Common Threads 2012

Welcome to the 2nd annual Common Threads!

This year, Mass Poetry is offering its second annual Common Threads group reading and discussion program for April, National Poetry Month. You’ll be able to find everything you need here to facilitate or participate in a Common Threads group. And don’t forget to come hear the poets read at a special Saturday session at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival on April 20-22 in Salem, Massachusetts.

Who can participate, and how do I get folks involved?

• Common Threads is happening in libraries, schools, churches, senior organizations, colleges, bookstores, and book clubs. Or you can just get together with a group of friends!
• Here’s an article about how to get a group started if you haven’t already done so.
• And you can use this poster here to let folks know where and when you’ll be meeting: Common Threads Posters.
• If you are a first-time facilitator of a group, you might want to take a look at this piece written for last year’s Common Threads by Mark Schorr.

How can I participate?

First, download the reader’s guide here or purchase it from Harvard Bookstore:

• Common Threads Guide Vol. 2 PDF
• Common Threads Guide Vol. 2 for Word
• Purchase the Common Threads Reader’s Guide here through the Harvard Bookstore at $10.00 per copy. Your purchase supports Mass Poetry’s initiatives including the Student Day of Poetry/Louder than a Bomb Festival at MIT in Cambridge, and the upcoming Mass Poetry Festival on April 20-22 in Salem, Massachusetts.

Second: Check out the videos of the living poets reading their own poems as well as those poems of the non-living poets.

• View the videos here on youtube.com.
• Or download the videos here on vimeo.com.
• Or watch the videos right here on our website:

Here are our 2012 selections with corresponding videos of poets’ readings:

• “The Author to Her Book” – Anne Bradstreet ( 2012 is the 400th anniversary of her birth)

• “The Fire of Drift-Wood”- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

(Parts 1 and 2)

• Poem 1129 – Emily Dickinson ( tell it slant)

• “For the Union Dead” – Robert Lowell

• “The Hardness Scale” – Joyce Peseroff

• “Horseface” – Sam Cornish

• “if see no end in is” – Frank Bidart

• “Out at Lanesville”- David Ferry

• “Baseball” – Gail Mazur