Why We Chose It: “月” by Chengru He

Oliver de la Paz is the 2023–25 Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA. He is the author and editor of seven books, including 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, was published by Liveright Press in 2023. With Stacey Lynn Brown, he coedited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member of Kundiman, Oliver also serves as cochair of their advisory board. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Artist Trust of Washington, and the Mass Cultural Council and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.