Mass Poetry supports poets and poetry in Massachusetts. We help to broaden the audience of poetry readers, bring poetry to readers of all ages, and transform people’s lives through inspiring verse. We produce the Commonwealth's Student Day of Poetry program and the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and now we want to take poetry to YOU, and the millions of citizens riding the T everyday.
Our April pilot of Poetry on the T was a hit. Now we want to fund a full summer of Poetry on the T, to enrich the commutes of the millions of citizens who ride the T every day, and to show potential large, long-term sponsors that Boston wants Poetry on the T! Each poem poster on the T includes a tear-off, so that riders can take the poem home.
$50 places one poem in one T car for an entire month. $150 keeps it there all summer.
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*Donors of $50 or more can nominate a poem to appear on the T this summer by sending a nomination to nominations@masspoetry.org. Please make sure to include your full name as it was entered with your donation.
**Super Writing Fun Time with Jill McDonough
Freewriting is an old trick: set a timer, write whatever comes into your head, and sift through it for gold. This workshop will be built around freewriting—excavations of your subconscious and conscious thoughts—to spark and develop detailed assignments for longer, more polished work. We will work together to construct these assignments, to help you get at what you want to write, your style, your voice, and the form that best expresses those. Individualized assignments will help you combine and expand your freewrites into poems you can be proud of.
***Reading Your Own Work Aloud with Lloyd Schwartz
In the literary world today, writers often reach a wider audience through readings and live performances than through publication. Yet most writers are not trained to read their works aloud. Even well known writers may read mechanically, monotonously, with too little—or too much—expression. In this workshop, participants discuss what makes a good reading and explore the wide range of successful reading styles. They each read one of their own poems or a passage of prose as if they were giving a public presentation, then get feedback from the class under the guidance of the instructor (who is an experienced actor, director, and radio commentator as well as a poet and Pulitzer Prize-winning critic). The students “work through” to a livelier, more effective reading as they deepen their understanding of their own work.
****Jeffrey Levine's workshop
This gathering/mini-workshop for up to 10 poets combines secrets of the publishing world with effective methods of revision for publication, including attentive and detailed review of your own work. Whether you’re heading toward a full-length manuscript, preparing individual poems for submission to literary journals, or wanting to push your writing to a new level simply for the pleasure of doing so, here is your opportunity to better understand what editors and publishers want, and to help you get your poems to that new place.
