Mass Poetry is once again sponsoring a series of events at the 2026 Boston Book Festival (October 17, 2026.) This year’s Mass Poetry programming brings together a vibrant mix of readings, workshops, and community gatherings for poetry lovers of all experience levels. Highlights include our lively Poetry Tent, where poetry lovers can try their hand at a sonnet-writing activity, along with readings by acclaimed poets Richard Hoffman and Lloyd Schwartz, a celebration of the Mass Book Awards featuring Laura Cresté, Patrick Donnelly, and Carla Panciera, and the lively spoken-word showcase “Poetry Off the Page,” hosted by Amanda Shea.
Attendees can also create their own poetry in workshops led by Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah, with “All These Words For Love (For You,)” and Jill McDonough, with “The Sonnet: Bang Out a Formal Poem the Size of Your Hand.” And, of course, we’ll round out the festivities with the beloved “Poems & Pints” reading at Room & Board, where you can raise a glass (or two) with fellow poetry lovers while enjoying readings, conversation, and the festive spirit of the Boston Book Festival.
The festival is free to attend.
Poetry on the Plaza
9:00 am – 5:00pm I Copley Plaza
Stop by our tent at Copley Plaza to celebrate the landing of Sonnet BOOM in Boston, and write a sonnet with us!
Mass Poetry Writing Room: A Space Just For You
11:00 am – 12:00 pm I Goethe-Institut, 2nd Floor
Write. Breathe. Be in community.
A Reading with Richard Hoffman and Lloyd Schwartz
Moderated by Danielle Jones
12:30 – 1:30pm I Goethe-Institut, First Floor
Join us for this session that spans a lifetime—the lifetime to date of award-winning poet Richard Hoffman. With the matched volumes, Each Child a Disappearance: New & Selected Poems (1972–2025) and Mundus et Infans: New & Selected Suites, Sequences, & Series, Hoffman explores his celebrated past and present as an artist. Exploring grand concepts with the same honesty as domestic scenes, learn from an author that National Book Award winner Patricia Smith calls “a fiercely gifted poet whose stanzas revel in the infinite possibilities of language.” He will be joined by Lloyd Schwartz, poet laureate of Somerville—“A major poet with a gentle comic soul” (Roger Rosenblatt)—who will share from his new books, He Tells His Mother What He’s Working On and Artur Schnabel and Joseph Szigeti Play Mozart at the Frick Collection (April 4, 1948) and Other Poems. Danielle Jones, director of the Nossrat Yassini Poetry Festival, will host this reading and conversation.
All These Words For Love (For You) Workshop
12:30 – 1:30pm I Goethe-Institut, Second Floor
Join Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah for All These Words For Love (For You). This workshop’s title is from one of the closing lines of the poem “For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers,” written by the poet Reginald Dwayne Betts. It’s a strange love poem, addressed to someone in particular, “anthophilous,” but exploring love in its broadness, its specificities, and also in its weirdness. This workshop is an invitation to write weird love poems! To explore love in its little oddities, and to mine for the language best suited to describe the things and people we love.
The Sonnet: Bang Out a Formal Poem the Size of Your Hand
1:00 – 2:00pm I Boston Public Library – Orientation Room
Sonnets are short, powerful, and incredibly varied in what they can accomplish. In this workshop we will think of the form as a kind of puzzle, like a game of word-Tetris, a bespoke Sudoku for when you are stuck in a meeting or on a bus. You’re just tinkering around, then BAM! you have a workable poem draft that’s already paying attention to sound and precision. Students will learn just enough about poetic meter—and have the opportunity to discuss their entirely reasonable fears of poetic meter. You don’t have to have written poetry before to be able to participate in this session with Jill McDonough: we’ll start off writing prose, and then refine it in stages before you write your own sonnet in class, with all the help you want.
Celebrating the Mass Book Award
2:00 – 3:00pm I Goethe-Institut, First Floor (100)
Sponsored by the Massachusetts Center for the Book in collaboration with Mass Poetry. Three distinctive voices from the 2026 Mass Book Awards longlist come together to read work that moves between the intimate and the expansive, reckoning with painful family legacies and navigating the burdens of memory and the past. Exploring grief, desire, and the healing power of the natural world, Laura Cresté (In the Good Years), Patrick Donnelly (Willow Hammer), and Carla Panciera (One Trail of Longing, Another of String) make room for contradiction, layering joy and tenderness alongside more difficult truths. They will share poems from their longlisted collections, as well as new work. Courtney Andree, Executive Director of Mass Center for the Book, will host.
Poetry Off the Page
3:30-4:15pm I Boston Public Library Newsfeed Cafe
A stellar line-up of spoken word poets take the stage and steal some hearts in a fast-paced, time-stopping poetry extravaganza: Essmaa Litim, Daiana “Dexter” Garcia, René Manuel Ramos. Whether you’re a longtime fan of spoken word or this is your first experience, this reading is sure to immerse you in poetry and leave you wanting more. Our host is Amanda Shea, a three-time Boston Music Award-winning Spoken Word Artist and Executive Producer of FreeVerse Presents.
Poems & Pints
6:30 pm – 7:30pm I Room & Board
Join us and raise a glass (or two) with other poetry lovers at what’s become a favorite BBF tradition, Poems & Pints! Comfy furniture, free pints and pretzels, with readings by notable poets from their new collections and forthcoming collections: Carson Jordan, Kirun Kapur, Tomás Q. Morín, and Clay Ventre