Keynote, Many Voices, Many American Poetries Festival.

Keynote Address

October 13, 2023 |  5:00 p.m.
Watson Fine Arts – Weber Theatre

Oliver de la Paz opens the festival with a keynote address, “Apologia for the Tumbleweed: Some Thoughts on Poetry, Deserts, and Diaspora.”

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 Diaspora Sonnets, The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the  New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), the Artist’s Trust of Washington, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU.