Cambridge and Somerville have long been hubs of poetry in the United States, producing or educating some of the country’s best-known poets.
That rich legacy of poetry is present all over the two cities even today. “The area has a very vibrant scene – maybe the most vibrant it’s ever been,” said James Fraser, manager of the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Harvard Square.
Poetry slams fill the underbelly of the storied Cantab Lounge in Central Square every Wednesday; a more relaxed, conventional scene for readings takes place at Little Crepe Café in Baldwin every Friday evening; while mere blocks away at the Lizard Lounge, Sunday night poetry jams combine an informal open mic event, a low-pressure slam and featured readings , with the twist of poetry performed in front of musical accompaniment.
Meanwhile, in Somerville “per capita there are more writers/poets than in Manhattan,” said Doug Holder, arts editor at the Somerville Times and founder of the Ibbetson Street Press, an independent publisher dedicated to poetry. Somerville has a Poet Laureate, and Cambridge has had Poet Populists.
Beyond the talent “There are presses that have been publishing poetry books for almost twenty years, pop-up readings around town; Porter Square Books is always a consistent venue,” added Holder. “It’s an ecosystem.” Taken all together the scene in the two cities, along with that in Boston, has made this area one of the best in the U.S. for poetry. It’s a place where the passing of Cambridge poet and musician Charles Coe warrants a memorial tribute hosted at the Boston Public Library and organized in conjunction with the Boston Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, with featured readers including three-time U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Massachusetts Poet Laureate Regie Gibson, Poet Laureate of Boston Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah. Poetry is part of the cadence of the community. [The Coe event will be from 1:30 to 4:30 on April 11.]
Stroll by the Grolier
A few steps off of Massachusetts Avenue near Harvard’s Widener Library is the Grolier Poetry Book Shop, one of the only shops in America to exclusively sell works of poetry.
Founded in 1927 as a shop for rare literature, it refocused solely on poetry in the 1970s, according to Somerville Poet Laureate Lloyd Schwartz. It is now owned by the family of the late Ifeanyi Menkiti, a Wellesley College philosophy professor and local poet.
The shop hosts regular poetry readings. “This is a spot where many writers and poets can intersect and meet each other,” said Fraser, who became its manager in 2022. “Grolier offers a space for community to gather and a place to browse without the feeling of having to buy anything and works as a catalyst for creative ideas.”
It’s also the place where a German documentary crew went to shoot scenes for a film on Pulitzer-prize winning poet and band leader Anne Sexton, a regular patron at the Grolier during her life. Fraser also co-founded Staircase Books in 2022. The Cambridge-based press publishes chapbooks and supports emerging poets.
Evenings at the Cantab and Little Crepe
At the Cantab Lounge, a diverse crowd of poets, students and other patrons fill the underground space every Wednesday evening. Boston Poetry Slam, a group founded by then-Cambridge residents and poets Michael Brown and Patricia Smith in 1991, hosts these weekly gatherings and has since 1992 (with a break during the pandemic), when the Cantab was also one of seven locations for that year’s International Poetry Slam.
“This has been a cornerstone of Central Square, the only registered cultural district in the city, and I think the Cantab has influenced a huge part of that,” said Myles Taylor, who directs the weekly slam nights.
To Taylor, the show’s success has come from its consistency and familiarity. “If you show up in this building on a Wednesday night, you will find us – you don’t need Instagram, don’t need the website, don’t need friends to bring you here – you just show up.”
Kaitie Dilán, known better to Cantab crowds as Kaitie D, works in film and television and has been a regular at the poetry slam for years. “I used to work 60-80 hours a week and I had no social life outside of work, so when the [2023 Writers’ Guild of America strike] happened I was like, oh crap, I need hobbies and to make friends as an adult.”
At the Cantab, they quickly found both.
Just a bit more than a mile across town from the Cantab, local poets and poetry enthusiasts congregate inside the warmly lit Little Crepe Café on Fridays for its City Night Readings. The aroma of meat or vegetable-filled crepes and fresh coffee waft over the room. The weekly event here is run by former Cambridge Poet Populist Jean Dany-Joachim.
“If I were to just be a writer for my own sake, yeah I could do that, but to have a room full of people who celebrate the same thing I celebrate, to find joy in words the way that I do, I don’t think there is any price you can put on that,” said Joachim.
Some nights Joachim invites specific poets to take the stage, but all nights are open to anyone who wants a turn at the microphone. “To me it’s not the fame of someone that matters, but the level at which they celebrate.”
Just blocks away from the café, the Lizard Lounge Poetry Jam on Sunday nights starts off with an open mic, for anyone who wishes to try a reading. Then comes a slam where poets compete for a prize of $100, and finally a featured poet reads.
The featured poets and open mic participants typically perform with the backing of the Blake Newman Group, a New England live jazz trio that improvises around each voice. Newman is both the bassist and the emcee of the evening. The resulting show feels like a head-on collision between different art forms and poetic style, turning the night into a kind of celebration of sound.
Stephanie Blair Mitchell was the featured poet on a recent Sunday. Mitchell, a longtime Cambridge resident, has been to its Sunday night event before, and also to City Night Readings at Little Crepe Café, but this was her first public reading of poems from her new collection, “Viewfinder.”
She says the vibe Newman creates is “incredibly supportive,” and she was struck by how the band’s music changed her reading. “You start to pay attention to the pacing and the energy, and it’s a different way to realize the meaning behind the verses.”
“It feels like poetry is thriving in Cambridge when you’re on that stage,” Mitchell said.
Keeping the Scene Thriving in Somerville
A few minutes’ drive away in Somerville, SomerWrites is an event series that helps bring together both beginners and well-established featured writers in different genres, including poetry, to share their work and learn from one another.
Started by the Somerville Arts Council and headed up by council member and poet Sarah Beckmann, the series held its first gathering in January at Portico Brewing. “The event series is an opportunity for people to not only share their work but connect with other writers in the area and build a sense of community,” said Beckmann.
The event mixes an open mic free to all attendees alongside talks and readings from featured guest writers, with Lloyd Schwartz kicking off the series in late January.
While there are readings and workshop events scattered around the city – like poet David Blair’s Somerville Poetry Workshop held at Arts at the Armory in seasonal stretches – Beckmann said she wishes the city had a scene more like Cambridge’s. The one in Somerville “is not nearly as robust as I or many other writers would like it.”
Still, she says the local scene has a warmth to it that it unusual. “Sometimes these [poetry] spheres can be competitive and semi-inaccessible – which is why the openness, kindness and enthusiastic support everyone has shown during SomerWrites has been so special,” said Beckmann.
Mentioning that 25 people recently signed up for the event’s open mic – out of a crowd of nearly the same size – she said, “People here are so excited, so respectful and so kind, and they’re just excited to have a new space to come to, to share their work and connect with other writers.”
Joachim had a simple message about the accessibility of poetry in both Cambridge and Somerville. “You don’t have to wear a big hat and walk down the street studying the stars to be a poet here, no, you can still have your feet on the ground,” he said lightheartedly, “you can smile, you can dance and still be a poet.”
This story was updated to correct the spelling of Lloyd Schwartz’s name, that SomerWrites welcomes writers from all genres and its first gathering was at Portico Brewing.
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