FSU lecturer earns spot in finals of Massachusetts Poetry Olimpics
By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez
Associate Editor
Professor Hannah Baker-Siroty is a visiting lecturer at Framingham State. She mostly teaches Composition courses and graduate courses, and she occasionally substitutes for other classes. She’s also in the finals of the “Massachusetts Poetry Olimpics,” also known as MAPO, this year.
This annual poetry competition was established in 2025.
Olimpics is spelled this way in order to avoid trademark infringement according to LD Green, founder of the MAPO.
He said MAPO is run as four events, with nearly 190 registered poets taking part.
Baker-Siroty said the state was divided into three regional teams - Western, Central, and Eastern - and poems were submitted for a monthly category for four months.
In May, MAPO accepted elegies; in June, villanelles; in July, sonnets; and in August, free-verse, according to their official website.
Baker-Siroty said she wrote a poem for each of the four months for the Eastern Massachusetts team.
She said she received an email recently that stated she was a finalist in the competition.
The final competition date and awards ceremony is Oct. 25. There, Baker-Siroty will have to share a new poem and will either win bronze, silver, or gold in the sonnet category.
Green said that in the competition, the top three poets in each category qualify for the finals.
The finals will be at Smith College in Northampton, he added.
Along with the medals for individual poets, each of the teams will also receive awards, he said.
Baker-Siroty said she has been working on sonnets in general for the past two years.
The one she wrote, “Have a Coffee, Write a Sonnet,” doesn’t follow the strict sonnet form, she said.
Her sonnets still have 14 lines and have a “turn,” but they don’t follow the rhyming pattern, she said.
“I’m not very interested in rhyming poetry very much, personally… I’m not compelled by it, so I don’t write it,” Baker-Siroty said.
Green said Baker-Siroty’s work is fun to read.
“Usually when I read a poem non-linearly, the substance evaporates, and the poem is lost. But with ‘Have a Coffee, Write a Sonnet,’ the art of her language and the message of her piece are still there,” Green said.
Acting Chair of the English Department, Lisa Eck, said she isn’t surprised Baker-Siroty is a finalist.
She said Baker-Siroty shared some of her sonnets during last year’s week of poetry.
“We were just so moved by someone writing contemporary sonnets and keeping the tradition, but not being reined in by all the rules,” Eck said.
She added she’s proud to live in a state that has these kinds of competitions.
She’s happy that Massachusetts “honors its poets and helps to make poetry more visible, more audible,” Eck said.
Baker-Siroty said she’s glad a poetry-centered competition is in Massachusetts.
She said she hasn’t done a writing competition like this before.
“Honestly, I’m just excited about getting bronze,” Baker-Siroty said. If she wins gold, that’s “icing on the cake.”
Before all of this, she said she was having some trouble with submissions.
“It’s hard being a writer, and so this was like a good positive reinforcement for me,” Baker-Siroty said.
Baker-Siroty was an associate English professor at Pine Manor College before it closed in 2022.
“Right after the pandemic. And I’ve been here ever since! I really love it here!” Baker-Siroty said.
She has an MFA in poetry, but she’s also studied screenwriting and fiction.
“I really like incorporating creativity into the classes that I teach,” Baker-Siroty said.
Some of the classes she has either taught or filled in for at Framingham State include mythology and creative writing, she said.
One of her former students, sophomore English major Margaret Hoar, said she’s excited for Baker-Siroty.
“She has such a passion for literature and for poetry,” Hoar said.
Baker-Siroty was one of Hoar’s first professors here, and she helped her feel welcomed, Hoar said.
The professor has “a love of writing, a love of communication,” she said.
Baker-Siroty said her interest in writing has been with her since childhood.
She’s dyslexic and has some learning disabilities, so she had a difficult time learning to read and write - except for poetry, she said.
“Instead of it being something that was holding me back, I found a way through poetry to push me forward to a place where I wanted to study English and become an English teacher, and talk about writing,” Baker-Siroty said.
The creative side of writing spoke to her more than traditional literature study, she said. “I really love to play with language.”
