Massachusetts Statewide Poetry Calendar

JESSICA JACOBS’ Pelvis with Distance (2015) details the life of the painter Georgia O’Keefe and, in the words of Christopher Merrill, “discovers a vibrant music rooted in portraiture.” A finalist for the Lambda Literary award and winner of the 2015 New Mexico Book Award in Poetry, Pelvis with Distance draws on O’Keefe’s paintings, letters, and personal documents as well as the poet’s own experiences in Abiquiú, New Mexico, where O’Keefe lived for many years. Jacobs’ second full-length collection, Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2019. Jacobs majored in English at Smith and went on to earn an MFA from Purdue University. Currently, she serves as associate editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown.

NICKOLE BROWN describes poetry as “a raw, muscular devotion to paying attention.” Brown aims to “knock poetry off its pedestal” and open readers to its multitude of possibilities. The narrator of Sister (2007), was born during a tornado to a 16-year-old “giggling, cigarette-sneak / mini-skirt-hike girl.” Library Journal named Brown’s second collection, Fanny Says, to its list of Best Poetry Books of 2015, and Patricia Smith proclaimed it “raucous and heart-rending, reflective and slap-yodamn-knee hilarious, a heady meld of lyrical line and life lesson.” Brown edits the Marie Alexander Series in Prose Poetry at White Pine Press, and teaches each fall at the Great Smokies Writing Program. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her wife, the poet Jessica Jacobs, and is at work on her next manuscript.