Middlesex Community College will host poet and educator Toni Bee as part of the Visiting Writers Series. The event will take place at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, February 3 MCC’s Federal Building Assembly Room on the Lowell Campus.
“Talking provides a reflection into your writing,” Bee said. “It’s a garden rake –clearing
exposing, expanding the verdant field of the mind. It’s a 24K deal that can leave
you realizing how rich or how wacky your creativity is. It’s a necessary and precious
process since creators can twirl solo, in their own brilliance, throwing seeds tending
or not. Talking gives clarity to the designer of the green space. It helps recycle,
reseed, or create a new layout new plan. Talking about writing is a treasure chest
of reflection and discovery. It helps one mine the world that has been created in
your own head.”
Bee has been a featured poet at The Cantab (Boston Poetry Slam), Lizard Lounge, Grolier Poetry Book Shop, The New England Poetry Club, The Boston National Poetry Month Festival, and elsewhere.
Her poetry has appeared in Oddball Magazine, Stone’s Throw Boog City, as well as Best Indie Lit New England, Vol. 2 (Black Key Press, 2015). In 2018, she self-published the chapbook 22 Again. Reading and Teaching Phillis Wheatley Peters in Boston – an article co-authored with Nicole Aljoe – was published in the journal Early American Literature.
In 2011, Bee was the first woman elected Poetry Populist of the City of Cambridge and in 2016, was selected Cambridge’s inaugural Poetry Ambassador. She hosts the second Thursday Poetry Reading Series in Hyde Park and Poets in The Garden, a series she founded with readings in public gardens in green spaces in Cambridge and Boston.
A teaching artist and storyteller at The Wang Theatre, Bee is a journalist for Cambridge Community Television, a Community Health Worker, and a founder of Black Lives Matter in Cambridge. She teaches workshops at Writers Without Borders and Grub Street Center for Creative Writing.
“Toni Bee is a powerful and dynamic spoken word poet and activist, and we’re excited that she’ll be coming to MCC to read in our Visiting Writers Series,” said Tom Laughlin, MCC’s Creative Writing Program Coordinator and Professor. “She will also give a craft talk for students in Professor Jonathan Bennett’s Reading and Writing Poetry class.”
The MCC Visiting Writers Series is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Office of Student Engagement.