Middlesex Community College will host poet and literary performer Regie Gibson as part of the Visiting Writers Series. The event will take place at 12:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 7 in the Bedford Campus Café East.
“What years of workshopping poetry and classroom teaching has shown me is I have a very limited ability – if any – to teach anyone how to make a poem successful or, even better,” Gibson said. “But, I can – on my better days – often help the poem suck less! That is, suggest ways to freshen up cliche, find direction, clarity and complexity, and help refine the music of it.”
Performing and lecturing widely in the U.S., Cuba and Europe, Gibson is a former National Poetry Slam Individual Champion in the U.S. and winner of the Absolute Poetry Award and Europa in Versi Award competitions in Europe. He has composed text for and performed with Handel & Haydn Society’s Crossing the Deep and has featured with The Boston City Singers, The Mystic Chorale, and the Lexington Symphony.
His poetry has appeared in The Iowa Review, Poetry Magazine, Harvard Divinity Magazine, as well as the anthology Spoken Word Revolution (Source-books, 2005). In 2023, his play “The Juke: A Blues Bacchae” premiered in Boston’s Calderwood Pavilion.
An actor and creator of The Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy, he is Artistic Director of Arts for Social Cohesion. Gibson has been awarded Live Arts Boston grants and a Brother Thomas Fellowship.
Teaching at Berklee College of Music and Clark University, Gibson serves on the boards of the New England Poetry Club and Grub Street Writers. In 2025, he was appointed by Governor Healey as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The MCC Visiting Writers Series is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Office of Student Engagement.
MCC’s Café East is located in the Campus Center Building at 591 Springs Road in Bedford. Parking is available on-campus.