This last year I worked on a literary magazine. Wee Right Güd, the literary magazine for the 7th and 8th Grade of PVPA. Of the many things I learned, I learned to enjoy poetry again.
I loved it as a child, but as a student in school, we disected poems as if they were strange dead bugs. This did not encourage a love of poetry, nor did it inspire me to take what I had learned about structure and write my own. It made me question my own ability. If we can find flaws in the great masters, how many more flaws will my own poems have. What I did not understand was that the so called flaws should have told me more about my instructors than they did about the poems. Unfortunatly, as a child we do not have the experience to know that so often it is their own fears talking. What I learned last year from the students editoral board of Wee Right Güd, is that at many times, it is the imperfect that is the most enjoyable.
I am fairly unfamilar with Poetry in Westfield, but I am not going to let that stop me from including what i do know.
I know that the Teapot Gallery has thier SPOKEN WORD SERIES 7pm-9pm Tuesdays. Jesters also has a Spoken Word Evening on Mondays
In looking for others, I did find this site, and it is well worth checking out :
http://poetrynews.wordpress.com/
a weekly online calendar/magazine which chronicles
poetry-related events in the Pioneer Valley of Western MA
as well as the greater Hartford/Springfield area.
You will also find links to poetry in NYC, Albany, Boston and other areas