The Writer’s Center welcomes poet Michele Wolf for a reading from her new collection, Peacocks on the Streets. Michele is joined by poet Margaret McCarthy reading from her collection In The Becoming: Poems On The Deirdre Story, a meditation on a creative woman’s coming to language.
FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
Michele Wolf is a poet, writer, editor, and teacher. Her previous poetry collections are Immersion (Hilary Tham Capital Collection winner, The Word Works), Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Prize for Poetry), and The Keeper of Light (Painted Bride Quarterly Poetry Chapbook Series winner). Her poems have been featured in The Southern Review, Poetry, The Hudson Review, North American Review, and many other journals and anthologies, as well as on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, poets.org, and the Poetry Foundation website (Poem of the Day). Among her honors are a literary arts Independent Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, an Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award, and fellowships from the Montgomery County, Maryland, Arts and Humanities Council, Yaddo, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. She teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda and lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Her website is http://michelewolf.com.
Margaret McCarthy is a poet, playwright and photographer. Her collection In The Becoming: Poems On The Deirdre Story was published by Broadstone Books in 2024, followed by her collaboration with bi-lingual Irish poet Gabriel Rosenstock, Beloved: Photo-Tanka Meditations, published by Broadstone Books in 2025. Her collection Notebooks From Mystery School (Finishing Line Press, 2016) was a New Women’s Voices Awards Finalist. Her poems and dramatic monologues have appeared in international literary magazines, journals and anthologies including: The Pagan Muse: Poems of Ritual and Inspiration, Working Papers in Irish Studies, Cyphers Magazine (Ireland), The Albero Project (Italy) Poetry New Zealand, Gargoyle Magazine (Washington DC), and the Hiv Here And Now On-Line Poetry Project, to name a few. Her website is http://www.margaretmccarthy.com
About the Book
Michele Wolf’s poetry collection Peacocks on the Streets possesses immediate mystique and grit. Life is strange, the poet alerts her reader, strange things happen. Embrace the strangeness, Wolf suggests, for “Living with wildlife is a part of life—/What we fear, what we prize.” Wolf draws a clear parallel between humans and animals; our worlds and our habitats constantly come into contact, even blur. In “Manatee Viewing Room,” the poet thinks, “Next they’ll receive Publix/Gift cards wrapped in BOGO circulars.” While the sentiment concerning these manatees is light-hearted, the inevitability of destruction due to carelessness and a sense of false-ownership is clear, and it extends human-to-human. Wolf asks, “Who is it who owns the recounting of history?/Who is it who owns a Black man’s life?” Peacocks on the Streets presents what at first feels absurd, and then through quick twists of imagery, absurdity becomes normalcy. This is our reality. In “Postcards at the Museum,” Wolf candidly describes, “The murderers had no fear of identification. Sometimes/The murderers were police. Vendors sold pop and sandwiches.” We are all spectacle, Wolf seems to say. Make the choice, come watch us.
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.
Enjoying our free events? Help us offer more programs to support writers with a $10 donation »