Voices of Poetry is pleased to present a free program of exceptional poetry on Saturday, April 22, at 2:00 p.m. at Cambridge Public Library. This event will feature five acclaimed poets: Toni Bee, Eileen Cleary, Deborah Leipziger, Michael McInnis and Lloyd Schwartz.

Toni Bee is a poet, educator, and freelance journalist. In 2011, she was elected Poet Populist of Cambridge, MA.  She led the Black Lives Matter march in Cambridge in 2015 and was selected as the city’s Poetry Ambassador in 2016. Toni has been a teaching artist for The Wang Theatre. 22 Again is the title of her recently published first book of poetry. Toni has featured at: Lizard Lounge, The Boston Poetry Slam, New England Poetry Club, The Boston National Poetry Month Festival and the Boston Poetry Marathon.

Eileen Cleary is the author of Child ward of the Commonwealth (Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an Honorable Mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize, and 2 a.m. with Keats (Nixes Mate Books, 2021). She co-edited the anthology, Voices Amidst the Virus, which was the featured text at the 2021 MSU Filmetry Festival. Her poems have been published in Sugar House Review, West Texas Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and other journals. Eileen founded and edits Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books, and curates the Lily Poetry Salon.

Deborah Leipziger is the author of the chapbook, Flower Map (Finishing Line Press, 2013); and the poetry collection, Story & Bone (Lily Poetry Review, 2023). Her poems have been published in various literary journals, including Salamander, Lily Poetry Review & Revista Cardenal.She is co-founder of Soul-Lit, an on-line poetry magazine which features spiritual poetry. Deborah is also the author of several non-fiction books on sustainability and human rights issues. She is co-founder of the New England Jewish Poetry Festival.

Michael McInnis was the founder of the Primal Plunge, Boston’s only bookstore dedicated to ‘zine and underground culture and small press literature. He is a co-founding editor and designer of Nixes Mate Review. His poetry and short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Chiron Review, The Commonline Journal, Cream City Review, Naugatuck Review, One-Sentence Poems, Oxford Magazine, White Knuckle Press and Yellow Chair Review to name a few.

Lloyd Schwartz – Poet Laureate of Somerville, MA – has published several books of poetry, including Who’s on First?: New and Selected Poems (University of Chicago Press, 2021); Little Kisses (University of Chicago Press, 2017); Cairo Traffic (University of Chicago Press, 2000); Goodnight, Gracie (University of Chicago Press, 1992), and These People (Wesleyan University Press, 1981). He is also editor of two volumes of collected works by Elizabeth Bishop: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters (Library of America, 2008), which he co-edited with Robert Giroux, and Prose (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011). His book, Music In—and On—the Air(PFP, 2013), is a collection of his music reviews that appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air.  In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, and in 2019 he was named a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in Poetry. Lloyd is the Frederick S. Troy Professor of English Emeritus at UMass Boston and has also taught at Boston State College, Queens College & Harvard University. He is a regular commentator on NPR’s Fresh Air and a contributing arts critic for the ARTery, the arts journal for Boston’s public radio station WBUR. In 2021, Lloyd received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

Voices of Poetry was formed by Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and poetry activist Neil Silberblatt. Since 2012, VOP has presented more than 400 poetry events in NY, NJ, CT & MA. Those events – which have featured Poets Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winners/nominees, as well as those who have not (yet) published a word – have been presented at numerous venues, including Forbes Library in Northampton, MA; Provincetown Art Association & Museum; The Rubin Museum of Art in NYC; Chesterwood in Stockbridge, MA; and The Mount / Edith Wharton’s home in Lenox, MA.  For more information about upcoming VOP events, visit  Voices of Poetry | Facebook.

Voices of Poetry – Back in Cambridge
Saturday, April 22, at 2:00 pm.
Cambridge Public Library
449 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 
Free and open to all. Registration not required.
Handicap accessible.