Celebrate National Poetry Month at the library with readings by the Chive Collective. The poets in the Chive Collective are Eileen Cleary, Christine Jones, Anne Elezabeth Pluto, and Gloria Monaghan.

Eileen Cleary is the author of 2 a.m. with Keats (NixesMate Press, 2020) and Child Ward of the Commonwealth (Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize. Her poems have appeared in Sugar House Review, West Texas Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, JAMA, Right Hand Pointing and other journals. Eileen is a 2016 and 2018 nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Eileen founded and edits the Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books, and hosts/curates the Lily Poetry Salon. She is a graduate of Lesley University’s and Solstice of Pine Manor’s MFA programs. As a nurse and poet living in Massachusetts, she is passionate about poetry and its witness of humanity.

Christine Jones earned her MFA from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a therapist and mother of two. She’s founder/editor-in-chief of Poems2go, an international public poetry project, and an associate editor of Lily Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and online, including 32 poems, Sugar House Review, Cider Press Review, SWWIM, On the Seawall, Solstice Literary Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, Passagers Journal, Pangyrus, Blue Mountain Review, and Ruminate, among others. Several poems have been turned into short films. She is author of Girl Without a Shirt (Finishing Line Press, 2020)  and Now Calls Me Daughter, also co-editor of the anthology Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic.

Anne Elezabeth Pluto is Professor of Literature and Theatre at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA where she is the artistic director and one of the founders of the Oxford Street Players, the university’s Shakespeare troupe. She is an alumna of Shakespeare & Company, and has been a member of the Worcester Shakespeare Company since 2011. She was a member of the Boston small press scene in the late 1980s and is one of the founders and editors at Nixes Mate Review. Recent publications include The Buffalo Evening News, Unlikely Stories: Episode IV, Mat Hat Lit, Pirene’s Fountain, The Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Mockingheart Review, Yellow Chair Review, Levure Litteraire – numero 12, The Naugatuck River Review, and Muddy River Review, among others.

Gloria Monaghan was born in New York City, but grew up outside of Detroit, where her family has lived for many years. She began writing poetry as a teenager after reading the imagists poets. She also writes fiction. She has written about Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and media culture. Her 7th book, Diary of Saint Marion, Lily Poetry Review, is coming out in 2025. She is also a filmmaker whose recent project is based on the life and work of painter, Jose Ricon Mora. Her last film on painter Nancy Ellen Craig was accepted into the Provincetown Film Festival in 2022. She lives south of Boston with her two cats. Gloria teaches poetry at Wentworth Institute of Technology and also runs poetry workshops and retreats.