May 3rd Reading, 7pm at The Blarney Stone

Rad Thie is from Cincinnati. He is studying poetry at UMass Boston.

Andra Hibbert is a queer writer pursuing an MFA in fiction at UMass Boston. She grew up in northern Vermont and attended Williams College. She has worked as an editor for Breakwater Review and Concrete. If Marilynne Robinson, Neko Case, and Michael Ondaatje could have a storytelling baby, she would like to be that baby. Her short story, Centers of Gravity, is forthcoming from Five Points.

Kurt Klopmeier is from St. Louis and is currently a first-year masters student in poetry at UMass. In his freshman year of high school he wrote a poem "When I See You," which rhymed "wrong or right," "day or night," and "ever might" in successive lines. He hopes that he has grown as a poet since then. He lives in Savin Hill and especially likes walking up to the peak of what he assumes is the eponymous hill in the park there. The last line of a poem that has affected him the most is from Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo": "You must change your life."

Zachary Bos
Q: What are three qualities you value in good poetry/fiction?

ZB: It needs to be memorable, both the plot and the phrasing; it needs to be accurate (even if it is all lies); and it needs to matter. There are many books which I read because they are diverting or entertaining, but I wouldn't call them "good," any more than I'd call a McDonald's chicken sandwich "good." It may hit the spot, but it isn't good. A work of literature that matters is good enough "to engrave on a ring or a stone," to quote a poem by Alissa Valles from
Boston Review a few years back.

Q: What was the title of an early work of yours (think childhood) and what was it about (preferably embarrassing)?

ZB: "Paterson" was something I was writing in middle school and grade school, when 1) I lived in Paterson, New Jersey; 2) I'd heard about Williams' long poem and said to myself in a fit of presumption, I can do that; and 3) I wanted to chronicle the acute difficulty of my awful, terrible, no-good existence. The self-regard was the terrible part, really.

Betsy Gomez is from El Centro, California. She is studying poetry at UMass Boston. She is currently a managing editor at Breakwater Review. Her interests include Russian literature, theology, and music.














Mark Rotondi


Q: What's your favorite 1st or last line to a poem?
 MR: "I am stuck in traffic in a taxicab which is typical and not just of modern life" Song, Frank O'Hara.

Q: Suggest a writer more people should know and read (and give a reason why).
MR: Italo Calvino. His books are never finished saying what they have to say.

Q: What are three qualities you value in good poetry/fiction?
MR: Something that signifies nothing, something written by a keen observer, something that is unintentionally funny.

Q: What was the title of an early work of yours (think childhood) and what was it about (preferably embarrassing)?
MR: "Play cards with me papa." It was about how much I hated solitaire.