The 2025 Massachusetts Poetry Festival: Full Schedule

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10:15am PDT

Collage as a Door to the Poetic Surreal: A Generative Workshop

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT

Join us for a generative workshop led by Leticia Priebe Rocha that pairs the visual art form of collage with poetry! Participants will be guided through an exciting process of discovery with different collaging materials and text to create their own hand-crafted collage. You will walk away with seeds of poems, deeper knowledge and experience with a visual art form, and a found poetry technique to help you, in the immortal words of Emily Dickinson, tell all the truth but tell it slant —
All levels of experience with poetry and visual art welcome!

Speakers

Leticia Priebe Rocha

Leticia Priebe Rocha is the author of the chapbook In Lieu of Heartbreak, This is Like (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and was a contributor in Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial, 2024). Leticia earned her bachelor’s from Tufts University, where... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT
St. Peter's Church - Chapel 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

10:15am PDT

DLG Memorial

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT

PEM - Morse Auditorium

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT
PEM - Morse Auditorium 161 Essex St Salem, MA 01970 USA

10:15am PDT

Lit Craft is Witchcraft: Writing & Performance as Magical Practice

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT

PEM - Groups Hub

Explore the allure of the witch archetype and its resonance with personal agency and outsider perspectives. Leaders in the magical writing community unveil their journey, showcasing how practices like automatic writing, tarot, animism, and shadow work fuel creative expression and experimentation. From spell books to astrology columns, from page to stage, they traverse literary realms, infusing their work with their own personal magic. This panel includes performance, interaction, and discussion of craft (witchy and literary!). Come revel in the magic and find new keys to unlock your most potent writing.

Speakers

Shari Caplan

Shari Caplan (she/her) is the artist behind “Exhibitionist” (Lily Poetry Review, 2024, Paul Nemser Prize Winner), “The Red Shoes; a phantasmagoric ballet on paper” (Lambhouse Books, Sept 2023) and 'Advice from a Siren’ (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Her poems have swum into... Read More →

Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez

Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez is a Chilean poet and novelist working at the intersections of text, textile, performance, archive, and translation. They are the author of La Pava (Ediciones Inubicalistas) and A/An (End of the Line Press). Their work has been supported by fellowships and residencies... Read More →

Kailey Tedesco

Kailey Tedesco (she/her/hers) is a practicing witch, caul bearer, and mother living in the Lehigh Valley. She has written four full-length collections of poetry, most recently including FOREVERHAUS (2020) & MOTHERDEVIL (2024) with White Stag Publishing. She teaches courses pertaining... Read More →

Jezmina von Thiele

Jezmina Von Thiele (they/she) is a writer, editor, educator, podcaster, and fortune teller. They write poetry, fiction, & nonfiction published in Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review Online, Narrative Magazine, & elsewhere, and some of this work is published under Jessica Reidy. Jezmina... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

10:15am PDT

Our Hands Upon

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

The everyday objects we hold close and use intimately carry a poetic imprint of emotional experience.

Our Hands Upon is a roving visual poetry event exploring this idea. Think of your favorite scarf, one you’ve wrapped, draped, cried into, sweated on, and tied around, and think of the poems you’ve left in its threads. Picture the emotional stains left on the aprons and skirts of the women involved in the Salem witch-hunt.

Alexis Fedorjaczenko will be showing and sharing handkerchief poems and a poem-apron made with text from the original documents of the Salem witch-hunt. Handkerchief poem samples will be given out while they last.

Join Alexis throughout the festival, between events, for conversations about poetic textiles, historical poetry, reuse of textual materials, hand printing, and the project’s connections to contemporary experience.

Speakers

Alexis Fedorjaczenko

Alexis Fedorjaczenko writes poetry, essay, and in hybrid methods, and her visual work includes handcrafted poem objects, analogue and digital collage, and photography. Alexis holds a Master of Fine Arts degree (poetry and essay) from Western Connecticut State University and Master... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

10:15am PDT

Sylvia Plath: Radical New Directions

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

This panel will explore the life and work of the landmark Massachusetts poet Sylvia Plath through radical new critical approaches, including trans masculinity, intimate partner violence, motherhood, burnt and missing texts, and the metaphysics of place and location.

Speakers

Iris Jamahl Dunkle

Iris Jamahl Dunkle is a poet, biographer, and scholar. Her new book, Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb (University of California Press, 2024), is a USA Today bestseller, receiving national acclaim for its poignant exploration of Babb’s life and her fraught relationship... Read More →

Kelly McMasters

Kelly McMasters is an essayist, professor, mother, and former bookshop owner. She is the author of the Zibby Book Club pick The Leaving Season: A Memoir-in-Essays (WW Norton) and co-editor of the ABA national bestseller Wanting: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult). Her essays, reviews... Read More →

Emily M Van Duyne

Ash Trebisacci

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

10:15am PDT

Teen Track: Crafting session w/ Amy

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT

NAGLY

Join us for an hour-long, hands-on crafting session where we make bookmarks! In this workshop, you’ll pick your favorite thread colors and learn simple stitching techniques to create a unique keepsake. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned crafter, this session offers a fun, stress free environment to stitch and design your own creation. All materials will be provided- just bring your creativity!

Speakers

Amy Luo

Amy is a senior who loves everything related to the arts, believing it has the power to inspire change in the community. In total, she has performed in about 10 different plays and open mics. She has published a few poems and was a Youth Poet Laureate semifinalist. When shes not doing... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT
NAGLY 2 East India Square Mall #121, Salem, MA 01970

10:15am PDT

The Informal Formal: A Craft Reading

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

The Informal Formal: A Craft Reading explores new forms and how to determine a “right” form for the poem’s subject (even the “timeless” one.) Each of the readers will offer a selection of their work and discuss how the poems were shaped during the writing and revision process, with a focus on the “formal” choices made.

Speakers

Michael Mercurio

Director of Community Engagement, Faraday Publishing Company

"A poet, editor, and occasional critic, Michael Mercurio lives and writes in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts. His poems, interviews, and reviews have been published or are forthcoming in Palette Poetry, Thrush, The Common, Cream City Review, Sierra (the magazine of the... Read More →

Molly Akin

Molly Akin is a writer and nonprofit library director based on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Molly was a featured reader along with Jane Huffman and Diane Seuss during the 2024 Tell it Slant poetry festival hosted by the Emily Dickinson Museum. She has read in other venues including Wilder... Read More →

Desiree C. Bailey

Desiree C. Bailey is from Trinidad and Tobago, and Queens, NY. Her collection What Noise Against the Cane won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and was named one of the Best Books of 2021 by the New York Public Library. Desiree is also the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt... Read More →

Tatiana Johnson-Boria

Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in Poetry. As an educator, artist, facilitator, and mother; she uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, cultivate healing, and to explore... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 10:15am - 11:15am PDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

11:30am PDT

Filtering White Noise: Using Erasure and Blackout Poetry To Make Sense of It All

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Chapel

Speakers

Chad Parenteau

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Chapel 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

11:30am PDT

Goin’ Up Yonder: Religion in Black Poetics

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

For many in the Black American community, religion played a large role in our upbringing. Whether we maintain our beliefs into adulthood, embrace a new faith, or abandon religion altogether, we may reckon with or otherwise allude to how that cultural context informed our lives through poetry. Four writers will read poems that include imagery, diction, and other aspects of religion. Then they will discuss among themselves and with the audience how these influences appear in and drive their work.

Speakers

Matthew E. Henry

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of seven collections, most recently said the Frog to the scorpion (Harbor Editions, 2024). He’s editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, the creative nonfiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and an associate editor at Rise Up Review. The winner... Read More →

Sarah Kersey

Sarah Kersey (she/they) is a poet and x-ray technologist living in Boston. Her debut chapbook Residence Time is published with Newfound. They have received support from Tin House Workshop. In 2021, they were a finalist for the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship. Sarah's work has... Read More →

Porsha Olayiwola

porsha olayiwola is an individual world poetry slam champion and the author of the collection i shimmer sometimes, too. olayiwola served as the third poet laureate for the city of boston. she is a 2020 academy of american poets poet laureate fellow. olayiwola is the assistant professor... Read More →

Quinton Collins

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

11:30am PDT

Master Class in Reading Your Work Aloud

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

In the literary world today, writers often reach a wider audience through readings than through publication. Yet most writers are not trained to read their works aloud. Even well-known writers may read with either too little—or too much—expression. This master class/workshop provides a rare opportunity to discuss--and practice--what makes a good reading. Participants explore the wide range of successful reading styles. Each participant presents a poem or short passage of prose for feedback from the group, under the guidance of the instructor--an experienced reader, public speaker, regular NPR commentator, and teacher--and then works toward a livelier, more effective presentation, which often includes a deeper understanding of the work being read.

Speakers

Llyod Schwartz

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

11:30am PDT

Understories: Tapping Hidden Networks

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT

PEM - Morse Auditorium

What cues can poets take from the remarkable underground pathways ignited by trees, fungi, and other species? The poets, editors, and organizers on this panel will discuss how, working outside of established power structures in precarious times and spaces, we can connect with allies and advocates—and how these relationships affect the work itself. Literature has a Wood Wide Web, and we can tap it.

Speakers

Lesley Wheeler

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of six poetry collections, including Mycocosmic, new from Tupelo Press, and The State She’s In. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming. Her work has been supported by... Read More →

Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry... Read More →

Anna Maria Hong

Visiting Creative Writer, Ursinus College

Anna Maria Hong is the author of the poetry collections Age of Glass, winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition, and Fablesque, winner of Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize... Read More →

January Gill O'Neil

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
PEM - Morse Auditorium 161 Essex St Salem, MA 01970 USA

11:30am PDT

“On Being Ill:” The Challenges, and Opportunities, of Writing Chronic Illness

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

In the throes of illness, language can be elusive. As Virginia Woolf put it, “English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache.” And yet, as Emily Dickinson noted, “After great pain, a formal feeling comes –.” In this group reading, four writers living with migraine, mental illness, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and long Covid will share poetry engaging with the challenges—and opportunities—inherent in producing art both because of, and in spite of, chronic illness. Reflecting the myriad ways illness impacts body and mind, presenters will share lyric and narrative poetry as well as formally experimental and hybrid forms such as visual, concrete, found, erasure and prose poems culled from the archive as well as contemporary medical discourse. The work of several presenters also aims to expose, and interrogate, persistent and stereotypical attitudes toward those living with chronic, often invisible illnesses—especially women/women-identifying and BIPOC patients—that result in their pain and disability being minimized or discounted by the medical industrial complex. In addition to reading their work, presenters will discuss their writing processes and how they sustain a creative practice while living with chronic pain and/or disability. Presenters will explore not only the dis-ease of their wayward bodies and brains, but also the ways that the altered sensations, perception, cognition, and emotions of sickness can open new pathways for creative expression.

Speakers

Therese Gleason

Instructor, Clark University

Therese Gleason is author of three poetry chapbooks: Hemicrania (2024), about living with chronic migraine, selected for the Chestnut Review Chapbook Series; Matrilineal (Finishing Line, 2021), which received honorable mention for the 2022 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize from the New... Read More →

Maria S. Picone/수영

Maria S. Picone/수영 (mariaspicone.com; @mspicone) is a queer Korean American adoptee who has three chapbooks: Anti Asian Bias, Adoptee Song (forthcoming Game Over Books), This Tenuous Atmosphere (Conium). She has been published in Tahoma Literary Review, Reckoning, and others including... Read More →

Carolyn Oliver

Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre, 2024); Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022), winner of the Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry; and three chapbooks, including, most recently, Night Ocean (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023... Read More →

Ann E. Wallace

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

11:30am PDT

“We, the poets, grant you refuge:” How Palestinian Poetry Inspires Activism

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT

PEM - Groups Hub

Western Mass creatives inspire with a braided session of poetry, art making, and stories of activism. With a ceasefire cento woven from Palestinian poetry, lyric poems inspired by Jewish resistance, healing, and anti-Zionism, and the doves and cranes of PeaceBirds flying out of the Asian and Abrahamic traditions, we offer creative sustenance from and to those doing the messy, necessary work of change-making.

As they read poems of Palestinian poets and their own original work used in protest and advocacy, the poet/artist-activist facilitators will demonstrate how poetry CAN change hearts and minds. Throughout the session, participants will write lines of poetry that inspire them from the readings onto paper that they will learn how to fold into birds. All will leave inspired to take their own poetry into the public sphere and contribute to the work of peace, justice, and sustainability.

Speakers

Carolyn A. Cushing

Carolyn A. Cushing (she/her) is a lyric poet inspired by nature, observing our changing climate, and focused on where life and death meet. Carolyn has published poems in local, regional, and national journals, and was a finalist for the Providence Athenaeum’s Philbrick Poetry Award... Read More →

JuPong Lin

Program Director, Goddard College

JuPong Lin is an independent artist-scholar and cultural worker who dances with horseshoe crabs and makes ceremony with cranes. Her work is dedicated to hospicing the dying colonized world and using the arts and poetics to create futures of joyful interspecies co-becoming. JuPong’s... Read More →

Rachel Teferet

Rachel Teferet (Xe/They/She) is a Jewish antizionist activist and a creative writing MFA candidate at Lesley University currently working on multiple dark fantasy novels. Their work has been published by Subprimal Poetry Art, Zoetic Press' NonBinary Review, Page & Spine, Slink Chunk... Read More →

Mona Shiber

"A native New Orleanian, art infiltrated Mona Shiber’s childhood and senses. Architectural studies led her to a BFA & MFA in ceramic sculpture, emphasizing drawing and installations. Years forward, her studies expanded in: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Embodyoga, meditation... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm PDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

12:45pm PDT

Bad Classicist: Writers Who Push Back Against Myth

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT

PEM - Groups Hub

Each writer/artist on this panel reaches back into the worlds and stories of myth and folklore to interrogate these narratives' silences, harms, and omissions. We work with these materials, knowing full well that they have historically been used to reinforce oppressive systems of empire, patriarchy, whiteness, and misogyny. Rather than hold these stories up as unimpeachable or as a means of gatekeeping or control, we aim to create novel points of access into these stories as we claim agency as narrators & reinvent myths in our own ways.

Speakers

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn

Jen Jabaily-Blackburn is the author of the full-length collection Girl in a Bear Suit (Elixir Press, 2024) and the e-chapbook Disambiguation (Salamander/Suffolk University, 2024) She is the winner of the Louisa Solano Memorial Emerging Poet Award from Salamander, selected by Stephanie... Read More →

Shanta Lee

Shanta Lee is an award-winning writer across genres, a visual artist, and a public intellectual actively participating in the cultural discourse with work that is widely featured in Harper’s Magazine, the Poetry Foundation, The Massachusetts Review, Art New England, and anthologies... Read More →

Nina MacLaughlin

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of Wake, Siren (FSG), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Massachusetts Book Award, as well as Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice (Black Sparrow), winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. Her first book was the acclaimed memoir Hammer Head... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

12:45pm PDT

Lyricism and Everyday Life

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Chapel

Join four poets with recent books as they read poems on everyday life and finding beauty in the banal. Isabel Duarte-Gray (author of Even Shorn, Sarabande 2021), Tawanda Mulalu (author of Please Make Me Pretty, I Don’t Want To Die, Princeton University Press 2022), Amanda Gunn (author of Things I Didn’t Do with This Body, Copper Canyon Press 2023), and Jess Yuan (author of Slow Render, Airlie 2024) will read from their collections and share new work. This reading features a variety of perspectives and lived experiences, exploring the intersection of the mundane and the profound, the ordinary and the extraordinary. How can a lyric speaker’s individual life relate to the daily lives of others? How can we weave together the real and surreal in writing through everyday experiences? Join us in celebrating the beauty of commonplace and communal moments with four poets’ original voices, tender vulnerability, and fresh thinking.

Speakers

Amanda Gunn

Amanda Gunn’s debut poetry collection, Things I Didn’t Do with This Body, was published by Copper Canyon Press. She is the recipient of the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, and a Pushcart Prize, as well as fellowships from the Wallace Stegner... Read More →

Jess Yuan

Jess Yuan (she/her) is a poet and architect. She is the author of Slow Render (2024), winner of the Airlie Prize, and Threshold Amnesia (2020), winner of the Yemassee Chapbook Contest. Jess has received fellowships from Kundiman and Miami Writers Institute, and her poems appear in... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Chapel 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

12:45pm PDT

Poets in Conversation with Gender

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

Attacks at all levels of government and society continue to occur against LGBTQIA+ people, especially trans and gender nonconforming people with focus on people of color. We must stand up and speak out for ourselves, tell our stories, educate ourselves and others about intersectionality, and claim the full spectrum of our humanity. This presentation will be a safe space for people all along the gender spectrum.
This is a poetry reading and discussion from several well-published trans, queer, and nonbinary poets. Themes in their work include gender identity and transition, the joy of gender euphoria, the heartbreak of love and loss, memorializing the losses our community has faced, and building bridges between past and present. In this time of transphobia and fear, it is important to speak up in spaces like poetry festivals, where LGBTQ+ people and allies can connect and support one another.

Speakers

Steven Riel

Steven Riel (he/him) is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Fellow Odd Fellow and Edgemere. His chapbook Postcard from P-town was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The Minnesota... Read More →

Jendi Reiter

Editor in Chief, Winning Writers

Jendi Reiter (they/he) is the author of the novels Origin Story (Saddle Road Press, 2024) and Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018), and five poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Made Man (Little... Read More →

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them), is the author of five collections of poetry including, A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books, the Lambda Literary finalist, Transitory, 2023, winner of the BOA Editions, Ltd. Isabella Gardner Award for Poetry... Read More →

Lee Desrosier

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

12:45pm PDT

Writing Through Evolving Place

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

Many poets are drawn to write about place, including natural landscapes, distant homelands, and specific neighborhoods. What happens when a place is in flux, constantly changing? Or what if the poet’s relationship to place changes? Panelists Sonia Aggarwal, Mary Kovaleski Byrnes, Kiran Maharaj, and Heather Wright will discuss writing through evolving place. Our panelists will interrogate issues of how writing is shaped by and responds to place as it changes physically, through memory, or through found memory. They will consider the intricacies of how place is both destroyed and created through the physical world and the poet’s imagined world, what that means for the poet’s relationship to place, and how the poet locates themselves physically, imaginatively, and literally. Audience members will also be invited to contribute through discussion and questions. This panel will be moderated by Livia Meneghin.

Speakers

Livia Meneghin

Emerson College

Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of the chapbooks Honey in My Hair and feathering. She has won fellowships and awards from Breakwater Review, The Room Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, the Writers' Room of Boston, and elsewhere. Her writing has found homes in CV2, Gasher... Read More →

Sonia Aggarwal

Sonia Aggarwal is a Boston based poet with an MFA from Emerson College. She is interested in personal and cultural histories, and the moments in which the two intersect. Aggarwal is a previous Pushcart Prize nominee and has poems published in SWIMM, SoFloPoJo, Worcester Review, and... Read More →

Kiran Maharaj

Kiran is a poet and aspiring scientist from Cambridge; he received his MFA from Emerson College, and his BSc in Physics from FAU. His main writing research interests lie in the evolution of Ind-Caribbean English and poetics. His main scientific interests revolve around RV modelling... Read More →

Heather Wright

Heather Wright is a poet, essayist, and educator raised in the US South who now lives on the North Shore of Boston. She currently attends the MFA poetry program at Boston University with a deferred PhD acceptance to UMass Amherst fall ’25. She is a recent graduate of the English... Read More →

Mary Kovaleski Byrnes

Mary Kovaleski Byrnes is the author of So Long the Sky (2018, Platypus Press). Her work has appeared in Guernica, Meridian, Salamander, the Four Way Review, Best of the Net, and elsewhere. She teaches writing and literature at Emerson College, where she co-founded the EmersonWRITES... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 12:45pm - 1:45pm PDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

2:00pm PDT

Maiden, Mother, Crone: A Reading Celebrating 22 Years of MER - Mom Egg Review

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

A reading focused on the “ages and stages” of motherhood. Children go through changes, and mothers adapt to these while experiencing their own growth, evolution, and exigencies. The readers, all Massachusetts-based or New England poets who have been published in MER, will share their thoughtful, nuanced, and often surprising poems on the various stages of motherhood and women's lives.

Speakers

Marjorie Tesser

Marjorie Tesser is editor-in-chief of MER-Mom Egg Review. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, The Important Thing Is (Firewheel Chapbook Award winner) and The Magic Feather (FLP). Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in SWWIM, poets.org, Cutleaf, and others. Marjorie... Read More →

Cindy Veach

Cindy Veach is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Monster Galaxy (MoonPath Press); Her Kind (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Montaigne Medal; and Gloved Against Blood (CavanKerry Press) a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and a Massachusetts... Read More →

Kathleen Aguero

Kathleen Aguero’s latest book is World Happiness Index (Tiger Bark Books). She has published five volumes of poetry and edited three collections of multi-cultural literature for U of GA Press. She is also poetry faculty-at-large in the Solstice low-residency M.F.A. program at Lasell... Read More →

Nadia Arioli

Nadia Arioli’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net three times and for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Cider Press Review, Rust + Moth, As It Ought To Be, McNeese Review, Penn Review, Mom Egg, and elsewhere. Essays have been nominated for Best of the Net and the... Read More →

Jennifer Barber

Jennifer Barber is the author of the collections Rigging the Wind (2003), Given Away (2012), Works on Paper (2016), and The Sliding Boat Our Bodies Made (2022). She is co-editor, with Fred Marchant and Jessica Greenbaum, of the anthology Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems, and... Read More →

Carla Panciera

Carla Panciera’s poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals including Poetry, The New England Review, and RHINO. Her collection of short stories, Bewildered, received AWP’s Grace Paley Short Fiction Award in 2013 and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press... Read More →

Joan Kwon Glass

Joan Kwon Glass is the mixed-race, Korean diasporic author of DAUGHTER OF THREE GONE KINGDOMS (winner of the 2024 Perugia Press Poetry Prize) & NIGHT SWIM (winner of the 2022 Diode Editions Book Award), as well as the chapbooks HOW TO MAKE PANCAKES FOR A DEAD BOY (Harbor Editions... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

2:00pm PDT

Poe(sí)a: Spoken Word in Spanglish

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

Poe(sí)a is a multidisciplinary spoken word performance in Spanglish, immersing the audience in a journey of acceptance. Addressing themes of immigration, language & bilingualism, acculturation, and heritage through spoken word, vocal performance, and movement invites the audience to question their own experiences and mediums of expression. Alejandra is a Boston-based bilingual artist and educator from Mexico who works in the intersection of arts, education, and community engagement.

Speakers

Alejandra Ramos Gomez

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

2:00pm PDT

Poetics of Pop Culture and Humor

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

Four poets will share their approaches to poems with fresh and humorous takes on pop culture and modern life. Jess Yuan (Slow Render, Airlie 2024), Yena Purmasir (Viraha, Game Over Books 2022), Otto Vock, and Alejandro Lucero (Sapello Son, Bull City Press 2024) will read from their collections and share new work. These poets reflect a range of approaches in using poetic craft to illuminate the joys and messiness of living in the world today. In this reading, poets will explore how the art of lyric can be closely aligned with the art of humor. How can crafting a poem be like crafting a joke? How can a visceral poem hit hard like a punchline? What’s the best way to introduce Lady Gaga in a sonnet? This reading explores how our idea of poetics can be expanded by weaving together and borrowing language from the internet, movies, music, sports, advertising, and beyond. Join us for a reading with fresh perspectives, witty insights, and delightfully relatable poems!

Speakers

Jess Yuan

Alejandro Lucero

Alejandro Lucero’s chapbook, Sapello Son, was named the Editors’ Selection for the Frost Place Competition (Bull City Press, 2024). His latest work appears in Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, and Waxwing. He lives in Baltimore, where he is... Read More →

Yena Sharma Purmasir

Yena Sharma Purmasir is a poet and essayist from New York City. She is the author of Until I Learned What It Meant (Where Are You Press, 2013), When I’m Not There (self-published, 2016), OUR SYNONYMS: An Epic (Party Trick Press, 2022), and VIRAHA (Game Over Books, 2022). In 2020... Read More →

Otto Vock

Otto Vock is a Jewish Non-Binary poet and educator from Jersey City, NJ, now residing in Somerville. Their poetry work has previously appeared in The Offing, The Plum Creek Review, and in a self-published chapbook called A Boy Pulls Out His Rib and Uses it for Lipstick. They’re... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

2:00pm PDT

Teen Track: Coaching the Future: Building Youth Poetry Slam Teams

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

NAGLY

*For poet-educators/youth coaches/teachers looking to form a team/teaching artists looking to coach.

Join us for a workshop hosted by Mass Poetry’s Teen Spoken Word Coordinator Anthony Febo. This workshop will focus on a variety of teaching/coaching practices, warm up/circle up activities, an overall poetry club/and slam team curriculum building. This will also be an opportunity for anyone looking to form a poetry slam team for next year’s Write Here | Write Now | Speak Loud!

Speakers

Anthony Febo

Anthony Febo is a Puerto Rican poet, teaching artist, and new dad living in Arlington, MA. Febo has been performing and teaching poetry and theatre for over a decade in the greater Boston area. His ability and love of remixing different forms got him featured as part of WBUR's The... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
NAGLY 2 East India Square Mall #121, Salem, MA 01970

2:00pm PDT

Teen Track: When Bodies Speak in Verse

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

NAGLY

The mind has let most things go, the body has forgotten nothing. To make someone feel is to feel something yourself. In this workshop SW@MP members Voula Flessas will divulge what about writing and performance sets stages and crowds aflame.

Whether you are causing an uproar or bringing a room to silence, this workshop will zoom in on how poetry can be felt in the body as an audience member and writer. Bring the lines that make your stomach drop, make your skin tingle, make a truly lasting impact.

Speakers

Maria Zaki

Voula Flessas

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
NAGLY 2 East India Square Mall #121, Salem, MA 01970

2:00pm PDT

Watershed: Ecopoetry from the Gulf of Maine

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

PEM - Groups Hub

From Great White Shark to Jagged Ambush Bug, from Ladyslipper Orchid to Piping Plover, from Red Fox to Box Turtle, let’s celebrate the more-than-human beings we share New England’s shores, woods, and rivers with. The poems and being stories shared here are part of the forthcoming CAPE COD TO NOVA SCOTIA: ART, ECOLOGY, POETRY OF THE GULF OF MAINE (Storey Press, 2027) co-created by Samaa Abdurraqib, Elizabeth Bradfield, and Ian Ramsey. This “Feel Guide” will include work by Anne Sexton and Robert Lowell as well as newly-written poems by writers with ties to the region, such as Porsha Olayiwola, Chen Chen, Anna V. Q. Ross, and more. The Gulf of Maine includes cities like Boston and Portland, parks like the Cape Cod National Seashore and Acadia, and countless other wonders. Join us in a celebration of this beautiful ecoregion and the ways that poetry can give voice to the wonders of science and connection.

Speakers

Elizabeth Bradfield

Elizabeth Bradfield’s seven books include SOFAR, which includes poems that first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Sun, and Orion; Interpretive Work, which won the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry; Toward Antarctica; and the co-created Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology... Read More →

Samaa Abdurraqib

Samaa Abdurraqib lives in Wabanaki Territory (Maine), close to the ocean and the mountains. Recently, her work can be found in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora, Writing the Land: Streamlines, and Cider Press Review. She was a finalist for the 2022 Maine Writers... Read More →

Ian Ramsey

Ian Ramsey is the author of Hackable Animal, finalist for the Prism Climate Prize. His writing has been featured in Terrain.org, Orion, High Desert Journal, and many other journals, as well as in collections like The Gift of Animals, Writing for Peace, and Maine Voices. Based in Maine... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

2:00pm PDT

We The Gathered Heat: A Reading of Asian American & Pacific Islander Poets

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT

PEM - Morse Auditorium

To celebrate the recent release of the newest anthology, “We The Gathered Heat: Asian American and Pacific Islander Poetry, Performance, and Spoken Word (Haymarket Books, 2024),” this reading will highlight 7 contributors from the anthology who all have New England ties. This anthology, and this reading, will feature some of the brightest voices in contemporary American poetry who challenge, expand, and illuminate the meaning of the label “Asian American and Pacific Islander” in today’s world.

Too often, Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans are squeezed into the same story. The poets gathered here, and the lineages they represent, exceed this sameness. May this anthology, and reading, uplift complexities and incite transformation and joy.

Speakers

Joshua Nguyen

Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean (University of Wisconsin Press) and the author of the chapbooks, American Lục Bát for My Mother (Bull City Press) and Hidden Labor & The Naked Body (Sundress Publications). He is a Vietnamese American writer, a collegiate national poetry... Read More →

Giles Li

Giles Li has had a career in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors for more than 25 years. He also has been a poet, performer, and cultural organizer.

Juliana Chang

Juliana Chang is a Taiwanese American poet. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Chestnut Review, diode poetry journal, Best New Poets 2023, and other publications. Juliana's first full-length collection, So Long This Wound Stayed Open, was published... Read More →

Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum is a poet and performance artist in Rhode Island, where she serves as Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam. She is currently Writer-in-Residence for the Providence Commemoration Lab. She has received fellowships from Poetry Foundation, Kundiman, Rhode Island Foundation... Read More →

Matthew Olzmann

Matthew Olzmann is the author of Constellation Route as well as two previous collections of poetry: Mezzanines and Contradictions in the Design. A recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and the National Endowment for the Arts, Olzmann’s poems have appeared in the New... Read More →

Usman Hameedi

Mass Poetry Board

Usman Hameedi is a Pakistani-American scientist, poet, educator. He also serves on Mass Poetry’s Board of Directors. Since 2008, he has competed in and coached for collegiate, national, and international level poetry slams. Usman has been featured on The Huffington Post, Intima... Read More →

Franny Choi

Their books include The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On (Ecco, 2022), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019), and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014). Franny’s writing has appeared in the New York Times... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm PDT
PEM - Morse Auditorium 161 Essex St Salem, MA 01970 USA

3:15pm PDT

"Mining America's Slave Archives: The Intentional Work of Transhistorical Black Poetry"

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

In this revelatory conversation, two poets, and their poet interlocutor, explore the layered realities of slavery’s archives and what they tell us about the enslaved as well as a collective American history. From an inherited oral slave narrative and plantation ledgers to a compelling Reconstruction-era diary, this panel will address the tough historical realities of narrative control, archival silences, inherited trauma, and the present-day residue of institutional American slavery. Poets Artress Bethany White and Lauren Russell will share poems from their respective collections on the topic, A Black Doe in the Anthropocene: Poems (University Press of Kentucky, 2025) and Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020), while poet Nicole Terez Dutton author of If One of Us Should Fall (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), curates the conversational flow.

Speakers

Artress Bethany White

Artress Bethany White is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. Her third poetry collection, A Black Doe in the Anthropocene: Poems, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in spring 2025 and chronicles her family's history of enslavement in America. She is the recipient... Read More →

Lauren Russell

Lauren Russell is a poet and writer in hybrid forms. She is the author of A Window That Can Neither Open nor Close: Poems, Plots, Chance (Milkweed Editions, 2024); Descent (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2020), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s 2021 Anna Rabinowitz Award; and What’s... Read More →

nicole terez dutton

Nicole Terez Dutton's work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review and Salt Hill Journal. Nicole earned an MFA from Brown University and has received fellowships from the Frost Place, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Virginia... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

3:15pm PDT

Grief and Resilience: Poetry Navigating Loss

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

PEM - Groups Hub

This session brings together six poets from Massachusetts to reflect on the topic of grief and resilience. Each poet will consider a question related to the role that writing poetry has played in helping them either to share personal experiences of grief or the wider grief and brokenness in the world. They will also explore how generating poems may have helped them to move toward some degree of resilience, if not resolution or acceptance of a loss. Then each poet will read 2-3 of their poems to illustrate how their writing has amplified our understanding of grief.

We plan to structure the hour for our session as follows:
• The moderator will welcome the audience, briefly introduce the poets and the topic. (3 minutes)
• The poets will each speak for 7 minutes, combining reflections and reading their poems.
• The moderator will facilitate a 15-minute Q&A with the audience, directing questions to poets on the panel when needed.

At the beginning of the session handouts will be provided with the following questions that have been generated by the poets in this session. Each poet will choose one to respond to as a way of sharing their writing process and a few of their poems:

Poetic form: How have you used different poetic forms - such as a crown of sonnets or a villanelle, to name just two - to access fresh language and help you pry loose subject matter that can be hard to write about directly?

Unexpected themes and metaphors: The poets on this panel have each written about the loss of people close to them - be it a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a friend - or grief in relationship to someone who is still living. What particular themes or metaphors have emerged in your writing about loss that might not have occurred to you before you wrote these poems?

Speakers

Ann Bookman

Senior Fellow, McCormack Graduate School, University of Massachusets Boston

Ann Bookman, a recent Pushcart Prize nominee, has published poems in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Soul-Lit: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry, Chronogram, and Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose, among others. In 2012, she published a chapbook, Point of Attachment, with Finishing Line... Read More →

Wendy Drexler

Wendy Drexler is a recipient of a 2022 artist fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her fourth collection, Notes from the Column of Memory, was published by Terrapin Books in September 2022. Previous collections include Before There Was Before (Iris Press, 2017). Her... Read More →

Susan Donnelly

Susan Donnelly’s newest poetry collection is The Maureen Papers and Other Poems. Its title poem was 2019 co-winner of the Samuel Washington Allen Award from the New England Poetry Club. The author of Capture the Flag, Transit, Eve Names the Animals, and six chapbooks, she has published... Read More →

Oliver de la Paz

Steven Ratiner

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
PEM - Groups Hub 32 Derby Square Salem, MA 01970 USA

3:15pm PDT

Love is the Measure of Loss: Poetry of Grief

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

PEM - Morse Auditorium

Writing about grief can be a literary exorcism. The completed poem, or book, becomes a vessel, an alchemical object. Betrayal, illness, violence, loss, and the deaths of those both known and unknown to us don’t disappear. Instead, the grief lives outside the body in the poem, the shellac or dry ice that preserves what’s passed. Grief can be a trigger for re-examining our lived experiences, and writing about grief becomes a portal to self-discovery, a way to navigate after loss. This will be a conversation among poets familiar with the way poetry mitigates and transforms grief into something we can revisit, a monument, a cemetery, an ever-burning flame.

Speakers

Jennifer Martelli

Co-Poetry Editor, Mom Egg Review

Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Best of the Net Anthology, Braving the Body Anthology, Verse Daily... Read More →

Cindy Veach

Susan Rich

Susan Rich is the author of six collections of poetry and co-editor of two prose anthologies. Recent books include Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press) and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry). Along with Kelli Agodon, she co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript... Read More →

Quintin Collins

Assistant Director, Solstice MFA Program

Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, assistant director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program, and a poetry editor for Salamander. He is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival and Claim Tickets for Stolen People, selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal's... Read More →

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
PEM - Morse Auditorium 161 Essex St Salem, MA 01970 USA

3:15pm PDT

Revision Roulette

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Chapel

Revision is crucial to developing your best work, but many poets struggle with this aspect of their craft. In this session, through a variety of techniques for revising poems at the micro and macro level, we will remind poets that revision can be fun. Participants will choose techniques at random and try them out on their own work. Ideally, poets should bring double-spaced versions of 4 or 5 of their most troublesome poems, though some techniques will also work with electronic versions. Participants will leave with complete instructions for all the techniques covered for their own future use.

Speakers

Carla Panciera

KT Landon

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Chapel 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

3:15pm PDT

Science in Poetry | Poetry in Science

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

Physics, astronomy, biology, earth sciences, and poetry all strive to understand life's mysteries. Four prize-winning poets will read from their newest books and discuss the ways literary writers incorporate science theories in their work. The audience is invited to join the discussion! Handouts with writing prompts and resources will be provided.

Speakers

Jackie Craven

Jackie Craven is the author of WHISH, winner of the 2024 poetry award from Press 53. Other titles include Secret Formulas & Techniques of the Masters (Brick Road Poetry Press) and prize-winning chapbooks from Headmistress Press and Omnidawn. Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Alaska... Read More →

Barbara Ungar

Barbara Ungar is the author six books, most recently, After Naming the Animals, from The Word Works, which also published Immortal Medusa and Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life. Prior books include Save Our Ship, which won the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and The Origin... Read More →

Maggie Greaves

Maggie Greaves is a poetry scholar and poet from Atlanta, GA. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such magazines as North American Review, Literary Matters, Third Coast, and Spoon River Poetry Review, and she has been nominated for multiple Puschart Prizes. Her scholarship... Read More →

Sarah Giragosian

Sarah Giragosian is the author of Queer Fish, winner of the American Poetry Journal Book Prize and The Death Spiral. In 2023, the University of Akron Press released the craft anthology, Marbles on the Floor: How to Assemble a Book of Poems, which she co-edited. She also wrote Mother... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

3:15pm PDT

Surrealist Poetry in the 21st Century

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

"...a dictated thought with the absence of any control exercised by reason” André Breton (1896–1966) first manifesto of the Surrealist movement

While André Breton (1896–1966) initiated the Surrealist movement with his first Manifesto of Surrealism, surreal elements in poetry and writing techniques associated with this art movement have always been integral to poetry. Breton, as a writer, was influenced by Freud, with whom he worked briefly, and Freud’s theories of the unconscious. The movement ignited within the context of the aftermath of World War I, in response to the unprecedented scale of killing achieved through mechanized violence. The Surrealist plan and hope were radical: in a society that glorified reason, surrealist art would defamiliarize the status quo and thereby prompt people to question their values and incite social change. How does a poet break from the status quo they’ve inherited through their poetic tradition, let loose from self-censorship, and still write meaningfully from the cusp between wakefulness and sleep?

In our present moment of global climate change and violence, the poets on this panel share the Surrealists’ goals to contribute to a more in touch and sustainable humanity. Surrealist techniques include automatic writing, writing from constraints, trance poetics, synesthesia, collage, dream writing, and free association, and each of the panelists forefronts one or more these elements in their poetry. This event will consist of three components: a poetry reading by the panelists, an interactive discussion with the audience about Surrealist writing techniques, and a mini-workshop in which audience members will have the opportunity to experiment with surreal writing via prompts offered by the panelists.

Speakers

Shira Dentz

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (2nd edition, Astrophil Press), winner of the Paul Nassar Prize, and how do i net thee (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), a National Poetry Series Finalist, as well as two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Shira's poetry... Read More →

Joanna Fuhrman

Rutgers University

Joanna Fuhrman is an Assistant Teaching Professor in Creative Writing at Rutgers University and the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Data Mind (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2024). Fuhrman’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2023 and 2025, The... Read More →

Kevin McLellan

Kevin McLellan is the author of: Sky. Pond. Mouth. (winner of the 2024 Granite State Poetry Prize selected by Alexandria Peary); in other words you/ (winner of the 2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection selected by Timothy Liu); Ornitheology; Tributary; Round Trip and the book objects... Read More →

Jessica Cuello

Jessica Cuello’s most recent book is Yours, Creature (JackLeg Press, 2023). Her book Liar was selected by Dorianne Laux for The 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize. Cuello is the recipient of a 2023 NYSCA Artist Grant and is poetry editor at Tahoma Literary Review. She teaches French... Read More →

KPrevallet

Anne Elezabeth Pluto

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

3:15pm PDT

Teen Track: Verses in the Air Open Mic

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT

NAGLY

Come and let your voice be heard on our youth only open mic (ages 13-19). This open mic is here to inspire you—to remind you that your voice matters and that poetry is a powerful way to stand up for yourself and the things you care about. However you express it, your voice is needed, and we can't wait to hear it!

This open mic is a non-competitive opportunity to share your work, but if you just want to listen, come basque in the work of your peers! An open mic would not be an open mic without a supportive audience to snap, clap, cry and deeply sigh. We'll have a first come, first served sign up list for those who'd like to read, and Brave New Voices Team members Maria and Voula will serve as hosts to guide the experience.

Saturday May 31, 2025 3:15pm - 4:15pm PDT
NAGLY 2 East India Square Mall #121, Salem, MA 01970

4:30pm PDT

American Tyrant: Poetry in the Age of Democratic Fragility

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Large Room

As political rhetoric intensifies and actions threaten democratic norms, poets are uniquely positioned to illuminate the subtle yet serious dangers of authoritarianism. In this compelling reading and discussion, four poets explore poetry’s power in confronting the erosion of democracy, amplifying marginalized voices, and demanding vigilance.

Two panelists bring firsthand experience of living under or writing about authoritarian regimes, offering urgent perspectives on oppression and resistance. The others address the struggles of communities disproportionately affected by today’s political landscape in America, where systemic inequities and rising extremism pose real threats to civil liberties.

Through their poetry, these writers examine how language can expose and challenge power, serving as both a mirror to society and a force for advocacy. They will discuss poetry’s role in bearing witness, preserving truth, and mobilizing collective awareness in moments of democratic fragility.

This event invites audiences to consider how poetry not only documents history but also intervenes in it, reminding us that in times of crisis, poets are both chroniclers and catalysts for change.

Speakers

Enzo Silon Surin

Faraday Publishing Company

"Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born, award-winning poet, educator, publisher, and social advocate whose work amplifies marginalized voices and explores identity, democracy, and resilience. He is the author of American Scapegoat, When My Body Was a Clinched Fist (winner of the Massachusetts... Read More →

Suzanne Frischkorn

Suzanne Frischkorn is the author of four poetry collections including Whipsaw (Anhinga Press, 2024), as well as five chapbooks. She’s the recipient of The Writer’s Center Emerging Writers Fellowship for her book, Lit Windowpane, the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring... Read More →

Cortney Lamar Charleston

"Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of three poetry collections: It’s Important I Remember (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, 2026); Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021); and Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017), selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Large Room 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

4:30pm PDT

Small but Mighty - Creating & Submitting Chapbooks

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT

St. Peter's Church - Chapel

This workshop will go over what chapbooks are, why you might want to publish one, a variety of strategies for organizing a manuscript, and how and where to submit chapbooks for publication. Attendees can bring 3 poems from a potential manuscript or manuscript in-progress and we'll have time together to look at these in small groups and talk about your projects.

Speakers

Adrie Rose

Smith College

Adrie Rose lives next to an orchard in western MA and is the editor of Nine Syllables Press, a chapbook press at Smith College. Her work has previously appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Massachusetts Review, The Baltimore Review, Ploughshares blog, and more. Her chapbook I Will... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
St. Peter's Church - Chapel 24 St Peter St Salem, MA 01970 USA

4:30pm PDT

Teen Track: Teen Festival Showcase

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT

NAGLY

Earlier this year, Mass Poetry hosted its second annual Teen Spoken Word Festival—Write Here | Write Now | Speak Loud!—in collaboration with Emerson College. This showcase will feature three of the top-performing teams, who not only delivered powerful poetry but also embodied the spirit and values of the festival. Each team will share their work and reflect on their experience. The event will be hosted by one of the festival’s organizers, Anthony Febo, Mass Poetry’s Teen Spoken Word Coordinator.

Speakers

Anthony Febo

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
NAGLY 2 East India Square Mall #121, Salem, MA 01970

4:30pm PDT

The Night Office: Embracing the Creative Power of Darkness

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT

National Park Service - Auditorium

How does darkness influence our art, our prayer, our perspective? Given the explosion of artificial light over the past 150 years, how do we navigate the loss of darkness and what—exactly—are we losing? In this panel, we’ll explore ways to enrich our creative practices through mindful engagement with darkness, literal and metaphorical. We’ll also explore the profound effects artificial light has on the natural world. We hope to converse across theology, ecology, poetry and non-fiction, touching on such topics as winter solstice, via negativa, midnight prayer (‘the night office’), and the importance of the night sky.

Speakers

Hannah Larrabee

Hannah Larrabee's Wonder Tissue won the Airlie Press Prize. Her new chapbook, The Observable Universe, is out from Lily Press and was longlisted for a Massachusetts Book Award. Hannah wrote poetry for the NASA Webb Space Telescope program and she participated in the Arctic Circle... Read More →

Matthew E. Henry

Nina MacLaughlin

Carolyn Oliver

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
National Park Service - Auditorium 2 New Liberty St Salem, MA 01970 USA

4:30pm PDT

Ways of Be(long)ing

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT

Cinema Salem - Theater 1

Five diverse Barrow Street authors participate in a round robin reading of poems about the complexities of identity. What does it mean to identify as a woman, a gay man, an Asian American, or Latinx? How do our identities intersect with our poetry and each other? Our poems range from speculative feminist dystopian to queer philosophical investigations to the exploration of cultural borders to a Latinx lyrics to identity, violence, sexuality, and the power of witness. A discussion will ensue.

Speakers

Kevin McLellan

Pui Ying Wong

Pui Ying Wong’s recent book of poetry Fanling In October won the Barrow Street Editors Prize. She is also the author of three other poetry collections: The Feast, An Emigrant’s Winter and Yellow Plum Season along with two chapbooks: Sonnet For a New Country and Mementos. She has... Read More →

Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada is a Costa Rican-American poet and critic. His publications include poetry collections Brutal Companion (2024, Barrow Street Editors Prize) and Next Extinct Mammal (2011), chapbooks Jane/La Segua (2023) and Revelations (2018). As editor, he produced the award-winning... Read More →

Carrie Bennett

Boston University

Carrie Bennett is the author of four poetry books, most recently The Mouth Is Also a Compass, winner of the Barrow Street Poetry Prize. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches writing at Boston University. She is a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist... Read More →

Timothy Liu

Timothy Liu's latest books of poems are Down Low and Lowdown: Bedside Bottom-Feeder Blues and Luminous Debris: New & Selected Legerdemain (1992-2017), both out from Barrow Street Books. New work is forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Georgia Review and Ploughshares. He teaches... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 4:30pm - 5:30pm PDT
Cinema Salem - Theater 1 1 E India Square Mall, Salem, MA 01970 USA

9:00pm PDT

Poetry Slam (In partnership with the Boston Poetry Slam)

Saturday May 31, 2025 9:00pm - 11:00pm PDT

Die With Your Boots On

Four powerhouse teams will take the stage, sharing original work that speaks to their lives, their truths, and the world around them. Through poetry, these incredible writers will challenge, uplift, and move us—one verse at a time.

This is more than a competition—it’s a celebration of voice, vulnerability, and the power of spoken word. Whether you’re here to cheer, snap, or sit on the edge of your seat, one thing’s for sure: you’ll leave inspired.

Speakers

Myles Taylor

Producer, Boston Poetry Slam

Myles Taylor is a transmasculine writer, organizer, award-winning poetry slam competitor, food service worker, Capricorn-Aquarius cusp, and glitter enthusiast. They are the current Producer of the historic Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge. Their first full-length collection... Read More →

Saturday May 31, 2025 9:00pm - 11:00pm PDT
Die With Your Boots On 9 Church St, Salem, MA 01970