Massachusetts Statewide Poetry Calendar

Friday, January 3, 7 pm
Poetry in the Parlor, curated by the New England Poetry Club
Kenneth Lee, Gloria Mindock, and Tontongi
The Old Manse
Concord, MA

Join the New England Poetry Club outdoors in the open air tent at the Old Manse for free poetry readings on Sunday, 8/27.
Sponsoring poetry in New England since 1915, the New England Poetry Club presents readings by poets with ties to the New England states and annual poetry contests. Members of the NEPC benefit from being part of a community of poets, gathering for readings by members with new books, and participating in monthly writing workshops.

August Poets:

• Cynthia Bargar
• Tom Laughlin
• Jess Levens

Register here. 

Three widely-published poets will read selections from their newly-released books of poems. Merryn Rutledge's Sweet Juice and Ruby-Bitter Seed is from Kelsay Books. Sunday, October 22, 2 p.m. at The Old Manse, Concord, MA, as part of the NE Poetry Club's series "Poetry at the Manse," co-sponsored by The Trustees of the Reservation. Registration suggested.

Martha Collins has published eleven books of poetry, most recently Casualty Reports (Pittsburgh, 2022) and Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019); the latter won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. She has co-translated five volumes of Vietnamese poetry, most recently Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ, with Nguyen Ba Chung (Milkweed, 2023), and co-edited, with Kevin Prufer, Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries  (Graywolf, 2017).  Collins founded the U.Mass. Boston creative writing program and for ten years served as Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin. Her website is marthacollinspoet.com.

Merryn Rutledge is a poet, reviewer, and teacher of poetry as craft. Sweet Juice and Ruby-Bitter Seed (Kelsay Books, 2023) features poems about her forebears in the American South, challenges like grief, and reflections on the costs of racism.  Her poems have appeared widely in journals throughout the world and in several anthologies, such as All Shall Be Well (Amythest Press, 2023), an anthology celebrating the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich. Merryn’s reviews of new poetry books by women have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly and Pedestal, for example. After earning a Masters and BA with honors in English from Smith College, Merryn taught literature, writing, and film studies at Phillips Exeter Academy. In a second career, she earned a doctorate in leadership and led a national leadership development consulting firm. During that period, essays based on her field research on leadership were published in the peer-reviewed journals and in books. Merryn enjoys working for social justice causes, singing, dancing, and playing on the shore near her home south of Boston.

Bestselling author Timothy Gager has published 18 books of fiction and poetry, which includes his latest novel, Joe the Salamander. He hosted the successful Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, MA from 2001 to 2018, and started a weekly virtual series in 2020. He has had over one thousand works of fiction and poetry published, eighteen nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work also has been nominated twice for a Massachusetts Book Award, The Best of the Web, The Best Small Fictions Anthology and has been read on National Public Radio. In 2023, Big Table Publishing published an anthology of twenty years of his selected work, with 150 pages of new material: The Best of Timothy Gager. Timothy served as the Fiction Editor of The Wilderness House Literary Review for ten years, and was the founding co-editor of The Heat City Literary Review. A graduate of the University of Delaware, Timothy lives in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Join the New England Poetry Club outdoors in the open air tent at the Old Manse for free poetry readings on select Sunday afternoons.
Extend your visit by signing up for a tour of the historic house prior to or following the reading. Learn more about tour offerings and pre-register for house tours here. Plan to come early or stay late for a stroll around the orchard and along the banks of the Concord River.

May poets:
Dr. Sara Epstein is a clinical psychologist who integrates mindfulness practices, including writing, in her psychotherapy work with children and adults. She also facilitates and teaches generative writing groups and classes. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Quarterly, Amethyst Review, Chest Journal, Nixes Mate Review, Plainsongs, museum of americana, among others. Her book reviews have been published in Mom Egg Review.  Bar of Rest is her first book of poetry.

Denise Provost has published two poetry collections: Curious Peach (Ibbetson Street Press, 2019) and City of Stories (Červená Barva Press, 2021).  Her poems have appeared in such journals as Ibbetson Street, Constellations, Muddy River Poetry Review, qarrtsiluni, Quadrille, Poetry Porch, Red Eft, Sonnet Scroll, Sanctuary, Light Quarterly, and in Bagel Bards anthologies. Twice Pushcart-nominated, Provost received the 2012 Best Love Sonnet award from the 2012 Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition, and the New England Poetry Club’s 2021 Samuel Washington Allen Prize. She was elected co-president of the New England Poetry Club in 2022. Provost served from 2006-2021 in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Gary Whited is a poet, philosopher and psychotherapist. His first book titled, Having Listened, won the 2013 Homebound Publications Poetry Contest. In 2014 it received a Benjamin Franklin Silver Book Award, and in 2015 was translated into Russian and a bilingual edition was published. His new book, Being, There includes new poems along with his translation of the ancient Greek fragments of Parmenides from the 5th century BCE. This book dances between the poetic voice of Parmenides and the poetic remembrances of a young life on a prairie cattle ranch. His poems have appeared in journals, including Salamander, Plainsongs, The Aurorean, Atlanta Review, Comstock Review, The Wayfarer, Poetry Daily and The Red Letters.