Poetry Reading: Tracy K. Smith

The Longfellow Summer Arts Festival brings music, poetry, and community to the front lawn of the Longfellow House on Sunday afternoons through the summer. All events are free and open to the public. This reading is presented in partnership with the New England Poetry Club.

Event Schedule

2:45 pm-3:00 pm Musical Performances

Lydia Harrell is a multi-instrument and multi-genre musician based in the Boston area. Her performance credits include an Emmy Award-winning song placement on The Young and the Restless and wins in two jazz vocal competitions. She performs regularly with the Steely Dan tribute band No Static and is an alum of the first Club Passim Folk Collective cohort. She is currently completing her first book, Riffin' & Runnin': Vocal Agility Workouts for the Contemporary Singer. She is an Assistant Professor of Voice at Berklee College of Music, where she has taught since 2018, and runs a private vocal coaching practice called Lessons With LovelySinger.

Ricardo Monzón teaches in the Berklee College of Music Percussion and Ensemble departments. He is an accomplished drummer, percussionist, and studio musician who has toured and performed with the Boston Pops Orchestra. He has performed for the “Chris Botti in Boston” concert/video/CD with Sting, John Mayer, Josh Groban, and Yo Yo Ma, 2010 nominated for Best Pop Instrumental album and Best Long Form Music Video. Ricardo is the leader of his own Jazz Quartet, Tropicante (Latin American trio), Marimba Canto De Guatemala, The Ricardo Monzón Orchestra (salsa), Raise the Roof (American Pop), Jazz for Kids and Mamboston. His Orquesta Bacharengue (Bachata/Merengue) won the Berklee Urban Service Award for providing the Performance of the Year at the Tito Puente Latin Music Series in 2010. Also in 2010, Ricardo was officially recognized by Mayor Menino for his “tireless commitment and dedication to the Guatemalan community in the City of Boston."

3:00 pm-4:00 pm Poetry Reading

Tracy K. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator and librettist. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017-19, during which time she spearheaded American Conversations: Celebrating Poetry in Rural Communities with the Library of Congress, created the American Public Media podcast The Slowdown, and edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time.

Smith is the author of five poetry collections: Such Color: New and Selected Poems, which won the 2022 New England Book Award; Wade in the Water, which was awarded the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award; Life on Mars, which won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize; Duende, winner of the 2006 James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets; and The Body’s Question, which received the 2003 Cave Canem Prize. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in nonfiction. She is the co-translator (with Changtai Bi) of My Name Will Grow Wide like a Tree: Selected Poems of Yi Lei, which was a finalist for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize; and co-editor (with John Freeman) of There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis. Her memoir-manifesto, To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul, was a Time magazine and Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times is a nonfiction celebration of poetry as a source of courage and emotional fortitude amidst the many upheavals of the 21st Century.

She is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute.

Fees

This event is free to attend.

Location

Latitude and Longitude 42.376962, -71.126381

Schedule

Event Type

• Partner Program
• Performance