Last updated: April 11, 2024
Thing to Do
Summer Festival
NPS Photo
The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the East Lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public.
Details
Duration
60-90 Minutes
Most events last 60-90 minutes. Some special events are longer. Participants are welcome to arrive and leave any time.
Activity
Live Music
Enjoy live music, poetry, and other community events on Sunday afternoons from June through August. Limited seating provided; consider bringing a folding chair or picnic blanket.
Age(s)
All ages welcome.
Pets Allowed
Yes
Leashed pets are welcome on the East Lawn.
Activity Fee
No
Entrance fees may apply, see Fees & Passes information.
Reservations
No
Season
Summer
Summer Arts Festival events take place on Sunday afternoons from June through August.
Time of Day
Day
Most events take place at 3:00 PM. Check detailed listing for more information.
Accessibility Information
The East Lawn is accessible via gravel pathways. All events use amplified sound and provide seating.
Free Music, Poetry, and Community on the Lawn
The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the East Lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public.
In the case of inclement weather, poetry readings will be moved indoors. Concerts will be canceled or rescheduled.
The series is made possible with support from the Friends of Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters, New England Poetry Club, Berklee College of Music, and the Mass Cultural Council.
June 2, 3:00 PM | Longfellow Student Poetry Awards
Kick off the summer with a celebration of emerging poets! The Longfellow Student Poetry Contest is an annual competition of original poetry, with categories for high school, middle school, and elementary school students. Students will read their winning poems at this ceremony, followed by a celebration on the lawn. The ceremony concludes with the presentation of the Victor Howes Prize to an undergraduate student.
The contest aims to encourage and celebrate young poets in exploring their craft, and is co-sponsored by the Frank Buda Memorial Fund, New England Poetry Club, Friends of the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters, and National Park Service.
Gail Mazur by Morgan Lacasse
June 9, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: 2023 Golden Rose Award with Gail Mazur
June 16, 12:30-3:00 PM | Juneteenth Gathering
Rain date June 22
Gather for Juneteenth to honor those who endured 18th century slavery and seized freedom on Brattle Street, their living descendants, and the long history of Black activism in greater Cambridge. This event will include a community gathering with music, poetry, speeches, art, food, and family activities. Details coming soon.
June 23, 3:00 PM | Concert: Juventas New Music Ensemble
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Juventas shares classical music as a vibrant, living art form. The ensemble brings audiences music from a diverse array of composers that live in today’s world and respond to our time.
June 30, 3:00 PM | Pride Picnic
Rain date July 7
Celebrate Pride by bringing your favorite picnic blanket to lay out on the Longfellow House lawn between 12:00-3:00 PM! This collaborative event will highlight LGBTQ+ history with Queer History tours, lawn games, food, and music. All ages and abilities welcome. Some food and refreshments provided but we encourage you to bring your own picnic foods as well.
Presented in partnership with the Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commission.
July 7, 3:00 PM | Concert: Berklee Summer in the City Series (Performer TBA)
Rain date September 1
The Berklee Summer in the City concert series presents free performances throughout Greater Boston from May through September. Stay tuned for 2024 performer announcements!
July 21, 3:00 PM | Concert: Berklee Summer in the City Series (Performer TBA)
Rain date September 1
The Berklee Summer in the City concert series presents free performances throughout Greater Boston from May through September. Stay tuned for 2024 performer announcements!
Sarah Audsley by Carolyn Kehler
July 14, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Sarah Audsley and George Kalogeris
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. She is the Writing Program Director at Vermont Studio Center.
George Kalogeris’s most recent book of poems is Winthropos, (Louisiana State University, 2021). He is also the author of Guide to Greece (LSU), a book of paired poems in translation, Dialogos, and poems based on the notebooks of Albert Camus, Camus: Carnets. His poems and translations have been anthologized in Joining Music with Reason, chosen by Christopher Ricks (Waywiser, 2010). He is the winner of the James Dickey Poetry Prize, the Stephen J. Meringoff Award, and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. For the past two decades, he has been the Director of the Classics Minor at Suffolk University.
NPS photo/Sam DiMatteo
Saturday July 27, 2:00-4:00 PM | Poets in the Garden
Join your host, Poet Populist emeritus of Cambridge Toni Bee, and other local poets for an afternoon of art and poetry alongside the Longfellow House garden. Full details coming soon.
July 28, 3:00 PM | Concert: Berklee Summer in the City Series (Performer TBA)
Rain date September 1
The Berklee Summer in the City concert series presents free performances throughout Greater Boston from May through September. Stay tuned for 2024 performer announcements!
August 4, 3:00 PM | Concert: Berklee Summer in the City Series (Performer TBA)
Rain date September 1
The Berklee Summer in the City concert series presents free performances throughout Greater Boston from May through September. Stay tuned for 2024 performer announcements!
August 11, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Sam Cornish Award with Gloria Mindock
Gloria Mindock is editor of Červená Barva Press and an award-winning author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her poems have been published and translated into eleven languages. Her recent book, Grief Touched the Sky at Night (Glass Lyre Press, 2023), won the International Impact Award, the Speak-up Talk Radio International Firebird Award and the Independent Press Award. Gloria’s book ASH (Glass Lyre Press, 2021) won several book awards and was translated into Serbian by Milutin Durickovic and published by Alma Press in Belgrade in 2022. At the Winter’s Gate, La Portile Raiului, was translated into Romanian by Flavia Cosma and published by Ars Longo Press in Romania. Gloria has numerous publications including Ibbetson, Gargoyle, The James Dickey Review, Growth: Journal of Literature, Culture, & Art (Macedonia), KGB Lit, to name just a few. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018.
Elizabeth Bradfield by Lisa Sette
August 18, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Elizabeth Bradfield and Kevin Goodan
Writer/Naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield’s recent books are Toward Antarctica, Once Removed, and the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, co-created with CMarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield and winner of the 2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, co-created with Alexandra Teague and Miller Oberman. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The Sun, and her honors include the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry and a Stegner Fellowship. Liz works as a naturalist and field assistant at home on Cape Cod, teaches creative writing at Brandeis University, and is Editor-in-Chief of Broadsided.
Kevin Goodan was born in Montana and raised on the Flathead Indian Reservation where his stepfather and brothers are tribal members. Goodan earned his BA from the University of Montana and worked as a firefighter for ten years with the U.S. Forest Service before receiving his MFA from University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 2004. He has taught at the University of Connecticut and has served as Visiting Writer at Wesleyan University. He currently lives in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire.
Kymm Coveney by Cesc Anadon
August 25, 3:00 PM | Poetry Reading: Kymm Coveney and J. Kates
Kymm Coveney was born in Boston, raised in Scituate, and has lived in Spain since the 1982 World Cup. The pandemic caught this free-lance writer and translator sheltering in Jamaica Plain, where she now spends the summer months, far from Barcelona's heat. History of Milk, Kymm's translation of award-winning novelist Mónica Ojeda's poetry collection, will be published by Coffee House Press in 2026. Several poems have been published online, and Section V "De Quincey's Botany" is forthcoming in The Georgia Review's fall issue. Her non-fiction translations include Forest Bathing, by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, and Tokyo Sketchbook, by Amaia Arrazola, both with Tuttle Publishing.
J. Kates, a minor poet and a literary translator, has published three chapbooks of his own poems and two full books, The Briar Patch (Hobblebush Books) and Places of Permanent Shade (Accents Publishing). He has been granted three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, has translated a dozen books of Russian and French poetry, and edited two anthologies of Russian translations. A former president of the American Literary Translators Association and a co-diretor of Zephyr Press, he is also the co-translator of six books of Latin American and Spanish poetry.
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