Oliver de la Paz

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is published by Liveright Press (2023), was the winner of the 2023 New England Book Award for Poetry, and was longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award. With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the
Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU. [On Leave 2025-26.]

Mentor.  Workshops and classes in poetry.

Statement:  “I encourage students to think of themselves not as isolated individuals, but as members of a learning community. For me, the writing workshop is a place where students improve their skills in reading, critical thinking, interpretation, and communication through engagement with their own texts and with those written by others.  To be members of a learning community, I teach my students that verbal and written communication are inextricable, neither can take place successfully if students do not listen to each other. In order for them to grow as members of a learning community, I challenge the class to ask critical questions, engage in civil discourse, and aim to learn from each other.  I do not see learning as fixed or hierarchical, but rather as a process of growth that occurs on multiple levels.

Additionally, by speaking to students about my own struggles with the writing experience, I guide them, helping them tackle their own difficulties with writing in a way that best suits their individual needs as both writers and students.  In engaging in a dialogue with them about the process, I try to make them aware that the act of writing takes time and that many of those who do live the writing life go through frustrations but also great joys. “