“Poetry on Stage”
The Chelmsford Library and the Lowell Poetry Network
will present two poetry programs at the Chelmsford Library this fall.

Jack McCarthy, Return of "Your Stand-up Poetry Guy”
Saturday, October 31, at 2:30 p.m.

AND

Tom Daley performing “Every Broom and Bridget,”
a one-man play about Emily Dickinson and her Irish servants
Saturday, November 7, at 2:30 p.m.

Jack McCarthy,
Return of "Your Stand-up Poetry Guy”
Saturday, October 31, at 2:30 p.m.

Jack McCarthy, "Your Standup Poetry Guy," is returning to the East Coast and will deliver a night of his original performance poetry at the Chelmsford Library on Thursday, Oct 31, 2009, at 2:30 p.m.

Jack McCarthy is a Boston-area working guy who retired to the state of Washington. He’s been writing poetry since the mid-60’s, averaging about a poem a year until 1992-93, when two things happened. First, his new wife Carol blackmailed him into attending a workshop with Galway Kinnell; then he brought his daughter Annie, for her birthday, to the open mike at the Cantab Lounge in Central Square, Cambridge, hoping she’d get excited about poetry. Jack was the one who got hooked.

Since then he’s brought out a book of poetry (Grace Notes), three chapbooks (Actual Grace Notes and Too Old to Make Excuses (But Still Young Enough to Make Love)), and two CDs (Breaking Down Outside a Gas Station and By Gift Unearned). In 2003, a major collection, Say Goodnight, Grace Notes, was released by EM Press to rave reviews. His work appears in several anthologies, including the anthology The Spoken Word Revolution.

Jack was a member of the Boston team at the 1996 National Poetry Slam and was an engaging minor character in the feature film "Slamnation," which documented that event. He was a member of the Worcester team at the 2000 National Poetry Slam, where he finished as the 10th ranked individual. He won the haiku championship at the Individual World Poetry Slam in Vancouver in 2007.
The Boston Globe said, “In the poetry world, he's a rock star.” The Boston Phoenix named him “Best Standup Poet,” the Boston Poetry Awards “Best Love Poet,” and the Cambridge Poetry Awards “Best Spoken Word” and “Best Humorous Poet.” For five years he had a local cable TV show on which he got to trade poems with national figures like Donald Hall, Thomas Lux, and Stephen Dobyns, as well as dozens of wonderful local poets.

Poet Stephen Dobyns has written, "Jack McCarthy is one of the wonders of contemporary poetry. He writes—and often performs—dazzling narratives full of wit and humor, sadness and hard thinking. He should be cloned." Of Say Goodnight, Grace Notes, ALA Booklist says, "McCarthy brings his compelling experiences to his poetry with nimble humor, hard-won wisdom, and a raconteur's knack for telling diabolically barbed stories…concrete, candid, personal, and utterly captivating…caustic, sexy and smart."Thomas Lux has written of him, "The only ambition he seems to have is to tell the truth as best he can in poems." That is a very worthy ambition, but it's not his only one. He also hopes to be remembered as an integral member of the movement to restore poetry to its rightful place in everyday American life. So that when Americans think of poetry, they don't think of school and homework, but of laughter and tears; a shortcut to the heart.

Among his influences he numbers Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Garrison Keillor, and Patricia Smith. He doesn't think of himself as a "performance poet," but as a "standup poetry guy," a writer of poems that perform themselves. For more information on Jack McCarthy visit www.standupoet.net

Tom Daley presents “Every Broom and Bridget,”
a one-man play about Emily Dickinson and her Irish servants
Saturday, November 7, at 2:30 p.m.

Tom Daley teaches poetry writing at the Boston Center for Adult Education, where he served as the poet-in-residence in 2007 and 2008. He leads workshops in poetry and memoir writing at Lexington (Massachusetts) Community Education. He serves on the faculty of the Online School of Poetry (http://onlineschoolofpoetry.org/) and the tutorial faculty of Walnut Hill School for the Arts.
Tom’s work has been published in numerous journals, including Harvard Review, Barrow Street, Poetry Ireland Review, Prairie Schooner, 32 Poems, Diagram, Salamander, Archipelago, Perihelion, Asheville Poetry Review, Del Sol Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Studio Potter. His manuscript, Shim, was a finalist for the 2004 Bakeless Prize (Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, Middlebury College) and for the 2005 Poetry Foundation Emily Dickinson First Book Award. His poem, “Industrial Canticle,” was nominated by the journal Eleventh Muse for the anthology, Best New Poets of 2007. His chapbook, Canticles and Inventories, was published by Wyngaerts Hoeck Press in October of 2005.
He has been a featured reader at many spoken word venues, including Boston Conservatory’s “Garden” program, Borders Books, Northeastern University, and The Attleboro Arts Museum. He has been a member of the award-winning Poetry Off Broadway troupe. In 2004, Tom produced and performed in “The Musician and the Muse,” a gala evening of performance poetry at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, and organized similar events at the Boston Center for Adult Education in 2007 and 2008. In April of 2009, he wrote, produced, and performed a leading role in the play “Every Broom and Bridget—Emily Dickinson and Her Servants.”
Tom conducted a workshop for young teens in the basics of poetry writing at Walnut Hill School for the Arts in March of 2009. In 2008, The Westwood (MA) Library sponsored poetry writing workshops led by Tom for Westwood students in grades 3 -5 and grades 6 – 8 (podcast at http://wwdbookbits.googlepages.com/home). He has led workshops in writing poems in response to music and musicians at the Concord Poetry Center (2009), and in “Building an Audience for Your Writing” at the University of Massachusetts Field Station on Nantucket in November 2005. He served as visiting poet at Asheville School in Asheville, North Carolina, at Atlanta Girls’ School in Atlanta, Georgia in October of 2005, and at Carolina Day School in the spring of 2006. He led a workshop in performance poetry at Stonehill College in February 2006 and a workshop on the creative process at the Nantucket Athenaeum in October 2006. In September of 2006, Tom was the poetry instructor at a retreat for poets and songwriters on Star Island, off the coast of Portsmouth, New Hampshire sponsored by Writers in the Round. He delivered a lecture on ekphrastic writing (writing about works of art) at Brown University in October of 2006 and was visiting poet at SUNY Cobleskill in March of 2007.
Tom studied advanced poetry writing with Janet Sylvester and Daniel Bosch at Harvard University Extension School, with Fred Marchant at the William Joiner Center at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and with Joan Houlihan and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright at Algonkian Workshops. He graduated with highest honors in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina, where he won the Charles and Fanny Fay Wood Academy of American Poets Prize.