Fred Woods is familiar to many of us who served in the Lowell revival campaign in the Roaring ’80s. He goes back earlier in Lowell as part of Team Tsongas during Paul’s runs for the U.S. House and Senate—and he was there for the presidential push in 1991-92. Although known…
One of our regular contributors, Chath pierSath, is back in Bolton, Mass., after several months in Cambodia. We have light snow today, but with the mild weather this past week Chath was out pruning on the farm where he works. He sent this poem about the seasonal work on the…
We have a new poem from Tom Sexton in Alaska, an avid reader of the blog and regular contributor. Tom’s Lowell poems will be published by Loom Press later this year in a collection titled Cummiskey Alley. Tom grew up in the city and now counts among his honors his selection…
Thanks to poet Joseph Donahue (Lowell/Duke University) and Tony Sampas, archivist at the UMass Lowell Libraries, we have another writer to introduce to our blog readers: William Reed Huntington (1838-1909). Born into a prominent Lowell family, William was the son of Hannah Hinckley and Elisha Huntington, a doctor who served…
We asked poet and writer Marie Louise St. Onge to share her story and thoughts about where she’s going with her writing. She sent us a summary of her experience to date and added her view of the challenge in front of every artist in the nation, even the world.—PM…
Chinese New Year was celebrated this past Saturday. And, when we think about it, what’s more American now than Chinese food? It’s everywhere, and most of us have enjoyed it. Frank Wagner brings us back to the table in this poem with his praise of a warming meal. Let us…
We’re re-introducing Marie Louise St. Onge to our readers. She grew up in Lowell’s Franco-American community and lives in Maine now. Marie Louise is a co-author of French Class: French Canadian-American Writings on Identity, Culture, and Place (Loom Press, 1999) and lead editor of Ad Hoc Monadnock: A Literary Anthology…
Our new contributor Frank Wagner from Texas has a poem about neighborhood destruction, a subject familiar to anyone in Lowell who knows what happened in the Market Street Greek-American enclave in the Acre in the 1930s, Little Canada in the 1960s, and the Hale-Howard district in the late ’60s/early ’70s.…
We’re sharing some poems by blog contributor Chath pierSath—from his travel diary in Cambodia where he has been for a few months. He often posts multiple times a day from cities and villages in his native country, composing spontaneously and documenting what he thinks and feels. His poems are raw,…
We have a new poem by Tom Sexton, an occasional contributor to this blog–and regular reader of what we post here. We had Linda Hoffman’s apple orchard essay this week. So, why not blackberries . . . and fire ants? Tom and his wife Sharyn live part of the year…