Contact: Meg Smith, festival organizer, 978-996-6592 megsmithwriter675@gmail.com Poe in Lowell festival to honor Edgar Allan Poe’s visits to Lowell Lowell, Massachusetts – A new festival will celebrate Edgar Allan Poe’s three visits to Lowell, with art exhibits, spoken word readings of poetry and short stories by Poe, dance performances inspired…
We have a new poem from one of our far-flung contributors, Tom Sexton in Alaska. Tom is a former Poet Laureate of Alaska and a permanent member of the Lowell High School Alumni Hall of Fame. The photographs below are by Kevin Harkins, made a few years ago when Tom…
The Old Worthen by Richard Marion (litho print, ink drawing with watercolor, c. 1975, reprinted with permission of the artist). . Old Worthen Christmas . The good way Dan turned his head and dropped three nickels into the bent tambourine of the Salvation Army-man between sips of twenty-five-cent draft and…
Bone in the Throat (March 2021) By Paul Marion Web photo courtesy of CNBC . The vast container ship Ever Given from Malaysia, Bound for the Netherlands, stuck like a bone in the Throat of the Suez Canal, reminded me of dozens or A hundred random trailer trucks wedged under…
My friend, teacher, and co-conspirator in Lowell things Charles Nikitopoulos passed away in 2019. He loved poetry and had a long shelf of skinny poetry books at home. He wrote poems when the spirit moved him. He was also a committed gardener with flowers and vegetables in a home garden…
Opening Day, Eagle River, Alaska By Mike McCormick Stepping into the bracing air, I yank on my gloves and stride across snow filled ruts that gleam like fresh baselines in the narrow strip of dirt driveway. Hundreds of red capped birds chatter like anxious fans as I duck into my…
SCHEDULE NOTE. I’ll be reading poems in the famous Moses Greeley Parker Lectures series on Saturday, April 29, AT 12 NOON (NOT 2 PM), at the Pollard Memorial Library, 401 Merrimack St, next to Lowell City Hall. The menu will include oldies and new work from books like “Union River”…
Our far-flung contributor Jim Provencher in Australia sent us a poem in response to my essay about hometown baseball from a few days ago (“Organized Ball”). Jim spent youthful days in Portland, Maine, playing Babe Ruth League, high school, and American Legion baseball. Here’s what he told us: “It’s weird,…
Tom Sexton, a frequent contributor to this blog, sent us a new poem that he worked on for some time. The length of a poem doesn’t guarantee that the composition was written swiftly. In the title, Yellowhead is the Yellowhead Highway, a main route in Western Canada. I like the…
The imagery of this poem by Frank Wagner is grim but it ends on an uplifting note. It also echoes an emerging movement in burial practice: Natural Organic Reduction, also known as human composting. It’s an option in six states and there’s a bill pending in the state legislature to…