of poems, Shadow Act, an Elegy for American Journalist James Foley. He currently serves as the executive director of Mass Poetry.
How to Catch a Falling Knife by Daniel Johnson – Alice James Books – https://www.alicejamesbooks.org/bookstore/howtocatchafallingknife
Previous Readings in the Series:
Thursday, March 11, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Harlym1Two5 and Lindsey O’Neill
Harlym 1Two5 is a frequent and highly regarded figure in competitions, performances, and concerts. 1Two5 has become a part of the Boston area poetry scene, and he has joined teams of poets who have won numerous competitions regionally and nationally. He is often asked to be a panelist on a broad range of topics regarding diversity and pluralism, and to prepare presentations in response to very specific incidents or conditions. Harlym is well known for his work leading workshops at local high schools, colleges, and communities dealing with issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. He is a “HUMAN HIGHLIGHT OF POETRY AND EDU-ACTIVISM.”
Lindsey O’Neill is a poet, teacher, and performance artist. She is an adjunct professor in Lesley University’s low-residency MFA program in creative writing, teaches creative writing at GrubStreet, and tutors in the writing center at Berklee College of Music. Lindsey also teaches yoga classes in the Boston area, and infuses her writing classes with contemplative practices to foster embodied awareness, distill our authentic voice, and enhance sustainable creativity. She believes both awareness-building practices and the creative arts are capable of inspiring community connection leading to social change. Lindsey holds an RYT certification with Yoga Alliance, a City of Boston Artist Certification, and an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. She is currently at work on her first poetry collection. Visit her at www.thelindseyoneill.com.
Thursday, April 8, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Simone Moise and Isabelle Goodrich
Register here to receive the Zoom Link.
Simone Moise is a 17 year old junior at Milton Academy, originally from Cambridge Massachusetts but now residing in Milton. She often writes about family, how she processes the world, influential movies/tv, her identity and her daily routine. She has won the Scholastic Regional Gold Key and Honorable Mention for poetry.
Isabelle Goodrich lives and writes in Boston, MA, where she is a senior at Boston Latin School. She is the president of the writing club and serves on the literary board of her school writing magazine. A top ten finalist to be the first Boston Youth Poet laureate, and a recipient of Regional Gold and Silver Keys from the Scholastic Writing Awards, Izzy is also the youth winner of the Boston in 100 Words Contest. Her poem, Aftermath in the Hub of the Universe was chosen among the winners by the Boston Poet Laureate in the 2020 Boston Mayor’s Poetry Program is displayed in Boston City Hall. Her winning flash fiction, Flight Patterns appears in train stations around the city.
Thursday, May 13, 7 – 9 pm
Featuring Karen Friedland and Chad Parenteau
Register here to receive the Zoom Link.
Click here to view the chat from the Zoom.
A nonprofit grant writer by day, Karen Friedland’s poems have been published in The Lily Poetry Review, Constellations, Nixes Mate Review, Writing in a Women’s Voice, Vox Populi and others. One of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and another was displayed for a year on the walls of Boston’s City Hall. Her two books of poems are Tales from the Teacup Palace (Cervena Barva Press, available at http://www.thelostbookshelf.com/f.html#KarenFriedland) and Places That Are Gone (Nixes Mate Books). She lives in the quiet West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston with her husband, two dogs, two cats, and too many house plants.
Chad Parenteau hosts Boston’s long-running Stone Soup Poetry series. His work has appeared in journals such as Résonancee, Queen Mob’s Tea-House, Cape Cod Poetry Review, Tell-Tale Inklings, Off The Coast, Ibbetson Street and Wilderness House Literary Review. He currently serves as a regular contributor to Headline Poetry & Press as well as Associate Editor of the online journal Oddball Magazine. His second collection, The Collapsed Bookshelf, has just been released. Visit him online at http://www.chadparenteaupoetforhire.com.
An Afternoon of Poetry in Hyde Park
Featuring Charles Coe and Linda Carney-Goodrich
Sunday March 31, 2019, 2 – 4 pm
Also featuring the Hyde Park Poets – Mike Ball, Kathryn Collins,
Sasja Lucas, and Paul Osborne
With an afterword by Jim Michmerhuizen
Charles Coe is the author of two books of poetry: “All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents” and “Picnic on the Moon,” both published by Leapfrog Press. In April a third volume, “Memento Mori,” will be released by the same publisher. Charles is also the author of “Spin Cycles,” a novella published by Gemma Media. He was a 2017 Artist-in-Residence for the city of Boston, was selected as a “Literary Light” by the Associates of the Boston Public Library and is an adjunct professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, where he teaches in the MFA program.
Linda Carney-Goodrich, Ed.M. is a teacher, mother, writer and performer. Her poems have been among the winners chosen of the Boston Mayor’s Poetry Contest judged by the Boston Poet Laureate in 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Her writing has appeared in Wordgathering, Songs of Eretz Poetry Review, Omnivore, Sojourner, Survival News, It’s All About Arts, Spare Change, and Classismblog. Her poems “Dot Girl” and “Vodka, Beer and Cigarettes” are published in City Of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems. A former theater artist, Linda performed her one woman shows, The Secret Childhood Diary of a Welfare Mother and My Life in Barbie in a variety of venues throughout New England. Linda is owner and operator of Home Scholars of Boston and a long time member of The Hyde Park Poets.