Turner and Tang-Rainwater will be presented with ceremonial medals created by local metal artist Pam Farren and will deliver their first official readings during the City of Worcester’s Inaugural Exercises and Celebration on Friday, Jan. 2, 2025, at 2 p.m. at Doherty Memorial High School.

Deeply embedded in the poetry community, Turner has become a standout in not only Worcester’s poetry scene but also New England. As an organizer and participant of the longest running independent poetry series, The Dirty Gerund Poetry Show, Turner has been uplifting emerging voices through performance, mentorship, and innovative programming. Her leadership and impact have earned formal recognition, including an Iron Poet Championship title, a gold medal in the Massachusetts Poetry Olympics, and a nomination for the City of Worcester 2025 Woman of Consequence. In 2024, Turner founded The Roadshow, a rotating poetry team designed to break down barriers to participate in competitive poetry.

Overseas migration of skilled Filipino professionals and middle-class families is often underarticulated, and yet, class and material resources do not cushion them from the uncertainty of re-establishing themselves in the United States. Oliver de la Paz’s The Diaspora Sonnets, Winner of the New England Book Award for Poetry, explores the many facets of this experience—from imagining a family’s departure from the Philippines at the onset of martial law in 1972, to moving across the vast landscape of the American West to search for opportunities and to create a home.

Gabrielle Bates, Sam Sax, Sally Wen Mao, and Edgar Kunz highlight a year of celebrated poetry collections

Among the exceptional writing brought to us in 2023, poetry has seen a renewed and necessary visibility. Whether you’ve listened to the soaring rallying cry from the picket line, or the way these collections have been a voice for the voiceless, one thing is clear: this has been a year of fierce and fearless poetry, existing on the frontlines of heightened social and political turmoil. Quite simply, the poets of today have shown up, and shown out, and we may never be the same.

Worcester’s poet laureate, whose ‘Diaspora Sonnets’ was longlisted for the National Book Award, directs his life and work toward the service of others

By Cheryl Clark Vermeulen Globe correspondent,Updated November 20, 2023, 2:25 p.m.

Oliver de la Paz and I met when we and other Boston writers volunteered for the 2019 Writers for Migrant Justice movement. An efficient organizer, he moved swiftly through every task with the most affable demeanor. While there wasn’t time then to learn his backstory, I wanted to know more about this well-published poet who cared for migrant justice and worked so hard and amicably.

More recently, in a corner booth at a tapas restaurant in Worcester, we filled ourselves, and talked about his latest book, his formative experiences, and his vision for poetry communities. Not only did his welcoming and cheerful presence shine through again, but so did all the ways that he is a poet who deeply values service.

2023 List Here

The 2023 Poetry Longlist includes poets in all stages of their publishing careers. Only one honoree on the Poetry Longlist has been previously honored by the National Book Awards: Monica Youn was a Finalist for Poetry in 2010 and a Longlister for Poetry in 2016. This year’s Poetry Longlist includes a Guggenheim Fellow and three National Endowment for the Arts Fellows. The poets have been recognized by the American Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Lannan Literary Award, the Pushcart Prizes, the William Carlos Williams Award, and more. Three of the books come from university presses and six come from independent publishers, including one publisher that is appearing on the National Book Award Longlists for the first time: the University of Georgia Press.

Oliver de la Paz’s sixth collection, The Diaspora Sonnets (Liveright, 2023), is a fascinating contribution to diasporic aesthetics. Compared to the accretive, organic quality of Wangechi Mutu’s collages, for example, The Diaspora Sonnets is a poetry machine running through a selection of small, sensory-rich moments in a family’s migration experience. References to large-scale global structures of colonialism and economic imperialism—characteristic of the diasporic art discussed so far and also relevant to de la Paz’s family history—are muted, or, more precisely, transmuted into a personal lyric of family and place. Born in Manila and raised in the remote high deserts of eastern Oregon, de la Paz emigrated to the United States as a child in the 1970s. His family moved for a time along Pacific Northwest migratory labor routes. Immigration is a linear story of departure and arrival, but The Diaspora Sonnets does not tell it straight, so to speak: moments of familial upheaval before and after emigration arise and return as recurring primal scenes. The very title of de la Paz’s collection indicates the layered intricacies of his family history and his poetic craft.

Titles submitted for the 2023 New England Book Awards must be either about New England, set in New England, or written by an author residing in New England. Submissions can be hardcovers, paperback originals, or reissues. Submissions must publish between September 1, 2022 and August 31, 2023. The award categories are Children's, Middle Grade, Young Adult, Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, and Poetry.

The following poetry titles are nominated for the prize:

The Study of Human Life written by Joshua Bennett (Penguin Books)
Negative Money written by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (Soft Skull)
Console written by Colin Channer (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Diaspora Sonnets written by Oliver de la Paz (Liveright)
Judas & Suicide written by Maya Williams (Game Over Books)

In 2019, we expanded on this work, and our prizes and fellowships for poets, by launching the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships. The Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships are $50,000 awards given to honor poets of literary merit appointed to serve in civic positions and to enable them to undertake meaningful, impactful, and innovative projects that engage their fellow residents, including youth, with poetry, helping to address issues important to their communities, as well as create new work.

In addition to the other eligibility and application criteria, the concept, scope, components, depth, geographic reach, and community support of the proposed project will be considered by a panel of award-winning poets and leaders in poetry and civic engagement. The panelists who recommended the recipients of the 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships were Director of Letras Latinas at Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies Francisco Aragón, former Columbia, SC Poet Laureate and Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Ed Madden, National Student Poets Founder Olivia Morgan, and former U.S. Poet Laureate and Academy Chancellor Tracy K. Smith. Final award decisions were approved and finalized by members of the Academy of American Poets Board of Directors.

The fellowships were established in partnership with the Mellon Foundation. Read more about the 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellows and their civic projects.

Lit Hub is excited to feature another entry in a new series from Poets.org: “enjambments,” a monthly interview series with new and established poets. This month, they spoke to Oliver de la Paz, the author of the author of six poetry collections, most recently The Diaspora Sonnets (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2023).

WORCESTER, Mass. - For the first time in three years, Worcester has a new poet laureate. Award-winning poet Oliver de la Paz is taking over the role, starting this month.

De la Paz is an associate professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross. His work “The Boy in the Labyrinth,” published in 2019, was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry.

Worcester City Manager Eric Batista announced the appointment earlier this month. De la Paz is replacing Juan Matos, who served in the role for the past three years.

Oliver de la Paz was prepared for his first official appearance as Worcester’s new Poet Laureate.

At the swearing-in ceremony for Worcester City Manager Eric D. Batista on Jan. 6 at Worcester City Hall, de la Paz read his poem written for the occasion, "Coming Home to the City of Song."

Full of Worcester imagery ("In my dreaming mind, hazy, full of lists/and wishes, I drive down Major Taylor" ... bright/signage of the DCU spells out this crescendo/of drama and glee") the poem is about greeting a loved one on their return after being "away somewhere far."

My book, The Boy in the Labyrinth, will be one of the books celebrated during this presentation.

The event takes place at 11:00AM in the Great Hall, Floor 2.

“Mornings are a sustained hymn / without the precision of faith,” writes poet Oliver de la Paz in his poem “Aubade with Bread for the Sparrows.” Paz, who’s an associate professor at Holy Cross, was recently named the Poet Laureate of Worcester. His term begins this month and runs through the end of 2025. Poet Juan Matos has held the role since 2020. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Paz has written a number of books including “Above Houses”; “Furious Lullaby”; “Requiem for the Orchard”; “Post Subject: A Fable”; and “The Boy in the Labyrinth,” a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in poetry. His latest collection, “The Diaspora Sonnets” will come out from Liveright this summer. Paz is also the co-chair of the advisory board for Kundiman, an organization that works to promote Asian American writers and writing. “The world is in haste to waken,” he writes. “Don’t ask for a name / you can surrender, for there are more ghosts to placate. / Don’t hurt for the sparrows, for they love you, like a road.”

Article by Nina MacLaughlin

“Mornings are a sustained hymn / without the precision of faith,” writes poet Oliver de la Paz in his poem “Aubade with Bread for the Sparrows.” Paz, who’s an associate professor at Holy Cross, was recently named the Poet Laureate of Worcester. His term begins this month and runs through the end of 2025. Poet Juan Matos has held the role since 2020. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, Paz has written a number of books including “Above Houses”; “Furious Lullaby”; “Requiem for the Orchard”; “Post Subject: A Fable”; and “The Boy in the Labyrinth,” a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in poetry. His latest collection, “The Diaspora Sonnets” will come out from Liveright this summer. Paz is also the co-chair of the advisory board for Kundiman, an organization that works to promote Asian American writers and writing. “The world is in haste to waken,” he writes. “Don’t ask for a name / you can surrender, for there are more ghosts to placate. / Don’t hurt for the sparrows, for they love you, like a road.”

Here's the trailer by Caleb Young and the good folks at Handcrank Films:

http://youtu.be/KbuJJoDwiMU