tended by poet Frances Donovan
If you’re in Boston this weekend, come on down to the newly renovated Jamaica Plain Public Library on Saturday, February 3 for a poetry reading at 2:00 pm. Continue reading “Poetry Reading: Heather Derr-Smith, Erica Charis, Frances Donovan, and Sonja Johanson”
This website first came about in 1996, when the World Wide Web (yes, we called it that) was as wide-open and empty as the American West. Fresh out of Vassar with a degree in English and a middling aptitude for computers, I stumbled on a job for a website that forced me to learn HTML. Back then, all you needed to create a website was a text editor, some server space, and FTP software. If you were feeling really fancy, you got Photoshop and threw up some images too. I’d grown discouraged trying to break into more traditional print publishing, so posting my own writing on my own website seemed a great way to circumvent the endless cycle of applications and rejections.
Like most 20-somethings, I had no idea what I was doing. There were a bunch of other 20-somethings out there stealing sharpies and Xeroxes to make ‘zines, but I felt like I belonged to a small, elite group of people with the mix of technical, editorial, and design skills required to make a website.
What we now call blogs we used to call online diaries. No matter what you called them, they were homegrown, barbaric yawps in the wilderness. Traditional media still wasn’t sure that this blogging thing was going to take off (that’s a direct quote from a VP of Public Affairs circa 2008). Continue reading “The Not-So-Glamorous Life of a Working Grad Student”
In my unbiased opinion, the one must-see reading this winter is happening on Saturday, February 3 at 2pm. Come see me (Frances Donovan), Erica Charis-Molling, Sonja Johnson, and Heather Derr-Smith read for free at the newly renovated library in beautiful Jamaica Plain.
Others might argue that honor goes to Nikki Giovanni (!) at Brookline Booksmith on Friday, February 2.
Also a shout-out to Regie Gibson and the other fine poets performing at the Gwendolyn Brooks tribute this Saturday, January 13 in Lexington, Mass.
All readings are in Massachusetts.
Friday, January 12, 7:30 pm
Alan Smith Soto, Tim Suermondt, and Pui Ying Wong
Loring-Greenough House
12 South Street (across from the Monument)
Jamaica Plain, MA
Saturday January 13, 3 pm
Chris O’Carroll and David Davis
Powow River Poets Reading Series
Newburyport Public Library
94 State St.
Newburyport, MA
Saturday, January 13, 4 pm
Tara Skurtu
Porter Square Books
25 White Street
Cambridge, MA
Saturday, January 13, 7:30 pm
Contemporary Poets Celebrate Gwendolyn Brooks
Nancy Boutilier, Robert Carr, Jennifer Clarvoe, Tom Daley, Regie Gibson, Krysten Hill, Dorian Kotsiopoulos, Julia Lisella, Kathy Nilsson, Sabrina Sadique, Lloyd Schwartz, Joyce Swagerty, Cammy Thomas, Jonathan Weinert
Munroe Saturday Nights series
First Parish Church
7 Harrington Road
Lexington, MA
Wednesday, January 17, 8 pm
Valerie Duff and Musical Guest
Unearthed Song & Poetry
Home.stead Bakery & Cafe
Fields Corner
1448 Dorchester Ave.
Dorchester, MA
Continue reading “Boston-Area Poetry Readings for January and February 2018”
a warm, yeasty smell
from the bakery hovers
in the cold, dry air
the trolley rattles
on and I have a moment
to be pure nothing
I first met Martha Collins at a seminar on taboo at the Mass Poetry Festival. Sharon Olds read a poem about testicles. Jill McDonough read a poem that included a line about a stripper’s “perfect pink asshole.” And Martha Collins read a poem about race. It was the Collins poem that made me the most uncomfortable. I’ve spoken about race plenty in conversation with people of color, but for a white person to initialize the discussion seemed uncouth in a way that frank talk about sex is not.
Collins read from White Papers, the second in a trilogy about race in the United States. White Papers focuses on the poet’s own recollections of race growing up in the Midwest and living in New England. Blue Front is a book-length poem that spirals around a brutal lynching that her father witnessed in 1909 in Cairo, Illinois. Admit One uses the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis (which her grandparents attended) as a jumping-off point to speak about “scientific racism,” the eugenics movement of the 20th century, and the continuing legacy of racism in the United States. Continue reading “The Martha Collins Race Trilogy”
black pair of panties
lying on the trolley tracks
where did you come from?
Poetry can bring a little light and warmth into these cold, dark evenings. Go get you some.
Thursday, November 2, 6 pm
Douglas Kearney and Tracie Morris
Edison Newman Room, Houghton Library
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Thursday, November 2, 6:30 pm
Barbara Siegel Carlson
Carver Public Library
Carver, MA
Thursday, November 2, 7 pm
Simone John and Ruby Poltorak
Rozzie Reads Poetry and Open Mic
Roslindale House
120 Poplar Street
Roslindale, MA
Saturday, November 4, 3 pm
Vietnam vet Marc Levy
Book reading/Short film
VFW Hall
95 Derby Street
Salem, MA
Continue reading “Boston-Area Poetry Readings for November and December 2017”
All readings are in Massachusetts unless otherwise noted. Thanks as always to Daniel Bouchard for compiling these listings, and to the fine organizations that make possible many readings to be found in and around Boston. If you have an event not listed here, please leave details in the comments.
Thursday, October 12, 5:30 pm
Gregory Pardlo
McCormack Family Theater
70 Brown St.
Providence, RI
Continue reading “Boston Area Poetry Readings for October and November 2017”
october’s reward
for tromping through the woods:
a golden feather
Garden of Words 