Selected Poets
Jean-Dany Joachim, Cambridge Poet Populist from 2009 to 2011, and the current Poet in Residence at First Church in Cambridge, selected six winning and one honorable mention for the Poetry of Science.
Danielle Legros Georges
Danielle is a writer, literary translator, and the author of Island Heart: The Poems of Ida Faubert. Appointed the second Poet Laureate of the city of Boston, she served in the role from 2015 to 2019. Her awards include fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Foundation, and the Black Metropolis Research Consortium. She is a professor of creative writing at Lesley University, and the translation editor of Consequenceforum.org. Collaborators: Daniel Chonde and Sheena Vasquez.
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Rachel Wahlert
Rachel Wahlert is a young adult living in Dorchester, Massachusetts. She supports low income undergraduate students to get them to graduation and find employment. In her free time, you can find her upside down playing capoeira or curled in a ball reading a romance novel. She is honored to be a poet for the Poetry of Science. She is inspired by her grandmothers, her experiences, human suffering and resilience. Collaborators: José Zepeda and Huili Chen
Charles Coe
Charles is the author of three books of poetry and author of Spin Cycles, a novella published by Gemma Media. Charles was selected as a Boston Literary Light by the Associates of the Boston Public Library and is a former artist fellow at the St. Botolph Club in Boston. He was a 2017 artist-in-residence for the city of Boston, where he created an oral history project focused on residents of Mission Hill. Charles has served as poet-in-residence at Wheaton College and at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State and is an adjunct professor of English at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, and Bay Path University, where he teaches in both MFA programs. Collaborators: Michael Wells and Nandita Menon. Learn more about Charles >>
Luisa Fernanda Apolaya Torres
Luisa is a Peruvian-born, Los Angeles-raised poet and is deeply honored to be a part of Poetry of Science. In high school, her English teacher insisted that she participate in a "Poetry Out Loud" competition - that's when she first savored the intrigue of words and pauses on her tongue, and the inexplicable joy that stemmed from that. She studied mechanical engineering and theater at MIT. Her poetry is inspired by an assortment of things from her daily life - from trees to arduinos to inexplicable dichotomies. Collaborators: Christian Loyo and Shannon Johnson.
Miriam Manglani
Miriam lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and three children. She graduated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2005 with a Masters of Education in Technology in Education. She is a member of Writer’s Village University where she is working towards her Fiction MFA Certificate. She works full-time as a Technical Training Manager at Sonos. Her poetry has been published in Village Square, an online literary journal. Collaborators: Olumakinde Ogunnaike and Swati Gupta.
Suparnamaaya Prasad
Suparnamaaya is an undergraduate junior at MIT majoring in Electrical Engineering and Creative Writing. She was born to South Indian immigrants, and the drive to maintain continuity in family and culture fundamentally shaped her childhood. These instilled values have led her to storytelling, where she's not only able to share the experiences of those who came before her, but to also advocate for those yet to come. Collaborators: Kathleen Esfahany and Kareem Carr
Sophie Laurence
Sophie Laurence’s favorite childhood poet was Robert Desnos (whose poems she recited by heart). Growing up, she also loved Korean sijo. Her first national honorable mention came in third grade with an original Korean sijo poem, “My Wild Panther,” published in Faces magazine. Later, in high school, her poem, “Complicit,” was a winner of a New York Times poetry contest. Sophie’s multilingualism (French, Korean, English) shapes her relationship with language. She studies computer languages, and embraces music, color, and numbers as languages. Sophie is currently a first-year student at Amherst College, where she studies and writes poetry while majoring in computer science and political science. Collaborator: Jason Samaroo. Learn more about Sophie