Office Hours With Boston's Poet Laureate

Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola will be hosting one-on-one office hours in the month of May!
Sign up here to schedule a time with her.

The Schedule for the 2018 Boston Poetry Marathon is Up

The Boston Poetry Marathon is a three day event, from August 10 to August 12, with over a hundred poets. I go on Saturday at 1:32 PM as part of a great block that includes friend Timothy Gager and Boston Poetry Laureate Danielle Legros Georges. That't's just a small fragment of the weekend lineup. Check it out the full schedule here.

Tonight There's A Party

Stone Soup Hosts Danielle Legros Georges tonight. There will be food and festivities. Please be in attendance early, as Boston's Poet Laureate goes on first.

December 21: And The Poet Laureate Comes to Stone Soup

On December, the Society of Urban Poets and Stone Soup Poetry (or as Neiel Israel put it during her recent feature, "Soup/Soup") will be holding a big holiday bash, and we're having Boston's  Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges kick off the festivities. This is going to be a tremendous night as we celebrate Stone Soup's amazing year and the friends who helped make it happen. And you get to hear an extended feature from Georges, who had an amazing year of her own as Poet Laureate. Let's start the holiday week and help end 2015 with the great style everyone at Stone Soup has been showing since the year began. IMPORTANT: Unlike previous weeks, the feature will go on first. Be at the event as close to seven o'clock p.m. as you can.

The Poet Laureate is Coming to Stone Soup

Photo by Priscilla Harmel.

Danielle Legros Georges Features on December 21.

It's a holiday party, and everyone is invited.
 

September 10: Come to The Emerge Arts Festival

The new Emerge Boston Arts Festival is a one-day celebration on September 10, 2015 of local arts and culture showcasing regional and national talent all in the setting of Boston’s architecturally iconic City Hall. Emerge Boston will feature visual art, video art, music, dance, poetry, and performance art. The evening will kick off with the awarding of the Fay Chandler Emerging Artist Awards and the opening of the accompanying exhibition. It continues with an exciting performance line up: singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell, City of Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges hosting S.O.U. P. aka Society of Urban Poetry, Percussionist and founder of Kadence Arts Maria Finkelmeier, and a sneak peek at Daniel Beaty's new play Mr. Joy. In addition, local working artist/vendors will be selling their works including jewelry, prints, ceramics.

The juried exhibition in City Hall will run for the entire month with 30 works of art from Boston’s emerging artists. 2015 is the inaugural year of the Fay Chandler Award for emerging artists, in loving memory of the artist and philanthropist with support from the Chandler Family. Daniel Beaty’s work Mr. Joy is part of his play cycle reflecting on transforming pain into power, featuring actress Tangela Large, which debuts at Arts Emerson on September 22nd.

Everyone is invited to this new free festival on Thursday September 10 from 5:00 to 10:30 pm at Boston City Hall.

WCW Twists

On Saturday I attended a workshop hosted by Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges. It was great to be introduced to new poets and meet up with friends like DiDi Delgado and Navah The Buddaphliii. 

On top of all that, I got to goof around in class.

Readers of this blog will know I have a penchant for aping William Carlos Williams. It's good practice as a poet, and once in a while I even get my bizarre  homages published. Sometimes I look at a poem, often a poem that's long, and I'll see if I can shorten it down to red wheelbarrow size. Below are three such poems I wrote during the workshop, each titled after the workshop attendees whose poems inspired me.


For Martin Rodriguez

so much depends
upon

a ginger
aryan

placed in tape
border

beside the white
heroin.


For Ellen Zellner

this house depends
upon

dad's voice of
ether

tiles of corn 
flower

between inside
barriers.


For Lynne Vitti

so much depends
upon

a long black
luger

gazed on strong 
suitor

behind the fire
station.

Two Saturdays from Now: Danielle Legros Georges Teaches a FREE Poetry Workshop

The last workshop of this summer with the new Boston Poet Laureate will be taking place at the Honan-Allston Branch of the Boston Public Library on August 8, 2-4 PM.

Danielle Legros Georges was appointed Boston’s Poet Laureate by Mayor Martin J. Walsh in December 2014 and teaches at Lesley University in the Creative Arts and Learning Division. She is the author of Maroon, a book of poems, and her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies. Her essays, interviews, poems, and reviews have appeared in publications including The American Poetry Review, The Boston Globe, Callaloo, Consequence, Salamander, spoKe, Solstice, Transition, World Literature Today, and the Women’s Review of Books. A resident of Dorchester, she was born in Haiti, has lived in Boston’s Haitian community of Mattapan, Chicago and New York, and has travelled to various parts of the world.

New Notification from The Poet Laureate

I'm excited about seeing a notice come through my email like this from the Poet Laureate's office.

Congratulations to Boston's New Poet Laureate

Congratulations Danielle Legros Georges.

Find out more about the poet via Boston Magazine.

It's important for me to document this news here, due to there being (as others have pointed out) a lack of online archived material on this position.  Not to mention the Cambridge Poet Populist, a position which has been around a little longer than the Poet Laureate but suffers from the same problem.

These are such new positions in this age of digital information, with only two Boston Poet Laureates and four Cambrige Poet Populists in history.  To have such poor documentation outside of blog entrie from stalwart scenesters like Doug Holder is inexcusable and will hopefully be corrected while it still can.