Worcester Poet Laureate

Hey Norwood, MA! I'll be in your neighborhood today, Tuesday April 23rd! I hope you can swing by the Morrill Memorial Library for a 7PM reading in the Simony Room!

Hi Friends. I'll be reading at the Los Angeles Times Festival of the Book this Sunday at 10:40AM. I'll be on the Poetry Stage and so will a host of exceptional poets. I hope to see you there!

'Enthralling': WSU professor and poet Heather Treseler wins May Sarton poetry prize "Enthralling"— Worcester State University professor and poet Heather Treseler wins prestigious May Sarton Poetry Prize

Poet Nathan McClain will be reading at the College of the Holy Cross on Thursday, April 18th, at 7:30PM.

The event will take place in the Booth Media Lab, Prior Performing Arts Center and is free and open to the public.

Nathan McClain is a poet, editor, and educator who lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author of Scale (Four Way Books, 2017) and Previously Owned (Four Way Books, 2022), and his poems and prose have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in Poetry Northwest, Green Mountains
Review,The Rumpus, Poem-a-Day, The Common, The Critical Flame, and upstreet, among other publications. Previously Owned, his most recent collection of poetry, will be available for purchase at the reading.

McClain teaches both creative writing and African American literary arts at Hampshire College and also serves as poetry editor of the Massachusetts Review.

Nathan McClain's visit, the final event in the 2024-25 Working Writers Series, is sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and Africana Studies. We look forward to seeing you there.

I will be teaching a generative workshop at the Worcester Public Library on April 27th from 2pm - 4pm. Register here:

Generative Poetry Workshop: The Poetic Obsession Through a series of prompts, exercises, and examples Worcester Poet Laureate, Oliver de la Paz, will demonstrate ways writers can reinvigorate their own writing by looking closer at singular obsessions. Our job, out of all this, will be simple. Our plan will be to find the secret door to our experie...

In honor of National Poetry Month and April Showers, the Worcester County Poetry Association is accepting submissions through April 30th for the Rain Poetry project.

This year is bigger than before! We're opening up FOUR additional age brackets to include Worcester's students:

Grades K-2

Grades 3-5

Grades 6-8

Grades 9-12

Three poems from each of these brackets will be selected and the poems painted at the chosen poets' schools in June before school is out!

Send up to two poems of 50 words or fewer to:

[email protected]

that tell us what it's like to Walk the Woo in your shoes.

Join me and other MA Poet Laureates for a reading and discussion this afternoon (April 6) at 2PM, hosted by the Brockton Public Library.

Here are my events for April 2024 with support from Worcester Cultural Coalition, The Academy of American Poets, and the Mellon Foundation.

FYI! Let’s cheer on our poets!

https://ew.com/taylor-swift-distantly-related-fellow-poet-emily-dickinson-8603783 #:~:text=The%20pair%20are%20sixth%20cousins,%2C%E2%80%9D%20Ancestry%20shared%20with%20TODAY.

Taylor Swift is distantly related to fellow tortured poet Emily Dickinson Tortured Poets unite! It turns out that Taylor Swift is distantly related to 19th century poet, Emily Dickinson.

Corrected! I left out a reading for the YMCA of Central NY on February 2nd.

My events for the new year. I hope to see you on this journey.

I’m ready.

Hey friends, in about an hour I'll be live podcasting for DVAN: Diasporic Vietnamese Artist Network this evening with Pulitzer Prize winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen and LA based podcaster and producer of The Vietnamese Podcast, Kenneth Nguyen.

Here's the link via Eventbrite:

ÁCCENTED #33 | Poetry & Podcasts: Weaving the Southeast Asian Tapestry ÁCCENTED #33 | Poetry & Podcasts: Weaving the Southeast Asian Tapestry

I'm excited to read with Rita Mookerjee at TidePool Bookshop tonight (December 7th) at 7PM where we will be reading from our new books. We'd love to see you at this remarkable independent community bookstore!

The Poetry of Oliver de la Paz and Rita Mookerjee | TidePool BookShop The Diaspora Sonnets by Oliver de la Paz Long-listed for the National Book Award in Poetry Winner of the New England Award for Poetry

Attention Worcester folks! I'll be reading this Thursday, December 7th at 7PM with Rita Mookerjee at TidePool Bookshop in Worcester, MA.

We will be celebrating our new books and we hope that you all can make it and do some Christmas shopping at a fantastic local and independent bookstore!

The Poetry of Oliver de la Paz and Rita Mookerjee | TidePool BookShop The Diaspora Sonnets by Oliver de la Paz Long-listed for the National Book Award in Poetry Winner of the New England Award for Poetry

Happy to be mentioned along with friends who wrote incredible books. Cheers!

Electric Lit's Best Poetry Collections of 2023 - Electric Literature Gabrielle Bates, Sam Sax, Sally Wen Mao, and Edgar Kunz highlight a year of celebrated poetry collections

Happy to share a profile about me that appears in this Sunday's The Boston Globe. Thanks to Cheryl Clark Vermeulen for chatting with me!

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/11/20/arts/oliver-de-la-paz-community-is-built-sonnets-verse/

Deadline Extended!

Deadline Extended!!!

I'll be at the Miami Book Fair celebrating with my fellow National Book Award nominees. Details are in the link:

CELEBRATING THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEES FOR POETRY - Miami Book Fair A special event with OLIVER DE LA PAZ, The Diaspora Sonnets; ANNELYSE GELMAN, Vexations; JOSÉ OLIVAREZ, Promises of Gold; PAISLEY REKDAL, West: A Translation; CHARIF SHANAHAN, Trace Evidence: Poems; EVIE SHOCKLEY, suddenly we; and MONICA YOUN, From From: Poems; moderating is RUTH DICKEY, ... Read M...

Thrilled to be chatting with Paisley Rekdal at Portland’s Brunish Theater this Saturday at 3:30pm for the Portland Book Festival.

I’ll be teaching a class on the sonnet for the Hudson Valley Writers Center this Sunday. Come join us! October 22, 1:30-3:30pm.

Hey Worcester! I’ll be reading this Thursday with Daniel Johnson in The White Room for Bedlam Book Cafe at 6pm. Can’t wait to chat with you! Worcester County Poetry Association

One more for the weekend! I’ll be reading today at the Brattleboro Literary Festival at 2:30PM with the great Baron Wormser.

I hope to see you at 118 Elliot!

See you at 2pm today!

Tonight!

I’ll be reading this Saturday with Diannely Antigua as a headliner for the Boston Book Festival at 2pm. There will be a Q&A with Danielle Jones afterwards. I hope to see you at the goethe-institut boston!