{"id":27425,"date":"2019-09-19T19:46:10","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T23:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom2\/2019\/09\/19\/necc-alumna-to-visit-home-with-her-book\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T14:18:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:18:37","slug":"necc-alumna-to-visit-home-with-her-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2019\/09\/19\/necc-alumna-to-visit-home-with-her-book\/","title":{"rendered":"NECC Alumna to Visit \u201cHome\u201d With her Book"},"content":{"rendered":"

Special feature courtesy of the Observer, NECC’s award-winning student newspaper\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

by: Patty Gosselin, Journalism and Communications major<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Diannely<\/a>

Diannely Antigua NECC alumna returns for a special reading from her book “Ugly Music.”<\/p><\/div>\n

Northern Essex Community College will host published poet and NECC alumna Diannely Antigua on October 9, 2019 in Lecture Hall A in Spurk at 2 p.m. to give an exclusive reading and discussion of her poetry book \u201cUgly Music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antigua, a Dominican American woman raised in Haverhill in \u201ca very sheltered environment\u201d she says, enrolled at NECC when she was only 16 years old. From her humble beginnings at a non-accredited church school in Haverhill, her growth at NECC led her to be named the commencement speaker in 2009 when she graduated with an associate degree in liberal arts. Her experience as commencement speaker, along with the public speaking class she took here at NECC prepared her for many of the public speaking events and readings she does now as a published poet.<\/p>\n

Antigua credits Northern Essex with \u201craising her\u201d she says: \u201cI met the professors along the way that were really helpful, also the classes that I decided to take just really helped lay the foundation for classes that I would take later on at UMass Lowell and NYU.\u201d One professor she had here at NECC served the role of being her writing mentor. Robert Jackson, who is still in her life 13 years later has been so helpful to Antigua with everything from reading her writing samples to helping her apply to grad schools.<\/p>\n

She was involved with Parnassus, NECC\u2019s own literary magazine and she currently continues to submit her poems to literary magazines regularly. She even landed the role of associate poetry editor at a magazine called BOAAT, a position she had to step down from to give more attention to her book \u201cUgly Music.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her book she\u2019ll be reading from at the NECC event \u201cUgly Music\u201d was published in May earlier this year and deals with subjects like immigration, mental illness and sexual assault. Antigua, a survivor of sexual assault at the age of only 11 years old says she doesn\u2019t want to shy away from talking about those subjects and uses her platform as a way to heal from her trauma, and to help others who may be dealing with similar situations. \u201cI think there\u2019s very few people that haven\u2019t been affected by one or both of those topics,\u201d she says. She also attends weekly therapy sessions.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the lessons I learned as a girl was to keep those things quiet. We\u2019re seeing that now as people are speaking up through the \u2018me too movement\u2019. They\u2019re just now being able to voice their trauma. This was kind of my own way of having my own \u2018me too moment\u2019, which was my book,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Antigua also masters the art of melding her experience with these sensitive subjects and the mundane. In her poem \u201cRe-Education\u201d she gives a special shout-out to a Haverhill burrito hot-spot Tacos Lupita, but also talks about Plan B. \u201cI have a lot of epiphanies while doing very mundane things in life, it\u2019s always been that way. I\u2019ve always very much appreciated the mundane,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The growth of Antigua\u2019s poetry career sparked when she was published for the first time in UMass Lowell\u2019s literary magazine. Later, she was accepted into the master\u2019s program at NYU for creative writing. \u201cTo this day I\u2019m still very much surprised that I got into that program\u201d she says about NYU. She was still working on her thesis when her friend encouraged her to submit her book for the Pamet River Prize which came with a publication. She ended up winning that prize and was published by YesYes Books in May of 2019.<\/p>\n

Antigua offers advice to anyone who wishes to pursue their passion who might need encouragement: just show up and continue to show up even when you feel like you don\u2019t have anything to give to your craft, she says. \u201cI think sometimes we can get recognition from outside of ourselves and that feels great, but I think it\u2019s important to recognize for yourself and be proud of the work that you\u2019ve done. And then being able to recognize the work that you\u2019ve done, allows you to come back to that work again and say \u2018well I\u2019ve done this so far and I can keep going,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

As far as coming back to the Haverhill campus at NECC, Antigua remembers a time when the Newbury Caf\u00e9 in Spurk was called \u201cJitters\u201d and she would spend hours writing there and meeting with her writing mentor. She says, \u201cThe simple act of being back on campus, I think will be magical because it\u2019s definitely a home for me in many ways. It\u2019s kind of like coming home after being on a long journey and talking to your family about all the things you did while you were gone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NECC will host published poet and NECC alumna Diannely Antigua on October 9, 2019 in Lecture Hall A in Spurk at 2 p.m. to give an special reading of her poetry book \u201cUgly Music.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNECC Alumna to Visit \u201cHome\u201d With her Book - NECC News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/necc.edu\/newsroom\/2019\/09\/19\/necc-alumna-to-visit-home-with-her-book\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NECC Alumna to Visit \u201cHome\u201d With her Book - 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