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. 


A woman standing at a wooden podium with a laptop, smiling and speaking into a microphone in a gymnasium. The podium has a school emblem that reads "The MacDuffie School Veritas."

2024 Featured Speakers

A woman with long dark hair and light skin, wearing a blue dress with yellow floral patterns, gold jewelry, and earrings, standing outdoors with a blurry green background.

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

Book cover for 'Bright Dead Things' by Ada Limón, featuring a warm, sunset-colored abstract background and text indicating it is a finalist for national book awards.
Book cover titled "The Hurting Kind" by Ada Limón, featuring abstract gray and black brushstrokes on a textured background.
A woman with braided hair, glasses, red lipstick, earrings, a necklace, and a black button-up shirt, smiling against a gray background.

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.

Logo of Witness Stones Project featuring a black crescent moon and text overlay on handwritten background.
Book cover titled 'Psalm of the Sunflower' by Antoinette Brim, featuring a sunflower with a dark center and a woman with long hair holding a book.

2023 Featured Speakers

An elderly man with a white beard and mustache wearing a black cap and a white shirt with embroidered designs, standing against a red-orange background.

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) 

The cover of the book 'Floaters: Poems' by Martín Espada, featuring a black and white photo of a man holding a child and standing with a young woman, against a brick building background. The cover includes a gold badge indicating it is a winner of the National Book Award for Poetry.
A blue tea or coffee pot with two cups, a spoon, and a loaf of bread on a table, with a calendar in the background. The image promotes imagining the angels of bread, and includes award and author information.
Book cover titled 'Trumpets from the Islands of their Eviction' by Martín Espada, featuring a black and white photograph of a woman with a distressed expression, clutching her stomach, with a small coffee cup in front of her.
A man wearing a backward baseball cap and a bomber jacket stands in front of a wall map of Ohio in black and white. The map shows county boundaries and the Ohio River, with text indicating the scale of 1 inch equals 6.6 miles.

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.

A mural of a young boy with dark curly hair, wearing a green shirt, holding a horse's face with a green bandana around its nose. Black birds fly above. The text reads 'The Crown Ain't Worth Much.'