Poetry Out Loud is a national recitation contest that celebrates the power of the spoken word and a mastery of public speaking skills while cultivating self-confidence and an appreciation of students’ literary heritage as they take poetry from the page to the stage. Poetry Out Loud has inspired hundreds of thousands of high school students to discover and appreciate both classic and contemporary poetry.

Oliver de la Paz will be one of the judges for the competition at the Hopkinton Center for the Arts, 98 Hayden Rowe St #2508, Hopkinton, MA 01748.

The event begins at 1PM.

UNLV’s Beverly Rogers Literature and Law Building: Room 101

4505 S. Maryland Pkwy. Las Vegas, NV 89154

March 5, 7:00PM.

Join BMI for a reading and conversation with poet Oliver de la Paz, author of The Diaspora Sonnets, with 2024-25 Shearing Fellow Monica Macansantos. 

Oliver de la Paz is the author and editor of several books and serves as the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA. His latest collection of poetry, The Diaspora Sonnets, was published by Liveright Press (2023). It was a winner of the 2023 New England Book Award and was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award. A founding member of Kundiman, he teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.

Monica Macansantos holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD from the International Institute of Modern Letters at the Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author of the forthcoming essay collection Returning to My Father’s Kitchen, and the story collection Love and Other Rituals. Her work has been recognized as Notable in the Best American Essays 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2016. She has received fellowships from Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the I-Park Foundation, and others.

This event is part of the Kwentuhan at Chikahan – Las Vegas Filipino Book Club series. The goal of the Club is to read and respond to the works of critically acclaimed Filipino authors, towards finding meaning in everyday struggles and triumphs.

Parking/getting there: Parking on UNLV’s campus is free and open to all after 7pm; “reserved” parking spots are enforced 24 hours a day, but you may park in any “staff,” “student,” or paid spots. To find the Rogers Literature & Law Building, please turn onto East Harmon Ave and take it as far as you can into campus. We encourage you to park in Lot I or Lot J as they’re closest to our building. 

Poets of the Public: New England Poet Laureates

Just what does a Poet Laureate do? You have questions and we have answers! Two poets from New England, Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua, will share their poetic work as well as discuss the programs they implemented for their own communities. They will also discuss how they became Poet Laureates, what kinds of opportunities are available through their positions, as well as what sort of pitfalls are present in navigating the role of public poet.

Open Mic Night

Open mic night hosted by poets Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua.
Bring your poems to Emily Dickinson’s garden! Readers will have 5 minutes each to make us feel “physically as if the top of [our] head[s] were taken off!” (Emily Dickinson to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 16 August 1870) Featured poets Oliver de la Paz and Diannely Antigua will follow the open mic. Open mic sign-ups are handled in advance via a Google Form, and selected readers will be notified. All readers must be available to read in-person and must register for the Festival to be considered. 

Poetry Masterclass: Haunted Works/Haunted Words

From invention to revision, this generative workshop will attend to the possibilities of creating new work that is in-tune with a subject that haunts you. We will be looking at how to write and sustain work within a singular focus, obsession, or motif. This workshop introduces poems and works paired with exercises that allow the writer to be haunted by a subject, inviting writers to seek new possibilities, and perhaps provide outlets to future projects and poems. We’ll explore models of poems and hybrid works by authors that find themselves, suddenly facing the ghosts that visit them frequently. Ultimately, we will look to lines from Dickinson that declare:

One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors Surpassing
Material Place—

Click Here to Register for the Festival

The reading will take place in the historic walled gardens of Keeler Tavern Museum in Ridgefield, CT. The garden and garden house were designed by architect Cass Gilbert, who also designed the U.S. Supreme Court Building in D.C. and Woolworth Tower in NYC. 

Nine Worcester County poets will read their musings. Sponsored by the Worcester County Poetry Association.

Poets, like painters, try to capture experience and place it on the page.  Imagine Van Gogh painting--trying to capture the explosions in the stars for his Starry Night. Now imagine the poet's attempt at capturing the essence of a lived moment. It can be daunting and can pursue the poet during every moment away from the page.  There is no failing this moment.  For, the pursuit of reliving the moment is only as good as the moment you face the page . . . or rather, only as good as the moments you're willing to face the page.  And so we come to the essence of this workshop.  The poetic obsession's purpose is to take you back to a life lived and translate the lived life into the imagined life.  Our job, out of all this, will be simple.  Our plan will be to find the secret door to our experience and open it.  Perhaps it's a door you've passed everyday and were afraid to open.  Perhaps it's an empty storefront you've seen as you've driven through your neighborhood.  Yet you've imagined yourself opening that door.  You've seen yourself taking a step and walking in and that image of yourself in relation to that door has obsessed you.  We will not be looking for ways out, but for ways in. Through a series of prompts, exercises, and examples I will demonstrate ways writers can reinvigorate their own writing by looking closer at singular obsessions.

KGB Bar and Zoom.

Hosted by Leah Umansky. More information TBA.

A reading at the Fitchburg Public Library. Fitchburg, MA.

6:30PM.

A reading at the Morrill Memorial Library.

7:00PM

Zoom Reading with Sandy Marchetti.

April 10, 6:30PM. Zoom link forthcoming with pre-registration.

An afternoon of conversation with local and New England Poet Laureates.

Poetry reading followed by Q & A with Prof. Mark Walsh.

A discussion of Asian American poets for the Connecticut Poetry Society.

Oliver will read in Rehm Library in the Smith Building at the College of the Holy Cross.

Thursday, February 15th, at 7:30PM.

Books will be available through Bedlam Bookstore.

YMCA of Central NY Reading via Zoom. Links forthcoming.

7:00PM EST

Theme: Family

Hosted by Julia Dasbach and sponsored by Denison University.

Seen, Sound, Scribe

Lincoln Center’s inaugural poet-in-residence Mahogany L. Browne continues her Seen, Sound, Scribe series, curating thought-provoking and often politically driven evenings of spoken word, spirited conversation, and presentations of new work. The January 20 iteration features recitation and interviews with the poet and NEA and Cave Canem Fellow Nicole Sealey (Ordinary Beast, The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named) discussing her latest collection, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure; followed by poet Oliver de la Paz, who will be reading from his National Book Award Longlisted collection, The Diaspora Sonnets. DJ Jive Poetic returns for the series, bringing the jams throughout the evening.

Via Zoom with Joan A.W. Kimball

2:30PM - 4:00PM

Zoom Link to be provided

The bimonthly Powow River Poets Readings Series, started in 1992, is free and open to the public, and includes an Open Mic. Poetry enthusiasts are urged to attend. Most readings are held on the second Saturday of the month at 3:00 p.m. at the Newburyport Public Library, 94 State Street in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Past readings have featured such eminent poets as former NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, X.J. Kennedy, Alicia Stallings, David Ferry, Robert Shaw, and talented newcomers like Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize recipient Rose Kelleher. 

Recent invited poets included New Criterion Award winner Dan Brown, poet and translator Rachel Hadas, magazine editors and award-winning poets David Yezzi and Joseph Bottum. Other Powow readers include Catherine Tufariello, Josh Mehigan, Mimi White, Catherine Chandler, Ernie Hilbert, Rick Mullin, Nick Balbo, Annie Finch, and other fine poets and friends of the formalist tradition.

The Open Mic is limited to ten poets, so come early to the library to sign up. The time limit is one poem up to two minutes. Please time your reading when you rehearse.   We look forward to hearing your work.

Come hear Oliver and Rita read from their new poetry collections at an exquisite local independent bookstore!

Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. In 2020, she was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Kingston, Jamaica. She is the author of False Offering, (JackLeg 2023). Her poems can be found in CALYX, Copper Nickel, New Orleans Review, the Offing, and Poet Lore. She serves as an editor at Split Lip Magazine, Sundress Publications, and Honey Literary.'

Past & Present: Oliver de la Paz & Paisley Rekdal

Portland’s Brunish Theatre

CONCORD FESTIVAL OF AUTHORS

Panel:

Accounting the Migration Experience and America’s Inequities: Oliver de la Paz and Jill McDonough

3:00PM

CFPL Goodwin Forum

Register here