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The National Park Service, Friends of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, New England Poetry Club, and Berklee College of Music are pleased to announce the 2022 Longfellow Summer Arts Festival. The festival begins Sunday, June 5 and continues through Sunday, August 21. For the first time since 2019, all events will take place in-person, outdoors on the east lawn of Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
In the 19th century, the Longfellow family home at 105 Brattle Street was a hub for literary, artistic, and intellectual gathering. As the National Park Service celebrates the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Site in 2022, the Summer Festival continues the Longfellow family’s legacy of art in the community. “50 years ago, this site began its transformation from a private home into the vibrant public gathering place that it is today,” says Acting Superintendent Chris Beagan. “We're thrilled to welcome the greater Cambridge community back to their park this summer and to celebrate the power of the arts to bring people together.”
All events are free and open to all. Self-directed family activities will also be available during each event. All events take place at 3:00 PM unless otherwise noted.
The series begins on Sunday, June 5 with the 2022 Student Poetry Awards. The annual awards, presented with the New England Poetry Club, celebrate local poets grades 3-12 as well as the undergraduate Victor Howes Prize winner Logan Klutse. “The Student Poetry Awards are the perfect way to kick-off the Summer Festival’s return to the Longfellow House grounds,” says Park Ranger and coordinator Beth Wasson. “Each of the submissions this year delighted us, moved us, and reminded us of the great talent of the young people in our community.”
On Saturday, June 11, New York City’s Grupo los Santos opens a double-header weekend with a high energy mix of jazz, rock, funk, Afro-Cuban, and Afro-Brazilian sounds. Formed in 1998, Santos has played concerts throughout the US, Cuba, and Europe. Their newest album, “Santos4,” is due out later this year.
On Sunday, June 12, former Poet Laureate of Springfield, MA Magdalena Gomez and poet, educator, and activist Enzo Silon Surin will read recent work. Gomez is the author of M’ija (Heliotrope, 2022), and Surin is the author of When My Body Was A Clinched Fist (Black Lawrence Press, 2020). “Art in general goes down to the basic function of somebody wanting to express themselves and finding a means to do it,” says Surin on Lesley University’s Why We Write podcast. “Whether it's somebody doing beat boxing on the steps in New York City, or wanting to just sing lyrics or write a song or just write a poem. It is about self-expression.”
The Summer Festival continues with a special evening event at 7:00 PM on Sunday, June 19. The Juneteenth Gathering features poetry, music, and a screening of Jubilee Juneteenth and the Thirteenth, a documentary film produced by Boston’s Museum of African American History. The evening will begin with a Drum Call, processional, and #Pop-Up Poetry, A Denise Plays Hard Event, with Multi-Disciplinary Artist/Producer Akili Jamal Haynes, Becoming Chibuzo.
Boston’s Juventas New Music Ensemble brings classical music as a vibrant, living art form to the east lawn on Sunday June 26. They’ll present an afternoon of chamber music, featuring beautiful new works by living composers from the local area and beyond.
On Sunday, July 3, 24, 31, and August 14, performers from Berklee College of Music’s Summer in the City Series will take the stage with a variety of fresh, eclectic music. Featured performers will be announced soon at https://www.nps.gov/long/planyourvisit/summer-festival.htm.
Local poets and translators Martha Collins and Philip Nikolayev continue the series on Sunday, July 10. Collins has published ten volumes of poetry, most recently Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019), as well as four volumes of co-translated Vietnamese poetry, including Black Stars: Poems by Ngo Tu Lap (Milkweed, 2013). Nikolayev is s a Russo-American bilingual poet living in Boston. His bilingual collection of translated verse, The Star of Dazzling Ecstasy: 79 Poems by Alexander Pushkin was published to critical acclaim by Tiptop Street.
The New England Poetry Club will present two prestigious poetry awards during this year’s Summer Festival: The Golden Rose Poetry Award to Patricia Smith on Sunday, July 17, and the Sam Cornish Award to Elizabeth McKim and Askia Touré on Sunday, August 7. The Golden Rose is one of America’s oldest literary prizes. Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize.
Elizabeth Gordon McKim is a poet, teacher, and spoken word artist, whose roots are embedded in the oral tradition of song, story and chant. Her most recent work includes Lovers in the Free Fall (2020). Askia Touré is a pioneer of the Black Arts/Black Aesthetics movement and the Africana Studies movement. His books include From the Pyramids to the Projects, winner of the 1989 American Book Award for Literature.
The Summer Arts Festival concludes with a reading on Sunday, August 21 by poets Chen Chen and Natalie Shapero. “my favorite poems are the ones where i get the deep sense that they need to be read—that the reading is the act(ivation) of the poem,” writes Chen on Twitter. “not so much because they need me to see something the way they do. but because they want some company.” His second book of poetry, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is due out from BOA Editions in September 2022. Most recently, Shapero is the author of the poetry collection POPULAR LONGING (Copper Canyon, 2021).
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The 2022 Longfellow Summer Arts Festival is generously supported by Friends of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters.
New England Poetry Club is an association of poets founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, and Conrad Aiken to foster the art of poetic expression.
Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site preserves the house that served as headquarters for General George Washington during the Siege of Boston and later home to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of the world’s foremost 19th century poets.
Last updated: May 30, 2024