When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? As a child I first encountered poetry when I was given a Shel Silverstein book. Later in grade school I can remember an assignment of taking text from Macbeth and creating a...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I know I must have encountered poetry earlier than high school but the moment that sticks with me the most was in a high school AP English Language & Composition class. Our...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?I found poetry everywhere in the remote mountains of southern West Virginia where I spent the firstpart of my childhood. I remember teaching myself how to write a 4 in the dirt...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? It is no exaggeration when I say that poetry has been a lifeline for me. I started writing poetry when I was in high school. As a teenager, I struggled with severe untreated...
AmeriCorps is seeking an SCI AmeriCorps fellow to fill the role of Community Engagement Coordinator at Mass Poetry. Duties include leading volunteer recruitment efforts at Mass Poetry to support organizational events such as the Boston Book Festival, Intercollegiate...
On May 3rd, 2024, Mass Poetry's Executive Director Daniel Johnson appeared on CBS News to promote our inaugural Teen Spoken Word Festival. Watch the complete interview here!
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? Like any good Doc Martens wearing teenage proto-goth of the early ‘90s, I loved Sylvia Plath, along with Yeats. It’s hard to believe now, but that was as close to contemporary...
Authievre answered our questions in English and Spanish. Enjoy her responses. Authievre contestó nuestras preguntas en inglés y español. ¡Disfruta sus respuestas! When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? Before I knew I...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems?I was drawn to repetition in sounds and language from an early age – my earliest memories are of the Madeline books (“She even said ‘poo-poo’ to the lion in the zoo”) and the...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? Like most kids, I was exposed to and asked to write poetry in elementary school. In middle school and high school we were forced to analyze the genre. For most of that time, I...
On January 27th, 2024, Parker-Vincent Alva was named Boston's next youth poet laureate. Parker-Vincent Alva is a SW@MP (Spoken Word at Mass Poetry) member and a 2023 GrubStreet Teen Fellow, as well as a student and writer from Boston, MA. He writes poetry and prose...
Young Poets Performing at the 2023 Massachusetts Poetry Festival Join us on May 3-5, 2024, for Mass Poetry's statewide Teen Spoken Word Festival. Located at the GrubStreet Center for Creative Writing and the Institute of Contemporary Art, this three day festival will...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My mother learned many poems by heart and still, at age 92, can recite poetry she learned when she was a child. I am only now realizing how much poetry was a part of my childhood...
Writing While Parenting is a collection of essays that explores the connections between poetry and parenting. How did you discover that you wanted to write about the overlap of these two subjects? Many of these essays come from a monthly column that I started writing...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? Both my parents read aloud to me and my siblings when we were small, and so my first experiences with poetry included children’s verses with strong rhymes and narrative...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? My mother read poems to me, When We Were Very Young, “James James/ Morrison Morrison/ Weatherby George Dupree/ Took great/ Care of his mother/ Though he was only three” and...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I’ve always loved words, and while I worked professionally as an editor for many years, I didn’t discover until decades later that I might have something of my own to say and a...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I first discovered poetry in middle school. I was drawn to the delightful strangeness of e.e.cummings’ language, the quirky sage voice of Emily Dickenson, and the vivid, dramatic...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? When I was about 18, I developed a weird hunch that I wanted to write poetry, but I didn’t really know how to get started. One problem was that I hadn’t found any poets whose...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? I fell in love with poetry in high school but as a reader, not a writer. Over the years I would read poetry, primarily what I think of as the “classics” for well-educated...
When did you first encounter poetry? How did you discover that you wanted to write poems? Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, when I was 18. It spoke deeply to something within me that lit this proverbial lamp of remembrance, something about the metaphysics of poetry...