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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.

The 2025 Golden Rose 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. Other publications include three volumes of poetry that focus on race (Blue Front, White Papers, and Admit One: An American Scrapbook); five co-translated volumes of Vietnamese poetry, including Dreaming the Mountain by Tuệ Sỹ (with Nguyen Ba Chung; Milkweed, 2023), a PEN America award finalist; and several co-edited anthologies, including Into English: Poems,Translations, Commentaries (with Kevin Prufer; Graywolf, 2017). Collins founded the UMass Boston creative writing program and for ten years served as Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College, where she was an editor of FIELD magazine and the Oberlin College Press. Two books are forthcoming: Word Work: Essays, Poems, Reflections from Tiger Bark in 2025, and Like Her Body the World: Selected Early Poems from Unbound Edition in 2027. Her website is marthacollinspoet.com.
 
With special musical guest Elizabeth Burke. Burke received her Music Degree in violin performance with an emphasis in string pedagogy from the Longy School of Music. She plays jazz, old-time, and bluegrass music and performs as an improvisational violinist.

Reservation or Registration: No

Image Gallery

Martha Collins headshot
Martha Collins headshot
Martha Collins
Martha Collins