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Special Event

Event

Golden Rose Poetry Award: Martha Collins

Longfellow House Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site

Fee:

Free.

Dates & Times

Date:

Sunday, August 10, 2025

Time:

3:00 PM

Duration:

1 hour

Type of Event

Partner Program
Performance

Description

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. This concert is presented in partnership with the New England Poetry Club.

The Golden Rose, one of America’s oldest literary prizes, was inaugurated in 1919 by the Second Church of Boston as a way to celebrate May Day by holding a poetry tournament in the style of the French Provençal poets who vied in “Les Jeux Floraux” in the Middle Ages. The rose was styled after the Gold Rose for which the French poets vied and which is now kept in the Cluny Museum in Paris.

The New England Poetry Club continues that tradition by awarding the Rose to the poet, who by their poetry and inspiration to and encouragement of other writers, has made a significant mark on American poetry. The Club has traditionally given the prize to a poet with some ties to New England so that a public reading may take place. The name of the poet is inscribed on the box alongside the names of all the previous recipients.

This year's recipient, Martha Collins, has published eleven books of poetry, most recently Casualty Reports (Pittsburgh, 2022) and Because What Else Could I Do (Pittsburgh, 2019); the latter won the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award. Her other publications include three books of poems that focus on race (Blue Front, White Papers, and Admit One: An American Scrapbook), and five co-translated volumes of Vietnamese poetry, most recently Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ (with Nguyen Ba Chung; Milkweed, 2023), a PEN America award finalist. She has also published several co-edited anthologies, including Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries (with Kevin Prufer; Graywolf, 2017). Collins founded the U.Mass. Boston creative writing program and for ten years served as Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. Her website is marthacollinspoet.com

Reservation or Registration: No

Image Gallery

Martha Collins headshot
Martha Collins headshot
Martha Collins
Martha Collins