Febo: Choosing Joy I met Anthony Febo or Febo, as he is known professionally, (“Yes, it’s very Bono, Madonna, Seal of me,” he said when I asked his preference for a name in this update about his work.)—well, I met Febo in Lowell, Mass., when performance poetry/slam poetry/spoken word was…
Jacquelyn Malone: New Poems, Broadside Contest Winner The first time I read Jacquelyn Malone’s name, it was on a list of writers who had been awarded a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. That was around 1990, I think. She was listed as a Lowell resident who had won…
Kate Hanson Foster: NEA Fellowship, New Book Completed, & More We caught up to a busy Kate Hanson Foster on the Groton frontier, where she lives with her husband, Bert, and their three children. She reports that the garden is pulled up and they just stacked a cord of wood…
Dave Robinson: Writer-in-Residence, Portugal Checking in with writer, poet, and multifarious arts guy Dave Robinson, we learned that he’s back from a Writer-in-Residence gig at Cultívamos Cultura in São Luis, Portugal. He was at the arts center in a dual role with his wife and creative partner, Anna Isaak-Ross, an…
Tom Sexton sent us a new poem from his outpost on the edge of northeast Maine. He and his wife Sharyn split their time between Maine and Alaska. Our readers will recognize Tom’s name from past contributions to this blog. He drops back in to Lowell when he’s on the…
Helena Minton: Recent Book, New Poems, & Frost Foundation Work I’ve known Helena Minton since the 1980s, when she was publishing with Alice James Books, a collective effort to bring out the best new poetry, particularly by women writers. Her book The Canal Bed (1985) includes a long poem centered…
Here’s another in my series of updates on active writers with a local/regional connection. I can see Exeter, N.H., from my house on a hill in Amesbury, so Matt W Miller is close by. Readers of this blog may know him from his Lowell days growing up and during high…
I am introducing a new writer to our blog readers. He’s not new to writing, but we haven’t featured his work here before. I met Mike McCormick through Tom Sexton, one of our regular far-flung contributors who is a mutual friend. That would be Tom Sexton, the poet and retired…
We have a brand new poem by Tom Sexton, our far-flung contributor and faithful reader who is in Alaska this time of year. Tom, as many of our readers know, is the author of several books of poetry including “A Ladder of Cranes” (Univ. of Alaska Press, 2015) and “Bridge…
For John Dolan By Michael Casey I talked to friend Dorothy Morganti In the office why I was out for a couple days it was to clear out the apartment of my cousin John Dolan who’d died at the Lowell General he lived in the senior citizens place across the street…