NEPC Board of Directors


Board Members

Co-Presidents: Denise Provost and Doug Holder
Vice President: Hilary Sallick
Treasurer: Joy Martin
Membership Chair: Linda Haviland Conte
Programming Chairs: Wendy Drexler and David P. Miller
Communications Chair: Lynne Viti
Special Advisor: Stephen Honig
Newsletter Editor: Elizabeth Lund
Nidia Hernández
Mary Buchinger
Carmellite Chamblin
Charles Coe
Danielle Legros Georges
Regie O’Hare Gibson
Jean Dany Joachim
Lloyd Schwartz
Denise Washington

NEPC Historian

Sarah-Jane Burton


New England Poetry Club Board of Director with Afaa Weaver
Linda Haviland Conte, Wendy Drexler, Mary Buchinger, Hilary Sallick.

Board Member

Mary Buchinger

Mary Buchinger is the author of six collections of poetry: Navigating the Reach (2023, Salmon Poetry), Virology (2022, Lily Poetry Review Books), / klaʊdz / (2021, Lily Poetry Review Books), einfühlung/in feeling (2018, Main Street Rag), Aerialist (2015, Gold Wake), Roomful of Sparrows (2008, Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, Boston Globe, Gargoyle, Hollins Critic, Nimrod, PANK, phoebe, Plume, Salamander, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, The Massachusetts Review, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and elsewhere; she’s read at the Library of Congress and internationally, and has received numerous awards as well as multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. One of her poems is permanently installed in Cambridge, where she lives and served as Poetry Ambassador. Buchinger (Bodwell) volunteered in the Peace Corps in Ecuador and holds a doctorate in linguistics from Boston University; she is professor of English and communication studies at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Boston. Website: http://www.marybuchinger.com

Board Member

Carmellite Chamblin

Board Member

Charles Coe

Charles Coe is a poet, writer, and musician. He sings jazz and plays and teaches the didgeridoo. He’s written three books of poetry and one of fiction, and teaches in the MFW writing programs at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI and Bay Path University in Longmeadow, MA. He’s long-time co-chair of the Boston Chapter of the National Writers Union, a labor union for freelance writers and editors. Here is a one-and-a-half-minute clip from a film filmmaker Henry Ferrini is making about Charles. Website: https://www.charlescoe.org

Membership Chair

Linda Haviland Conte

Linda Haviland Conte is the author of the full-length collection Seldom Purely and the chapbook Slow as a Poem (Ibbetson Street Press). Her work has appeared in the anthologies From the Farther ShoreConstellations, Bagels with the Bards, and Connecticut River Review.  Linda has been featured in Verse Daily and WCAI’s Poetry Sunday. Her poems have received recognition from state and the national poetry societies. 

Website: https://lindaconte.net

Programming Chair

Wendy Drexler

Wendy Drexler’s third poetry collection, Before There Was Before, was published by Iris Press in 2017. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Barrow Street, J Journal, Nimrod, Pangyrus, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, Sugar House, The Atlanta Review, The Mid-American Review, The Hudson Review, The Threepenny Review, and the Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily and WBUR’s Cognoscenti, and in numerous anthologies. She’s been the poet in residence at New Mission High School in Hyde Park, MA, since 2017.  Website: wendydrexlerpoetry.com

Here’s a video of her reading her poem “The Galapagos Tortoise,” which was published in the 2020 issue of RHINO: GalapagosTortoise

Board Member

Danielle Legros Georges 

Danielle Legros Georges is a writer, translator, academic, and author of several books of poetry including, The Dear Remote Nearness of You, winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Margaret Motten book prize. Her awards include fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Foundation, and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. In 2015, she was appointed Boston’s second Poet Laureate. She directs the Lesley University MFA program in Creative Writing. 

Website: daniellelegrosgeorges.com.

Board Member

Regie Gibson

Regie Gibson has lectured and performed widely in the U.S., Cuba and Europe. In Italy, representing the U.S., Regie received both the Absolute Poetry Award (Monfalcone) and the Europa en Versi Award (LaGuardia di Como). He’s also received the Walker Scholarship for poetry from the Provincetown Arts Work Center, a Mass Cultural Council Award, a YMCA Writer’s Fellowship, the Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation, and two Live Arts Boston (LAB) Grants for the production of his first musical “The Juke: A Blues Bacchae” in which he uses Euripides’ tragedy to explore African American music and spirituality. Regie currently serves as the lead-creative on a team of scientists and members of the Red Cross-Red Crescent Climate Center (Hague, Netherlands) helping to craft language regarding issues of climate change. He currently serves on the boards of the New England Poetry Club and Grub Street Creative Writing Center. He teaches at Clark University and is the proud father of a newly-minted Eagle Scout.

Contest Coordinator

Nidia Hernández

Nidia Hernández was born in Venezuela, and has been living in the US since 2018. She is a poet and translator of Portuguese poetry, an editor, broadcaster, and radio producer, and a poetry curator. Nidia directs the editorial project lamajadesnuda.com, which won the 2011 WSA prize for Cultural Heritage. She curates Poesiaudio (Arrowsmith Press) and is a contributor for Mercurius Magazine. Sundara Ramaswamy Prize 2021, for her assemblage of The Land of Mild Light, selected poems of Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas. The selection’s translators include Robert Pinsky, Sophie Cabot Black, Carolyn Forché, Shara McCallum and Forrest Gander. She has presented works drawn from the 34 years of her Radio program (also called La maja desnuda) which has more than 1,768 broadcasts. Currently, she is broadcasting the program through UPV Radio 102.5 FM in Valencia, Spain.

Co-President

Doug Holder

Doug Holder is the founder of the Ibbetson Street Press. He is the arts editor of The Somerville Times, and the curator of the Newton Free Library Poetry Series. Holder teaches writing at Endicott College and Bunker Hill Community College. His own work has been published in such places as the Worcester Review, Lilipoh, Rattle, The Boston Globe, The Cafe Review and elsewhere. For over thirty years Holder ran poetry groups at McLean Hospital for psychiatric patients. Holder has received a citation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives for his work as a poet, editor, publisher, and professor. The “Doug Holder Papers Collection” is archived at the University at Buffalo libraries. Many of his interviews of poets and writers are in collections at Harvard University and U/Mass Boston. Holder is also the co-founder of the literary group “The Bagel Bards.” Holder’s latest collection of poetry is “The Essential Doug Holder…” (Big Table Books).

Special Advisor

Stephen Honig

Stephen is a corporate attorney in Boston who has been writing poetry and prose for his whole life.   He has published five books in the last three years:  a poetry collection of earlier works entitled “Messing Around With Words;” chapbooks relating to people who ride the rails (“Rail Head”) and concerning the first ten months of the pandemic (“Mandatory COVID Chapbook”); a collection of recent poetry exploring the American experience (“Laertes in America”); and a collection of short stories about obsession and how innocent people get caught into unexpected chaos entitled “Noir Ain’t the Half of It.”  He has also written a newspaper column on business for two decades and posts on business matters regularly at The Law and Other Anomalies). Ibbetson Street magazine has on occasion honored him with inclusion of some of his work, for which he is grateful. The law practice includes financing and buying and selling technology companies and advising management and boards of directors as to their obligations and procedures; serving on the board at NEPC, he hopes to contribute to the continuing good management of the Club.

A resident of Newton, his family consists of three grown children including two lawyers, and one artist (who integrates poetry into his shows), two grandchildren, and a son now in freshman year at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, all of whom obey Popcorn the dog, who is in charge of everything except the content of poetry.

His interests include service on nonprofit boards (Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Eastern Massachusetts; National Association of Corporate Directors–New England), writing poetry regularly, and seeking a publisher for the novels he has written and which for now reside in the bowels of his computer.  He also awaits the promised re-opening of Cantab Lounge, as he enjoys reading and hearing poetry in beer-soaked basements.

Board Member

Jean Dany Joachim

Jean Dany Joachim, Cambridge Poet Populist from 2009 to 2011, and the current Poet in Residence at First Church in Cambridge, is also an author of short stories and plays. He created the Many Voices Project, a series of readings and follow-up poetry workshops, inspiring conversations about race and equality. He has four published collections of poetry, Chen Plenn (2007), Crossroads / Chimenkwaze (2013), Avec des Mots (2014), and Quartier (2016). He is the director of City Night Readings, a series featuring diverse poetic talents, writers, and artists. He is an adjunct professor at Bunker Hill Community College. Jean Dany is a 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council grant recipient for his play:Your Voice Poet, and the winner of STC’s Playwrights of Color competition.

Board Member

Joy Martin

Southern-born, Joy currently resides in New England’s Boston area, surrounded by the comforts and discomforts of white privilege.  She enjoys membership in the New England Poetry Club and The Poetry Society of Virginia.  In addition to sharing poetry with Gloria Mindock, she participates in Newton Poetry and Poetry Reimagined groups. Published in Muddy River Poetry Review, Radical Teacher Journal, Ibbetson Street Press, among others, her poems explore life with its multitudinous facets, including her and broader humanity’s place and challenges within it. Her hope is that poets and their poetry will do the work to energize people and steer humanity in the direction of greater understanding and goodness. She looks forward to sharing her Project Management, Business Analysis, technical skills, and love of poetry with others to further the reach of the New England Poetry Club.

Board Member

Jacqueline L. McRath

What is your relationship with poetry?

After the high school “Invictus” and “The Raven,” Gwendolyn Brooks’ work helped me gain a sense of self.  Beat Generation poet Ted Joans’ poems awoke an “awe” within me, and Barbara Helfgott Hyett helped to shape my thoughts into poems.  The Orange Line Literary project, headed by Sam Cornish, Boston’s first Poet Laureate, continues to inspire me with its magnificent poetry and prose works. 

Why are you serving on the board of the New England Poetry Club? 

I am serving on the board because it provides the opportunity to more intimately learn about this historical organization, its values, and membership’s vast range of poetics. I would also like to assist in furthering the mission of recognizing and being more inclusive of talented diverse writers from the broader population.

What directions do you envision for the Club? 

I would like to see the club continue/expand its support of poets from diverse backgrounds/ethnicities – reflective of our society. Many poets hold writers with similar perspectives and experiences as models. It would be intriguing to delve into the works of Lowell, Frost, and Aiken for these identified perspectives in special topics/discussions and readings.   

I share my piece below:

A Bus Ride to Kano

A bus ride to Kano is two hours late,
A fear of getting no seat.
Buying bread, oranges, canned mackerel,
Sardines for the 15-hour trip.

It’s a little girl singing in Yoruba,
Reading from Voices of Africa,
Yam, empty maltex bottles in the aisle,
And three African drivers,
Two to help watch the road
To avoid accidents, one to drive.

A bus ride to Kano is a
Sleeping, nursing baby next to me
And spit-up on Donna’s 
White see-thru blouse.

It’s a rickety, noisy crossing
Of the Jebba Bridge
Over the River Niger,
Roasted plantain in the mouth,
Water in the jar,
And me with my people.

A bus ride to Kano is a long trip. 

           –J. L. McRath                       

03/04/75    Kano, Nigeria

Programming Chair

David P. Miller

David P. Miller’s collection, Bend in the Stair, was published by Lily Poetry Review Books in 2021. Sprawled Asleep was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2019. His chapbook, The Afterimages, was published by Červená Barva Press in 2014. His poems have appeared in Meat for Tea, Hawaii Pacific Review, The Poetry Porch, Denver Quarterly, Muddy River Poetry Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, Constellations, The American Journal of Poetry, Lily Poetry Review, Nixes Mate Review, Ibbetson Street, Poem of the Moment, and What Rough Beast, among others. He is a member of the Jamaica Pond Poets. His poem “Add One Father to Earth” was awarded an Honorable Mention by Robert Pinsky for the NEPC’s 2019 Samuel Washington Allen Prize competition. With a background in experimental theater before turning to poetry, David was a member of the multidisciplinary Mobius Artists Group of Boston for 25 years. He was a librarian at Curry College in Massachusetts, from which he retired in June 2018.

Here is an interview from December 2018, conducted by Doug Holder for his program “Poet to Poet, Writer to Writer.”

Co-President

Denise Provost

Long ago, Denise Provost attended Bennington College to write and study poetry. In an era of activism, she became a lawyer, worked in local government, eventually running for elective office. Provost served on Somerville’s city council for seven years, then in the Massachusetts House of Representatives for fifteen years.

Women in public life have a hard enough time being taken seriously, so Provost kept her poetry under wraps for many years. About a dozen years ago, she started sending poems off for publication in journals, writing book reviews, would occasionally read a few poems in public places. Provost eventually discovered that her literary urges could no longer be suppressed.

Provost received the Best Love Sonnet award from the Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition in 2012, and the New England Poetry Club’s Samuel Washington Allen Prize in 2021. Her chapbook Curious Peach was published by Ibbetson Street Press in 2019. Her collection City of Stories was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2021.

Vice President

Hilary Sallick

Hilary Sallick is the author of Asking the Form (Červená Barva Press, 2020) and Winter Roses (Finishing Line Press, 2017). A lifelong New Englander, she lives in Somerville, MA, where she teaches reading and writing to adult learners. Her longtime interest in the potential of poetry to build community and to foster deep learning grounds all her work.

Website:  https://hilarysallick.com 

 

Board Member

Lloyd Schwartz

Lloyd is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the current Poet Laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts. He’s the author of five books of poetry—These People (Wesleyan Poetry Series), Goodnight, Gracie, Cairo Traffic, Little Kisses, and  Who’s on First? New and Selected Poems (all with the University of Chicago Press). His poems have been chosen for The Pushcart Prize, The Best American Poetry, and The Best of the Best American Poetry, and have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic, The New Republic, Paris Review, Harvard Review, Partisan Review, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Consequence, Plume, and numerous other literary journals. He was the Poetry Editor of the Phoenix Literary Section, a guest editor of Ploughshares, and for 18 years, a member of the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary.

For his poetry, he has been awarded NEPC’s Daniel Varoujan Prize, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts,  a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. His  book Little Kisses was named by the Massachusetts Book Award as one of the ten “Must Read” poetry books of 2017. In 1995, he was named by the Associates of the Boston Public Library one of Boston’s “Literary Lights” and in 2017 Mass Poetry invited him to read in an evening of Boston’s “inspired leaders.”

Lloyd has a long and ongoing relationship with theater and music. His adaptation of his first book, These People: Voices for the Stage, was produced by the Poets’ Theatre. As an actor, he has appeared on stage with such theatrical luminaries as Stockard Channing, Tommy Lee Jones, James Woods, Alvin Epstein, and Cherry Jones. His poems have been set to music by such distinguished composers as John Harbison, Scott Wheeler, Mohammed Fairouz, Helen Grime, David Patterson, and Jean Singer.  Soprano Renée Fleming invited him to speak to her vocal master class on “The Poet’s Perspective.”

A close friend of Elizabeth Bishop, who became the subject of his Ph.D. thesis at Harvard, Lloyd has become an internationally recognized editor and scholar of her work. His Bishop volumes include the Library of America’s Elizabeth BishopPoems, Prose, and Letters, FSG’s Centennial Edition of her Prose, and Elizabeth Bishop and Her Artthe very first collection of writings about her work, chosen by Donald Hall to inaugurate his University of Michigan Press series Under Discussion.

Lloyd is also a widely respected  arts critic. His book Music In—and On—the Air (Arrowsmith) is a selection of the classical music reviews he first broadcast on NPR’s Fresh Air. He’s also the Contributing Arts Critic for WBUR’s web-journal the ARTery. As the longtime Classical Music Editor of the Boston Phoenix he was awarded three ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Lloyd Schwartz reads his work, “A True Poem”:

Project Facilitator

Dianne Tarpy

Dianne M. Tarpy is the author of two books, the first, From the Heart, (2021) and her recently released, second in the series, entitled A New Day (2021) –  words of inspiration and hope to soothe the soul.  

Late to the scene of poetry writing, she previously worked in the corporate telecommunications environment for over 34 years. In this role, she experienced first-hand the life-altering tragedy of 9/11 in New York City and the resulting aftermath and restoration of the network.  

She is a community and family-focused leader, resident, and hometown sports fan from Haverhill, Massachusetts, where she has lived her entire life.  As a wife, mother of three, and Nana to eight beautiful grandchildren, she has lived long enough to experience life at its best and its worst.  Having achieved two master’s degrees at Lesley University and Norwich University, she is the recipient of a number of awards at the national and local level for her work achieved in giving back to the community in which she lives and works.  

A voracious, lifelong reader, writing has always come easy.  Little did she know that lying quietly within her were books waiting to be written – she just needed the right time and mental space to do so. The silver lining of the pandemic is that she feels as though her life’s purpose has been realized.  She believes in learning that never ends and knows that one person can – and does – make a difference. As well as knowing that it is never too late to do or be all that you wish for.

She has been invited to contribute locally in her home town by reading her work at Northern Essex Community College, and at an event hosted by the River Bards, Haverhill’s group of local poets, who have a passion for shining a light on poetry, prose and the spoken word.  Additionally, she was honored to be included at the New England Poetry Club’s September 12, 2021 Fall Poetry Fest, where selected members with new books were invited to read.

Website: Diannemtarpyauthor.com

Communication Chair

Lynne Viti

photo by Richard Howard

Lynne Viti  is the author of three published poetry collections: Dancing at Lake Montebello (2020), Baltimore Girls (2017) and The Glamorganshire Bible (2018). Her fourth collection, The Walk to Cefalù, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press/Portage Poetry Series, University of Wisconsin Stevens Point in September 2022.  A lecturer emerita in the Writing Program at Wellesley College, she currently teaches in community programs, leads poetry workshops in New England and is piloting a poets-in-the-schools program in Westwood, Massachusetts.

Board Member

Denise Washington

Denise is so excited to be using the power of poetry to bring people together!  She is the Founder and CEO of her #Pop-Up Poetry Series, A Denise Plays Hard  Event.  For the past 3 years poetry has been popping up around the City of Boston,  beyond and currently on-line, virtually, empowering communities one poem at a time!  This Series create a safe space for people to breathe, listen, recite and enjoy! 

She is currently an Educator in Boston,  nurturing students, teaching mindfulness, yoga and Zumba to the whole school community, their families and staff.  She was born and raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts; was a METCO student who graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School; is an Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts Alum and a vocal student of the late John Andrew Ross.  She holds a Master of Science degree in Early Childhood Education from Wheelock College and a Bachelor of Science Degree from Emerson College in Television Production/ Creative Writing.  For several years, she lived in North Hollywood, California.  While living there she discovered her love for writing television scripts, plays, poetry and Children’s literature and she became a Television Writer on a show produced by HBO.

NEPC Historian

Sarah-Jane Burton

Sarah-Jane is an Australian academic who specializes in the literature of Boston and the New England area.

Website: https://www.sarahjaneburton.com

 


Former Board Members

Rebecca Connors, Communications Chair, 2021-2023

Jennifer Markell, Programming Chair, 2016-2022

Ralph Pennel, Programming Chair, 2017-2020

Marjorie Thomsen, Programming Chair, 2016-2019

Ashley Perssico, Publicity Chair, 2018-2019

David Ellis, Membership Chair, 2016

Diana Der-Hovanessian, NEPC President, 1970s-2018

Victor Howes, NEPC President and Membership Chair, 1960s-2018