Last Sunday, poet Tom Sexton, in town for his 50th high school reunion last weekend, gave a poetry reading at the Mogan Cultural Center. About 50 people crowded into the Art Room of the Mogan Center to hear Tom read from his most recent book, A Clock with No Hands, a collection of the poems about Lowell that he has been writing for many years. Like Kerouac, Tom moved away from Lowell, but the city has remained one of his primary subjects. The reading was sponsored by the Lowell Poetry Network, which has really come of age. The main organizer of the event, poet Paula McCarron, met Tom when she was living in Alaska. Like him, she is a native of the area and returned several years ago. I’ve been to hundreds of poetry readings, and this one was one of the best because of the spirit in the room and the excellence of the writing. Tom connected with his core audience for these poems. You don’t have to be from Lowell to admire the work, but his writing about Lowell has a stronger resonance for people who have shared the experience of the place and the time and the characters brought forward in the poems. He has been writing those poems for us. And then sending them out to the world of readers, from Alaska to Japan, from Maine to Ireland. Tom is a former poet laureate of Alaska and two years ago received a Distinguished Alumni Award from Lowell High School. There ought to be an English course at Lowell High School in which students read the poems of Tom and so many other top-notch poets from the city who are writing today, including Michael Casey, Joe Donahue, Chath pierSath, Matt Miller, Hilary Holladay, Dave Robinson, and Kate Hanson.