Celebrating a Beloved Teacher:

Cambridge Poets Contribute to New Anthology

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

Boston Center for Adult Education poetry teacher Ottone Riccio is venerated in the 54-poet marathon “Do Not Give Me Things Unbroken: An Anthology Of Contemporary Poetry To Honor and Celebrate Ottone Riccio.” In the work, his students pay tribute in the the most appropriate medium – the pen and the verse. The book, which was edited by Lana H. Ayers, Martha Miller, Mary R. Collins, John Wunjo, Peng-Ean Khoo and Ellen B. Siegel, is available from the publisher, iuniverse.com, where it can be downloaded for $6, or through Miller for $20.

Riccio, 81, authored “The Intimate Art of Writing Poetry.” A onetime fellow student of noted poets Anne Sexton and George Starbucks, among others, he took over their BCAE class nearly 40 years ago. On Oct. 2 from 7-9 p.m., Riccio will be honored at a wine and cheese reception at the Center.

Interspersed within the book’s rich and voluminous literary offerings are prints and photos by Mary Collins, Sheila Twyman, Martha Miller and other contributing poets who are artists as well. The title comes from a request made by Riccio of his students in a class, "Do not give me things unbroken." Poet and painter Peng-Ean Khoo recalled Riccio’s ultimately fruitful challenges: "We always found ourselves being flung away from the farthest corners of our comfort zones."

Represented within the collection are Cambridge poets Wunjo, Victor Ocampo and Beatriz Adelrio, who are all noteworthy in their own right. Wunjo (the Celtic Rune of joy), born John Osborne, has lived in Cambridgeport since 1994 and Cambridge since 1987. He hosts the weekly live call-in radio program “Moonglow with Wunjo” on WCCR, which broadcasts every Monday at 6 p.m. out of Cambridge Cable/CCTV; on the two-hour show, he reads poetry and discusses current events. A high school dropout, he studied acting in New York in 1956, where he met his wife, whom he was married to for 22 years. He has three sons and five grandchildren, and along the way, attended Yale Drama school as a playwright and acquired a master’s in social work from Smith College. “It's been an interesting and exciting shamanic journey indeed,” he said.

Cambridge resident Ocampo, a Philippine native, came to the United States as a young teen in 1974 when his father was pursuing graduate studies at Harvard. At Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, he studied with English teachers Ms. Mary Sullivan, Mrs. Mary Eisenhaure, Mr. Burns and Mr. Hurley. “They were really some of the first people to help me appreciate the possibilities of language,” he said. “Ricky (Riccio) helped me to transform that appreciation into poetry.”

Ocampo holds a B.S. in biology from St. John's University in Minnesota, an M.S. in Zoology from the University of the Philippines, and an M.S. in Clinical Investigation from the MGH-Institute of Health Professions. He presently is a Project Manager at the Division of Preventive Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Among other journals, his poetry has appeared in Soundings East, Modern Haiku,Wind Magazine, The Cape Rock and StarLine.

“I always think of Ricky when I am stuck with a line,” he reflected. I ask myself, ‘What would Ricky do here? How would he handle this?’"

Adelrio is a lawyer and a mediator in the U.S. and in her native Argentina, with the core of her legal practice involving representing abused and neglected children and parents. In her mediation practice, she facilitates family and other potentially non-litigious conflicts.

With a Master of Laws from New York University Law School, she has lived in the Harvard Square area since 1982 when she arrived with her ex-husband, who taught physics at Brandeis. She read poetry at the Living Wage Tent City during last year’s sit-ins, and is a regular at Stone Soup Poetry. She reads annually at the Marshfield Art Fair and was featured in the Art Speaks recital at the Marshfield Art Gallery. In Argentina, her collection "Youth" was published when she was 17 years old; this past January and Feburary, she read poetry on the weekly radio program Tango. She has three poems in the anthology.

“Ricky was my first teacher of poetry,” she said. “Not only is he an exquisite artist and teacher, but he inspires in me the passion I need to create and the inquisitiveness to reinvent the existing. I feel he is a fine artist and teacher who has an exceptional sensibility. He has the ability to change a word, a comma, a title, or the order of maybe two words, and create an extraordinary poem.”

For information or to R.S.V.P. for the Oct. 2 reception, please call 617-267-4430. To order the anthology, send a check for $20 to: Martha Miller, 100 Brackett Rd., Newton 02458.