Hyla Brook Reading Series Launch Party May 14 at New Location

Join the Hyla Brook Reading Series launch party on May 14 at 6pm with Anna Lena Phillips Bell and Hyla reader Irene Baker at our new location at Hyla Brook Estate, 140 Rockingham Road, Derry, right next to the Frost Farm. Refreshments and cash bar! https://frostfarmpoetry.org/reading-series

Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Might Could, winner of the Anthony Hecht Prize, Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St Brigid Press. New poems appear in Sewanee Review, Orion, Literary Hub, and Poetry London. Bell teaches at UNC Wilmington, and is the editor of Ecotone.

2026 Frost Farm Metrical Poetry Contest

Submissions for the 2026 Frost Farm Metrical Poetry Contest are now open. Ryan Wilson will judge, and the deadline is March 31, 2026 at 11:59 p.m. See the site for full details, and good luck!

2025 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award Finalist

My poem “Button Box” was a finalist for Plough Quarterly’s 2025 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award. The poem was selected in blind judging out of over 1,029 entries. The contest winner was Gail White, and the other finalist was Daniel Galef. The box in the poem is real, and the poem only hints at the outrageous 1970s style clothing my mother made me!

Having a latte at the Space Cafe

A big thank you to Markus Mooslechner for inviting me to be on his Space Cafe Podcast, where we explored the intersection of space science and poetry. We talked about AI and poetry, the role poetry can play in the exploration and understanding of space, and he surprised me by asking what song I’d take on a playlist into space! So grab a latte and enjoy!

Outer Space: 100 Poems reading features poets from around the world

Despite being the moderator, I was probably the most excited attendee at this special event! Carmine Street Metrics, with hosts Anton Yakovlev and Wendy Sloan, held an online reading from Outer Space: 100 Poems (Cambridge University Press, 2022). The reading featured 12 of the contributors from across the globe! I had not met or spoken to many of them before, only communicated by email, and it was such a treat to hear these poems in the poets’ own voices, after seeing them on the page for so long!

The readers included Victoria Moul, Alice Gorman, A.M. Juster, Jay Ruzesky, John Curl, Janet Kenny, Leslie Monsour, John Foy, Donna Kane, Ned Balbo, Yun Wang, and Anton Yakovlev. In addition to their own poems, they read poems by A.E. Housman, Deborah Warren, Elizabeth Jennings, A.E. Stallings, Rebecca Elson, Catherine Chandler, and translations of Du Fu, Alexander Pushkin, and poems from Sanskrit, Mayan, Old English, and Passamaquoddy.

There are some amazing moments during the reading, including images of Valentina Tereshkova, a few lines in Mayan, and a reading of Du Fu in the original. Enjoy!

What just happened?

I just went to my events page to add an upcoming event, the 2021 Newburyport Literary Festival and I saw that the last “upcoming event” in that list was the 2020 Newburyport Literary Festival, which was cancelled. Whoa.

Now, truthfully, I have participated in events since then. In January I read at an online launch of the Powow River Poets Anthology II, a reading at Temple Etz Hayim last October., and a Light poetry reading over the summer. But, like most people, I haven’t gone anywhere to read or hear any poetry in almost a year now.

Attending online readings has been pretty cool at times. I got to hear Leslie Monsour read, and that almost never happens because she lives in California, and I live in New Hampshire. I’ve seen New Yorkers and Canadians and New Mexicans and Vermonters all read in the same reading.

What will it be like when we finally are all back in one room? Will we miss access to our wider audiences? Maybe so. But I also think there’s something hardwired in our brains that wants to see people in 3-D and hear voices not coming through a speaker.

So the 2021 Newburyport Literary Festival is on my events calendar. I hope to either see you or “see” you there.

Fun at the New England Crime Bake

I’m just back from my first ever New England Crime Bake, and I had a great time. I was in the Agents and Editors track, and I worked on my pitch, my query letter, and my first page. I also had a fabulous manuscript review with Joanna Shaffhausen. Highlight of the night: watching these acclaimed authors (that’s Hank Phillippi Ryan in the middle) be the backup singers in the salute to Hallie Ephron.

2017 Nemerov Sonnet Award Finalist - Happy and Sad

I was very happy to learn that my sonnet, "In the Attic," was selected as one of the finalists in this year's Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award contest. The poem will be published in an upcoming issue of Measure.

At the same time, I was sad to learn that this will be the last year of the contest. This was one of the few national contests dedicated to poetry in form. The judges were nationally-recognized formal poets, and William Baer, the force behind the contest, is one of the premier advancers of metrical poetry in this country.

There are still some national contests focused on form, including the Able Muse Write Prize and the Frost Farm Prize, among others, for which I am grateful. I only feel sorry for all of us, that we won't have that one dream to aim for any more, that of "winning the Nemerov." That certainly kept me writing some mornings, so thank you for that, Bill Baer.

Thank you, The Hippo!

It was wonderful to open up our local culture and arts newspaper, The Hippo, to find this full-page article. Not only did Angie Sykeny discuss my program "Talking to God Through Poetry," which I gave at Etz Hayim Synagogue in Derry, N.H., but she also took a comprehensive look at my poetry, my mystery novel, and where I get my inspiration for my poems. It's a great feeling to have one's work given such consideration. Thank you, The Hippo, for printing stories like this one!