Mass Poetry and Me

Join me at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival! I’m a triple threat—reading at three venues during the four-day event. Visit the Mass Poetry Web site for info on all of the wonderful events. Some readings and workshops have sold out, so reserve your seats today. *Most of the events are FREE.* How’s that for the creative economy?

Here’s where you can catch me during the weekend. Be sure to stop in and say hello!

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Thursday, October 15 – Salem, MA
7 p.m., Salem Athenaeum

North Shore poets will help initiate the Massachusetts Poetry Festival with a reading and celebration of poetry from the Commonwealth. J.D. Scrimgeour will host. Among the readers will be: Rufus Collinson, James Connatser, Bill Coyle, Amy Dengler, Diane Kendig, Claire Keyes, Ruth Maassen, Rich Murphy, January O'Neil, John Ronan, Dan Sklar, and Suellen Wedmore.

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Saturday, October 17 – Lowell, MA
Noon, St. Anne's Church

Tapestry of Voices is an eleven year old poetry organization, co-founded by Harris Gardner and Lainie Senechal; based in Boston with more than 150 affiliates from the Greater Boston Area, most of whom are widely published. TOV has produced numerous programs throughout Massachusetts, including the Ten Year Old Boston National Poetry Month Festival and two on-going monthly Boston venues. The participating poets in Poetry Voices Past and Present, presented by Tapestry of Voices will read from beloved poets from the past such as Anne Sexton, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, Longfellow, Lorca, Neruda, and others. Each poet will also include two original poems thematically related to each past poet creating a wonderful blend of past and present voices. This hour of poetry is sure to leave you wanting more.

• January O'Neil will read Elizabeth Bishop
• Joanna Nealon will read Emily Dickinson
• Laine Senechal will read Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Doug Holder will read Robert Lowell
• Walter Howard will read Longfellow
• Richard Hoffman will read William Meredith
• Gloria Mindock will read Constance F. Woolson
• Harris Gardner will read Anne Sexton
• Diana Saenz will read Stanley Kunitz
  
  

3 p.m., St. Anne's Church

A sampler reading of Cave Canem poets, featuring: Metta Sama, DeLana R.A. Dameron, Tara Betts, January O’Neil, Jarita Davis, Jericho Brown, Lillian Bertram, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Venus Thrash, Joy Gonsalves, and Johnny Davis. Founded in 1996 by poets Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady, Cave Canem is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to the artistic and professional growth of African American poets. The organization has grown from an initial gathering of 26 poets to an influential movement with renowned faculty and a high-achieving fellowship of 287 poets in 34 states. Its programs include a week-long summer retreat, first and second book prizes, a Legacy Conversation series, writing workshops, publications and national readings. Cave Canem fellows have published over 150 books and have received many prestigious awards—Guggenheim and Lannan Literary Fellowships and the Whiting Writers’ Award, among others.

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Don’t forget to sign up for the Gluck-Pinsky-Waldman-Weaver reading Saturday night beginning at 7 p.m.