NEPC is proud to feature a series of events featuring some of the most acclaimed voices in American poetry.
It’s the sweetest poetic phrase in American democracy: “We the People.” It is confounding, then, that some, in recent days, aim to limit the inclusive vision of what we are and to narrowly redefine American culture.
To explore the diversity of voices and visions in contemporary poetry—and to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our great democratic experiment—we are producing WE (too) THE PEOPLE—eight poetry programs across Summer 2025 and 2026, included in the Longfellow Summer Festival.
The New England Poetry Club is partnering with the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters and their Friends organization to invite some of the most acclaimed names in American poetry to bring their voices to this special program. Taken together, the work of these literary artists will offer a dynamic vision of our country and its people, our shared history, and our imaginative reach.
The readings will be presented, free and open to the public, on the lawn at the Longfellow House on four summer Sundays each year. Brief musical performances will begin at 2:45 p.m., and poetry introductions will begin promptly at 3 p.m. In case of inclement weather, the events will move next door to the Lincoln Institute.
Videos of the 2025 WE (too) readings are available on YouTube, courtesy of the Somerville Media Center. Recordings of the 2026 readings will be made available 48 hours after each event.
Study guides will be prepared so that schools across the country can use these materials in the classroom.
Get Involved
Become a NEPC Member now to learn about all We (too) The People events and opportunities!
Events for 2026
July 12th – Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith––educator, memoirist, editor, translator, and librettist––is one of America’s most acclaimed writers. Her poetry was honored with a Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Harold Washington Literary Award, the Academy Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets, the Harvard Arts Medal, and many more. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in nonfiction. Ms. Smith is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. The 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States, she spearheaded American Conversations: Celebrating Poetry in Rural Communities, created the American Public Media podcast The Slowdown, and edited the anthology American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time.
July 26th – Lloyd Schwartz (awarded the Sam Cornish Prize) and Massachusetts’ first Poet Laureate Regie Gibson
Lloyd Schwartz, the Poet Laureate of Somerville MA, will be awarded NEPC’s Sam Cornish Prize,given in recognition of a poet of long-standing artistry, literary advocacy, and generous mentorship, who has made a significant impact on the literary communities of New England and beyond. The author of seven poetry collections, Schwartz’s work has been honored by the David Ferry-Ellen LaForge Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Academy of American Poets, and a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Poet, educator, dynamic performer, Regie Gibson was chosen in 2025 as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ very first Poet Laureate. He’s the author of Storms Beneath the Skin, and the creator of the Shakespeare Time-Traveling Speakeasy. Gibson has received multiple Mass Cultural Council Awards for poetry; the Brother Thomas Fellowship from the Boston Foundation, and two Live Arts Boston (LAB) grants for the production of his first musical, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae. He teaches at Clark University in Worcester and is an Assistant Professor at Berklee College of Music.
August 2nd – Major Jackson and Kirun Kapur
Major Jackson is the author of six acclaimed poetry collections, including Leaving Saturn which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. He is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University, and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Jackson is a recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Among many accolades, he’s the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and has been honored by the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He formerly hosted The Slowdown poetry podcast, and is currently the poetry editor of the Harvard Review.
Kirun Kapur‘s first collection, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist, was awarded the 2013 Antivenom Poetry Award and was a finalist for the Mass Book Prize. Her newest book, Women in the Waiting Room, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Kapur was awarded the Arts & Letters Rumi Prize in Poetry, the Nazim Hikmet Prize, and the Glenna Luschei Award, as well as fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Vermont Studio Center and MacDowell Colony. She serves as the editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal, and teaches at Amherst College where she is the director of the Creative Writing Program.
August 9th – Golden Rose reading with Marie Howe
Marie Howe will receive NEPC’s 2026 Golden Rose, an award that has honored over a century’s worth of American poets whose work has deepened the imaginative life of our nation. She was the 2025 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her New and Selected Poems. Howe’s luminous career was inaugurated with a Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, selected by Stanley Kunitz. She is the former Poet Laureate of New York State and the current Poet in Residence at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. She’s received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship as well as grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Bunting Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, she teaches at both New York University and Sarah Lawrence College.
Past Events
August 10th — MARTHA COLLINS, winner of the 2025 Golden Rose Award
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.
August 3rd — RICHARD BLANCO
Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, RICHARD BLANCO is one of the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to be chosen. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden. Other honors include the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, and the Patterson Prize.
July 6th — ROBERT PINSKY
A three-term United States Poet Laureate, ROBERT PINSKY is an author and editor of thirty collections of poetry, essays, and memoirs. Among his many efforts to share the transformative power of poetry and language, he created The Favorite Poem Project, a truly democratic reflection of the way poetry is ingrained in the lives of American communities. Among his numerous awards are the Korean Manhae Award and the Italian Premio Capri.
July 20th — STEPHANIE BURT and DIANNELY ANTIGUA
STEPHANIE BURT is an influential trans poet and critic, the author/editor of numerous poetry collections and anthologies, and the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. Donald Revell wrote “Burt has found a courage I’d never imagined until I read these poems.” The New York Times called Burt “one of the most influential poetry critics of her generation.”
A rising literary star, DIANNELY ANTIGUA is a Dominican American poet and educator—the author of the collections Ugly Music (YesYes Books, 2019), which won the 2020 Whiting Award, and Good Monster (Copper Canyon Press, 2024). She was the 13th Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, and currently teaches at the University of New Hampshire as the Nossrat Yassini Poet in Residence.
Photo Gallery
Ways you can help
There are several ways you and your organization can participate in and support this undertaking:
- Let your organization’s membership know about this reading series so they can be part of the virtual audience
- Share the WE (too) THE PEOPLE flyer on your Facebook and social media pages
- Plan your own WE (too) readings and performances so that communities across America will be part of a broad-based poetry fanfare, celebrating what truly matters in our cultural life.
- Consider joining and contributing to NEPC; learn about our yearly contests, book prizes, and reading series.
As Whitman envisioned, the vast we that is at the heart of the American experiment depends on our active participation. We hope you’ll join us to keep that spirit alive and flourishing.
Inquiries
For further information and interviews, contact Steven Ratiner, President of NEPC: president@nepoetryclub.org