Massachusetts Statewide Poetry Calendar

Poets, let your voices be heard! Whether you’ve written an original piece or would like to share a favorite poem written by someone else, the mic is yours and we’re all ears. The suggested theme for this month’s open mic is poems about animals.

Deana Tavares is a creatively fluid artist, poet, songwriter activist, and actor. Growing up on the south coast of Massachusetts, many of life's hurdles only further strengthened her drive toward the arts. Her deep connection to the natural world and humanity is regularly reflected through her visual artwork, poetry, and songwriting. An avid visual artist, writer and maker, her work can be found on saveprouty.com, engagingpeace.com., jummyjeenz.com, and Art On The Trails - Marking Territory 2019 chapbook.

Ed Meek writes poetry, fiction, articles and book reviews. His new book of poems, High Tide, has just come out. He has been published in The Sun, The Paris Review, Plume, The North American Review. He lives in Somerville with his wife Elizabeth and his dog Mookie, whom he will never trade.

Email Holly Guran at hguran@aol.com to register and receive the Zoom link. 

Join us for a virtual poetry reading from three published poets: Jeffrey Harrison, Joyce Peseroff, and Steven Cramer. Please register to get the Zoom link and password; they will be sent in a confirmation email when you register and a reminder message the day before the event - please check your spam folder for the emails and scroll to the bottom for the link. Email caryprograms@minlib.net with any questions.

Steven Cramer is the author of five previous collections, most recently Clangings (2012) and Goodbye to the Orchard (2004), which won the Sheila Motton Prize from the New England Poetry Club and was named an Honor Book in Poetry by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Recipient of two grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, he founded and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University.

Petition is Joyce Peseroff’s sixth book of poems. She is the editor of Robert Bly: When Sleepers Awake, The Ploughshares Poetry Reader, and Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon. Her fifth collection, Know Thyself, was designated a 'must read' by the 2016 Massachusetts Book Award. Recent poems and reviews appear in Consequence, On the Seawall, Massachusetts Review, and Plume. She directed and taught in UMass Boston's MFA Program in its first four years. Currently she blogs for her website, joycepeseroff.com, and writes the poetry column for Arrowsmith Press.

Jeffrey Harrison is the author of six full-length books of poetry, most recently Between Lakes, published by Four Way Books in September 2020. His previous book, Into Daylight, won the Dorset Prize and was published by Tupelo Press in 2014. His first book, The Singing Underneath, was selected by James Merrill for the National Poetry Series in 1987. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Bogliasco Foundation, among other honors. His poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals, as well as in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize volumes, and other anthologies, and been featured regularly on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, Poetry Daily, and other online or media venues.

Poets, let your voices be heard! Whether you’ve written an original piece or would like to share a favorite poem written by someone else, the mic is yours and we’re all ears. The suggested theme for this month’s open mic is poems about food.  

Bruce Weigl is the author, editor or translator of over thirty books of poetry, poetry in translation, critical essays, and prose. His most recent poetry collection, On the Shores of Welcome Home, won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and was published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in 2019. This year BOA will also publish a collection of his short prose, Among Elms, in Ambush, and the Writers Association Publishing house in Ha Noi, Vietnam will publish his co-translation of Slaughterhouse, a book-length poem by Nguyen Quang Thieu, one of Vietnam’s most important writers.

Cammy Thomas’ first book, Cathedral of Wish, received the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. A fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation helped her complete Inscriptions. Her third collection, Tremors, is forthcoming in 2021. All are published by Four Way Books. Her work appeared recently in the anthology, Poems in the Aftermath. Two of her poems under the title Far Past War were set to music by her sister, composer Augusta Read Thomas. The work will premiere in 2022. Cammy lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

To sign up for this Zoom reading, contact hguran@aol.com