Join us at the Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society for a FREE poetry reading on Wednesday, November 5 from 6:00pm – 8:00pm. Each program begins with an open mic and features two headlining poets. This month’s poets are Monica Ong and Virginia Shreve. No registration is required and donations are greatly appreciated to support the not-for-profit museum. Please visit www.noahwebsterhouse.org/wordhouse-poetry/ for more information.
A visual poet and the author of Silent Anatomies (2015) and Planetaria (2025), Monica Ong brings a designer’s eye to experimental writing that surfaces hidden narratives of women and diaspora. Her work has been exhibited at the Poetry Foundation and her fine press visual poetry editions and literary art objects reside in over sixty distinguished institutional collections worldwide. In 2024, Ong was named a United States Artists Fellow.
Virginia Shreve, Town of Canton Poet Laureate, Beat Poet Laureate of CT 2020-2022, and newly-minted Lifetime Beat Poet by the National/International Beat Poet Foundation, resides in the small river village of Collinsville, CT, with husband and dogs, none well-trained, but all good-natured. Her poems have appeared in various anthologies, The Southern Poetry Review, Naugatuck River Review, Slippery Elm, Phantom Drift, Your Daily Poem (online), and others.
