Denise Provost. Besides long service in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Denise Provost has published two poetry collections: Curious Peach (2019) and City of Stories (2021). Her poems have appeared in such journals as Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, Light Quarterly, qarrtsiluni, and Poetry Porch. Provost received the Maria C. Faust Sonnet 2012 Competition Best Love Sonnet award, and New England Poetry Club’s 2021 Samuel Washington Allen Prize. She was elected co-president of the New England Poetry Club in 2022.
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 received Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations, and have appeared in Meat for Tea, Lily Poetry Review, Reed Magazine, LEON Literary Review, Solstice, Salamander, Tar River Poetry, Kestrel, Vincent Brothers Review, and Nixes Mate Review, among other journals. His poems “Interview” and “And You” were included in an issue of Magma (UK) focused on teaching poetry to secondary school students. He lives in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, with his wife, the visual artist Jane Wiley.
Vijaya Sundaram is a Medford-based poet of East Indian origin. She is also a guitarist, sitarist, songwriter, singer, an Assistant Professor in the English / Humanities department at BHCC, and a former home-school Poetry and Literature teacher. Her work has appeared in publications like
The Rising Phoenix Press, the Stardust Review, and TELL Magazine, among others. In early August 2023, she was appointed and celebrated as the Poet Laureate of the City of Medford, MA. A collection of her poetry was published in late August of 2023 in chapbook form by Červená Barva
Press, based in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Fall 2023
Sept 19, 2023 7PM
Elizabeth Lund--
Elizabeth Lund is the award-winning host of Poetic Lines at NewTV. The show features in-depth interviews with emerging and established poets about their work and creative process. She also interviews poets and reviews major collections of poetry for The Christian Science Monitor, where she served as poetry editor for 10 years. From 2015 to 2020, Elizabeth wrote a monthly column about poetry for The Washington Post.
Elizabeth co-directs Haiku Newton, which began in 2022 and brings haiku on lawn-style signs to venues around Newton.
Her own poems have appeared in various publications including The Dalhousie Review, Connecticut Review, The Christian Century, and the Patterson Literary Review. “Un-Silenced” is her debut collection.
Elizabeth has read or spoken at festivals and venues along the East Coast including the Dodge Poetry Festival, the largest poetry festival in the US, and the Gaithersburg Book Festival.
With all of her projects and endeavors, Elizabeth aims to help people discover how poetry can enhance their daily lives.
Pui Ying Wong---Pui Ying Wong’s poetry book Fanling In October is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press. She’s also the author of three other collections: The Feast, An Emigrant’s Winter and Yellow Plum Season along with two chapbooks. She has received a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Plume, Chicago Quarterly Review, New Letters, Zone 3 among many others. Born in Hong Kong she now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, the poet Tim Suermondt.
Parama Chattopadhyay--Parama Chattopadhyay is a graduate from MIT (2006) in Neuropsychology and Management Science. She then went on in her studies to complete Masters in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Scranton in 2010. She also is the Executive Director of her SMART Academy at the Out of the Blue Art Gallery where she teaches international youth standardized tests, college application essays, music, and art. Her Gallery has been the meeting place for many years in the past for Stone Soup Poetry, multiple national theatre acts, and an array of art and musical events. She is a Howard Nemerov Distinguished writer and Robert Frost Poetry camp reader and awarded poet. Her poetic muses are William Wodsworth, Olga Broumas, and Pablo Neruda. You may read more about her at: www.outoftheblueartgallery.com.
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April 2023
Feb 2023
Carmelitte Chamblin
Ravi Yelamanchili
Toni Bee
Nov, 2022
The poetry series continues with readings by Willy Ramírez, Tom Laughlin and Alexis Ivy standing in for Barbara Helfgott Hyett. An open mic will follow with a limit of one poem per person. Open mic signups are taken via the Zoom chat feature; limited slots are available. The series is facilitated by Doug Holder of Ibbetson St. Press.
Willy Ramírez is an educator, poet, and cultural advocate. He is the founder and organizer of La Guagua Reading Group and of the annual La Guagua Poetry Festival, hosted by Middlesex Community College, where Ramirez is Professor of English.
Tom Laughlin is a professor at Middlesex Community College in Bedford and Lowell where he teaches creative writing, literature, and composition courses, as well as coordinating a visiting writer’s series and open readings for students, faculty and community members. The Rest of the Way, a book of his poetry, was released by the Finishing Line Press in July. More of his work can be found on his website here.
Alexis Ivy
Sept. 2023
Nidia Hernandez is the editor of The Invisible Borders of Time: Five Female Latin American Poets. Hernández is also the winner of the Sundara Ramaswamy prize for The Land of Mild Light: Selected Poems of Rafael Cadenas.
Jean Dany Joachim was the Cambridge Poet Populist from 2009 to 2011, and the current Poet in Residence at First Church in Cambridge, is also an author of short stories and plays. . He has three published collections of poetry, Crossroads / Chimenkwaze (2013), Avec des Mots (2014), and Quartier (2016).
Karen Klein--After retiring from Brandeis faculty, Karen Klein returned to studying modern dance and began writing contemporary lyric poetry. Her first book of poetry is This Close ( Ibbetson Street Press)
April 2022
Harris Gardner
Denise Provost
Dennis Miller
Feb. 2022
Durane West-- Durane West is a spoken word artist with a love for coloring based in Brighton, MA. In eighth grade, he stumbled upon poetry to express his feelings for a crush. He has been uncovering pieces of his soul through written verse ever since. Winner of the 2021 Poem for Roxbury contest, his favorite forms of poetry are haikus. West was published four times in 2021 from 826 Boston, Write on the Dot, Mother Mercy, and Boston Hassle. Check out his weekly sports recap on Boston Hassle’s website.
Julia Kanno-- Julia writes: “I am the mother of two amazing young men ages 27 and 17. I am from Appalachia and Botswana. I am an artist and also work in healthcare. I have self-published with my co-pilot levin pfeuffer two books of prose a storm is cuming and The hardest helmut. My first reading was done at Northeastern University and since then I have read at the Somerville Armory two times. I consider myself an introverted artist/writer. I give birth to my works including those that have been displayed at the Decordova Museum as well as Howard University and local gems such as The Middle East and Out of the Blue gallery. I will be published in Tell magazine featuring my textiles and art in the spring. Currently, I am studying behavioral science and psychology because there is a need for more people of color to be there for people of color to help end the stigma of seeking mental health.
Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of the poetry chapbooks Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag) and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press). His full-length collection, the Colored page, is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2022. The editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, MEH’s poetry and prose is appearing or forthcoming in Barren Magazine, Frontier Poetry, The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, New York Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry East, The Radical Teacher, Shenandoah, Solstice, and Zone 3. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA, yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.
Fall 2021
Nov. 2021
Wendell Smith
Ruth Smullin
Susan Donnelly
Doug Holder
Sept 2021
Janet Slyvester-Winner of a Pushcart Prize, a PEN Discovery Award, the Grolier Poetry Prize, among other honors, Janet Sylvester’s poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including the Best American Poetry, Georgia Review, Poetry Daily, Boulevard, etc....
Kevin Gallagher is a poet and publisher living in Belmont. His newest book of poems in And Yet it Moves (MadHat, 2021). He edits spoKe, a Boston based annual of poetry and poetics.
Feb. 2021
Lloyd Schwartz
Gail Mazur
Danielle P. Jones
Nov. 2020
DeWitt Henry
James Najarian
Lawrence Kessenich
Sept. 2020
Rosie Rosenweig
Wyn Cooper
Frances Donovan
March 10, 2020
Wyn Cooper--Wyn Cooper has published five books of poems: The Country of Here Below (Ahsahta Press, 1987), The Way Back (White Pine Press, 2000), Postcards from the Interior, (BOA Editions, 2005), Chaos is the New Calm (BOA Editions, 2010), and Mars Poetica (White Pine Press, 2018). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, Slate, Crazyhorse, AGNI, The Southern Review, and more than 100 other magazines.
Nausheen Eusuf--Nausheen Eusuf holds a PhD in English from Boston University and an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. Her poetry has won a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in The American Scholar, PN Review, Southwest Review, Salmagundi, World Literature Today, and Best American Poetry 2018 & 2019. Her first full-length collection Not Elegy, But Eros was published by NYQ Books (US) and Bengal Lights Books (Bangladesh). Website: www.nausheeneusuf.com.
Michael Steffen-- Michael Todd Steffen is the director of the Hastings Room Reading Series in Cambridge, Mass.. His latest book of poetry is Partner, Orchard and Day Moon that was published by Cervena Barva Press. His poems and articles have been published in many literary reviews in the United States and abroad. He has spent ten years living and teaching in France and England, an experience that has enriched his creativity. He was awarded the Somerville News Writers’ Festival Poetry prize.
APRIL 14, 2020
Lloyd Schwartz
Schwartz's books of poetry include Cairo Traffic (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and the chapbook Greatest Hits 1973-2000 (Pudding House Press, 2003), which were preceded by Goodnight, Gracie (1992) and These People (1981). He co-edited the collection Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art (University of Michigan Press, 1983). Schwartz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1994
Gail Mazur-- Gail Mazur is Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College and Founding Director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, a weekly poetry reading series she ran for 29 years.
Danielle Jones-- Jones is the assistant director of the Writers House at Merrimack. My poems have appeared in Best New Poets, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cider Press Review, Memorious, Southern Poetry Review and elsewhere.
