Rodger Martin Wins Stanley Kunitz Medal
New Hampshire poet Rodger Martin "has earned the right to be called a citizen and poet of the world," says the Stanley Kunitz Medal committee of the Worcester County Poetry Association.
Martin has also earned the right to be named the 2024 Stanley Kunitz Medal recipient.
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WSU Professor Wins Poetry Prize
Worcester State University Professor Heather Treseler won the prestigious 2023 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize for her first full-length book of poems, "Auguries & Divinations."
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Can Poetry Make a Difference in Our Lives?
April is National Poetry Month.
What role does poetry play in your life?
"In the guest essay “How to Breathe With the Trees,” Margaret Renkl writes about Ada Limón, who is serving her second term as poet laureate of the United States. Ms. Renkl says that in a new poetry anthology, Ms. Limón makes a case for poetry being able to heal us and the earth itself:..."
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Poetry in MA in 1998
| On this day in 1998, 25 Bostonians, including the president of the Massachusetts Senate, a homeless man, and a fifth grade student, recited their favorite poems to a packed auditorium at the Boston Public Library. The president of the library came dressed in western attire, complete with bolo tie and hat, and read a cowboy poem. Others presented poems in Spanish, Vietnamese, and American Sign Language. The event helped launch the Favorite Poem Project, the brainchild of Boston-based poet Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States. Over the next year, 18,000 Americans responded to Pinsky's call to share their favorite poems. Three anthologies, 50 video documentaries, and an award-winning website are the result..... |
To read more, click here: Favorite Poem - 1998
Poetry to train doctors
2/17/2024
João Luís Barreto Guimarães, a breast cancer specialist and prizewinning poet, is pioneering the teaching of poetry alongside medicine to help trainee doctors empathise with their patients:
How Poetry Helps
- How Poetry Helps Trauma Victims"After delving into how Fuhrer's newest poetry collection, Gellar Studies (2023), shows the power of pop culture narratives as a conduit for processing trauma, I had the honor of interviewing Fuhrer. In this exclusive interview, Fuhrer explains how pop culture narratives and icons became essential to their ability to recognize and find language for the abuse in their own life...."
November, 2023
Worcester Youth Poet Laureate
Library of Congress and Hispanic Poets
Richard Fox [- 2023]
Local poet Richard Fox died this morning after a many-years fight with cancer.
You can watch his funeral online on Tuesday, 10/3/2023 at:
Richard's website: website
In memoriam...
Richard
d 10.2.23
.
the Fox has crossed the meadow
swum across the stream
climbed the last hill
& vanished from our sight.
.
we who watch with weary eyes
the afterglow of his luminescence
bid our beloved bon voyage
on this, his final earthly journey.
.
yet even as tears choke out these words
truth shimmers in plain sight –
nothing is ever truly lost to us
memory is not then, but now
.
each time his name is mentioned
his presence reawakens –
may his memory be a blessing
in every mouth, in each heart
.
today.
Robert Eugene Perry 2023
Poetry and the military
- Tommy Tuberville and poetry in our militaryTess Taylor, remarking on Senator Tommy Tuberville's recent remarks, said:
"... he reminded us that poetry is powerful: It can wake us up in dark spaces. It can call us to ourselves even (and especially) on Navy aircraft carriers."
Poet Laureate Ada Limón
Ada Limón: 'You Are Here'
U.S. Poet Laureate to Publish Anthology, Bring Poetry to National Parks
Ada Limón’s signature project as the nation’s 24th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, “You Are Here,” will feature two major new initiatives: an anthology of commissioned nature poems and poetry installed as public art in seven national parks.
“I want to champion the ways reading and writing poetry can situate us in the natural world,” Limón said. “Never has it been more urgent to feel a sense of reciprocity with our environment, and poetry’s alchemical mix of attention, silence, and rhythm gives us a reciprocal way of experiencing nature — of communing with the natural world through breath and presence.”
SFWA and poetry
|
The SFWA is the Science Fiction Writers Association....
Poetry and Translations Now Accepted |
|
SFWA is now accepting poetry and translated fiction as qualifying works for membership in the organization, thanks to the votes of full SFWA members this past spring. These overwhelmingly positive votes affirm that SFWA members are eager to welcome poets and translators into the organization, joining prose, game, comics, graphic novel, and screenwriters working on traditional, work-for-hire, self-publishing, and independent career paths. Our combined efforts bolster SFWA’s mission of promoting, advancing, and supporting science fiction and fantasy writing. Interested individuals are welcome to review the full membership guidelines and submit an application. Please help us spread this good news! Full press release. |
Poetry lovers
Anu Garg provides a free email service to people who loves words on his website wordsmith.org (A Word A Day).
This week's theme is "Words with AI usage examples".
Click below for a word for "poetry lover":
Rhode Island State Poet
Could you be Rhode Island's next State Poet? Click below for details!
Ancient Poem
- Ancient PoemEnheduana is the first known named author. Her poems of strife and upheaval resonate in our own unstable times
Why Does God Keep Making Poets?
Why Does God Keep Making Poets - an interview
- Why Does God Keep Making Poets?In a column in the NY Times, poet and poetry teacher Abram Van Engen is interviewed about how to read poetry.
Van Engen is a professor in the humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. He co-hosts the podcast “Poetry for All”.
Mapping Worcester in Poetry
"A new project aims to capture the places poets have trodden, and take residents and visitors alike with them, with self-guided walking and driving tours of locations important in the lives of poets who have left their mark."
Upcoming Poetry Events - June 10, 2023
Gerald Stern's Final Boko of Poetry
- Gerald SternJoin us as we honor the life and work of the legendary poet with an evening of reflection and celebration, featuring readings by distinguished poets Alicia Ostriker, Ross Gay, and Chase Berggrun.
The event will be held on Zoom Thursday, June 15, 2023 at 3:30 pm Pacific / 6:30 pm Eastern.
Richard Fox Tribute
- Richard Fox TributeThe Worcester County Poetry Association is will be hosting a poetry event in tribute to local poet Richard Fox, who has entered hospice after many years of cancer treatments. Participants in this online event will recite some of Richard's poems.
Tidepool and Stanley Kunitz
TidePool Press Book Launch
Judith Ferrara:
A Feast of Losses, Yetta Dine and Her Son,
the Poet Stanley Kunitz
Book Launch, Reading and Book Signing
Thursday, June 8, 2023 at 7:00pm
TidePool Bookshop
372 Chandler Street
Worcester, Massachusetts 01602
508-753-2500
- A Feast of LossesBook cover of "A Feast of Losses"
Slightly Off-Beat Poets
- Slightly Off-Beat Poets EventBooklover’s Gourmet Open Mic Poetry offers a monthly, round-robin style, open poetry reading.
Poet-Pourri
- Local Poetry Event May 18, 2023Come listen to your local poets, storytellers and humorists regale you with their latest pieces. A night that won't soon be forgotten.
Tidepool Bookshop Poetry Event: Tuesday, April 11, 2023 at 5:30pm
- Tidepool Bookshop Poetry Event"By turns invitingly conversational and transportingly inventive, C. I. Marshall has the keenest powers of inner and outer observation I’ve encountered in some time. The beloved dead speak, a dog tells of its genealogy, a busker transports us to another continent or metaphysical realm; incandescently imaginative, witty and poised; and yet the poems are profoundly real, breathing with the energy of life fully lived, mistakes fully enjoyed. An intensely musical, narrative joy from poem to poem."--Luke Kennard, 2022
National Poetry Month 2023
- National Poetry Month 2023Launched by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996, National Poetry Month is a special occasion that celebrates poets’ integral role in our culture and that poetry matters. Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world, with tens of millions of readers, students, K–12 teachers, librarians, booksellers, literary events curators, publishers, families, and—of course—poets, marking poetry’s important place in our lives.
Baseball Poetry Festival
- Baseball Poetry FestivalThe city will host a "first of its kind" National Baseball Poetry Festival uniting baseball and poetry with events April 28-30 at Polar Park and in the Canal District.
That Rarest Thing: a Bestselling Poet
- That Rarest Thing: a Bestselling PoetDonna Ashworth: "Whenever there’s big, collective suffering, poetry rises out of it,’ she says. ‘Think about war poetry!’ "
Blackout Poetry
- Blackout PoetryNeed inspiration? Try blackout poetry!
Poetry and Endangered Languages
- Poetry and Endangered LanguagesPoetry in Raizal, also known as San Andresan Creole, a language of the Caribbean.
Worcester Poet Laureate Inauguration
- Poet Laureate Inauguration of Oliver de la PazThe City of Worcester’s Cultural Development Division and Worcester Public Library will host an inauguration ceremony for new Worcester Poet Laureate Oliver de la Paz. The ceremony will take place from 5:30 – 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 on the first floor of the Worcester Public Library at 3 Salem St.
Special guests Juan Matos (Poet Laureate 2020-2022), Amina Mohammed (Youth Poet Laureate 2020-2021), Jason Homer (Executive Director, Worcester Public Library), and a presentation of the Poet Laureate medal by Worcester Mayor Joseph M. Petty.
Click the red icon for more information!
National Poetry Month Poster - April 2023
Worcester Poet Laureate
- Worcester Poet Laureate: Oliver de la PazOliver de la Paz is Worcester's new Poet Laureate...
Phillis Wheatley
- Phillis Wheatley PoemsUniveritiy at Albany Professor finds new poem by famed early American poet Phillis Wheatley, who was the first Black and Enslaved person to publish poetry in the USA.
Charles Simic
- Charles Simic: 1938-2023Charles Simic, Pulitzer-Winning Serbian-American Poet and U.S. Laureate, Dies at 84
Local Poetry Series
- Local Poetry SeriesA poetry series with readings set at The Rose Room Cafe in Webster and Roseland Park in Woodstock, Connecticut seeks to unite poetry lovers across states, styles, and life experiences.
Griffin Poetry Prize Changes
- Changes to the Griffin Poetry PrizePreviously, the organization had administered an international award and a Canadian one but the Canadian-specific one is to be eliminated.
Kayden Hern - MA poet laureate
- Governor's Inaugural Poet LaureateKayden Hern received a personal invite from Gov. Kathy Hochul to serve as the poet laureate of her inaugural ceremonies Sunday.
The 9-year-old, an honor roll student from Harlem, said that he wasn't nervous at all reciting his poem.
Urdu Poetry Festival
- Urdu Poetry FestivalWhere Romantic Poetry in a Fading Language Draws Stadium Crowds