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© 2026 The Somerville Times. All rights reserved.
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A Tribute to Jack from his friend Sidewalk Sam
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At the memorial service for Jack Powers, the founder of Stone Soup Poetry of Boston, Mass., the famed street artist and Power’s close friend Sidewalk Sam, made an eloquent tribute speech about Jack. A few years back I worked with Sam to organize Jack’s 70th birthday, along with Margaret Narin and the Rev. Louise Anderson. Sam graciously sent me the text of the speech.
May 6
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Kye DeAngelis is a first-year Studio Art major with a minor in Creative Writing and Expressive Arts Therapies at Endicott College. She is from Mansfield, Massachusetts, and has been writing since she was young, with one short story winning an honorable mention in the Scholastic Writing competition in 2024.
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Poet Trapper Markelz sends his daughters ‘off to war’
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I contacted poet Trapper Markelz about his new collection of poetry, Off to War, Daughter. Trapper is on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club.
April 29
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Brian Russell is an undergraduate at Endicott College in Beverly, MA.
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‘Special Operation’ by Mark Pawlak
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Review by Off the Shelf Correspondent Dennis Daly
Generally, I try to avoid political poems as well as anti-war poems. Not because they don’t have an important place in those overlapping genres – they do. Or because they can’t effectuate changes in belief systems with their emotional and sometimes rational appeal – they can. But even so, overcome with their own self-importance or consumed with the certainty of true believers, the poets, who write them usually fail. Brilliant exceptions like Sigfried Sassoon (First World War), Wilfred Owen (First World War), and Michael Casey (Vietnam War) prove the rule. Therefore, when confronted with reviewable collections of this verse type, I walk, nay, I run in the other direction. But not today.
April 22
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Our poet writes: “I’m Irina Canute, a student at Endicott College currently enrolled in Professor Doug Holder’s Creative Writing course. I am majoring in Health Science and expect to graduate in 2027. This poem is in response to a sculpture at the Manninen Center for the Arts at Endicott College.”
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Somerville Poet Laureate Lloyd Schwartz brings a symphony to his work
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I had the pleasure to interview Lloyd Schwartz about his latest book of poetry: ARTUR SCHNABEL AND JOSEPH SZIGETI PLAY MOZART AT THE FRICK COLLECTION (APRIL 4, 1948) and other poems. Schwartz’s work is full of musicality and delicately gets the marrow of life.
April 15
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Braxton Crockett is an undergraduate at Endicott College in Beverly, MA.
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‘The Quantity Theory of Morality’ by Will Self
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Review by Off the Shelf Correspondent Ed Meek.
I’m late to reading Will Self, author of 22 works of fiction and 9 works of nonfiction, shortlisted for the Booker prize numerous times, ditto the Whitbread novel of the year, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. The Quantity Theory of Morality is a bookend to The Quantity Theory of Insanity written 35 years ago. The former claims there’s a surfeit of insanity; his current novel brings back a character to argue there isn’t enough morality in our age to keep us on track.
April 8
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Elizabeth S. Wolf has published six books, including the Rattle chapbook Did You Know? Her latest book is a braided poetry collection, Parenting in the Age of Columbine. Her work appears in many journals and anthologies, including Rattle, ONE ART, The Strategic Poet, and Ibbetson Street, and is archived on the moon in the Lunar Codex. Elizabeth has received four Pushcart nominations and is featured in the April 2026 issue of Boston Literary Magazine.
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Poet Wyn Cooper’s new book explores ‘an island of pain in a sea of indifference’
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Recently, I caught up with poet Wyn Cooper, a former Somerville resident, to talk about his new collection of poetry, The Unraveling.
Wyn Cooper has published five books of poetry, including, most recently, Mars Poetica.
April 1
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Trapper Markelz (he/him) writes from Arlington, Massachusetts. He is the author of the chapbooks Childproof Sky (Cherry Dress, 2023) and Off To War, Daughter (Rockwood Press, 2026). His work has appeared in the journals Baltimore Review, Passengers Journal, Pine Row Press, Wild Roof Journal, The Dewdrop, and Poetry Online, among others. Learn more at trappermarkelz.com.
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Passing the time with Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish
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This is an article I wrote in 2008 about the late, first Boston Poet Laureate, Sam Cornish.
Sam Cornish, the Boston Poet Laureate, invited me to his office to chat before participating in another meeting we were involved with later in the day with Boston-area poetry activists. On the subway, on the way to the meeting, I read through a collection of Cornish’s that I picked up at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop some time ago: Cross A Parted Sea. Cornish writes about everything from Pullman Porters, sharecroppers, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, his father, etc. He does it with just the right amount of raw energy and the Blues, and his choice of words packs a wallop, or at times a well-appointed sucker punch: Case in point:
March 25
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Jonathon Nimmons is a British poet and the founder of WriteSeen, the world’s first creative social network.
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Somerville poet Sarah Beckmann: A poet of water and women’s rights
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I recently caught up with Sarah C. Beckmann, a font of literary energy and activism in our literary community.
Sarah C. Beckmann is a member of the Somerville Arts Council Board, where she promotes arts initiatives in the Somerville community through a local grant program and the SomerWrites event series. In 2021, she published a poetry chapbook, Naiad Blood, and her first full-length poetry collection, The Race for Daphne, is forthcoming in May, 2026. She earned an MFA from Emerson College in Boston and works in research communications at the MIT Media Lab.
March 18
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Somerville poet Ed Meek sends us a couple of new poems. He has a new book of poetry coming out titled Great Pond.
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Interview with X.J. and Dorothy Kennedy
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Poet X. J. Kennedy has passed recently, so I decided to reprint this interview I had with him and his wife in 2015. Introduction from X.J. Kennedy’s website:
J. Kennedy was born in Dover, N. J., on August 21, 1929, shortly before the crash of the stock market. Irked by the hardship of having the name of Joseph Kennedy, he stuck the X on and has been stuck with it ever since.
March 11
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Tom Lyons wrote a lot of poetry in the 70’s and 80’s and had some success being published in a couple of poetry magazines. His jobs as an Auditor, a COO, and a Management Consultant kept him on the road for nearly 30 years. Fifteen years ago, he bought the New England Mobile Book Fair, at the time the largest independent brick-and-mortar book store in New England, where, among author events, he started hosting well-attended poetry readings. Inspired again to create, this led to forming a poetry group that meets twice a month. Some of his poems have appeared in the Muddy River Review and Boston Literary Magazine. He has appeared on Somerville and Milton local TV. Tom is also a member of the Bagel Bards. His first book of poetry, Luna Moth, has been well received, having sold more than 600 copies to date, and is going into its fifth printing. His new book, The Beautiful Army, is being compiled by Big Table Publishing and should be available shortly. One of the new poems is presented here.
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