Poetry Month
2025 Speaker, Ms. Regine Jackson
To help MacDuffie celebrate Poetry Month 2025, Ms. Regine Jackson read her own works and helped students workshop their own poetry in an assembly that included the whole school. Afterwards, Honors and Advanced Placement classes stayed for a one on one discussion with Ms. Jackson regarding some of her poems they had studied in class. In addition to being an author and poet, Ms. Jackson is Executive Director and Co-founder of Cultural Connections: A Celebration of Black and b/rown Literature.
2024 Featured Speakers
U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limon
Students will study poems from two of her collections: The Hurting Kind (2022) and Bright Dead Things (2015) and attend a reading hosted by The Boutelle Poetry Center at Smith College, Northampton, Ma. (April 30, 2024
CT Poet Laureate, Antoinette Brim-Bell
Students will study poems from her collection Psalm of the Sunflower (2010) and The Witness Stones Project in preparation for her reading and craft talk during an all-school assembly on Monday, April 8, 2024.
2023 Featured Speakers
National Book Award Winner, Martin Espada.
Students read poetry from among several of his collections such as: Floaters, Imagine the Angels of Bread, and Trumpets from the Islands of their Eviction in addition to hearing Professor Espada read and participating in a Question and Answer session. (April, 2023)
Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, poet and essayist
Students attended a virtual reading and question and answer session, which was sponsored by The Boutelle Poetry Center at Smith College, Northampton, Ma.
