Massachusetts Poetry Festival
July 31st – August 1st, 2027
The Massachusetts Poetry Festival is a biennial celebration that presents an accomplished roster of poets across the Commonwealth and beyond.
We are happy to share that the Massachusetts Poetry Festival is returning to downtown Salem July 31 and August 1, 2027! This biannual event is the largest poetry festival in New England; in 2025 we had 80+ events, 150+ poets, and 1200+ in-person attendees.
Here are some ways you can get involved:
Propose an event for the 2027 Massachusetts Poetry Festival!
Mass Poetry welcomes you to propose a program for the 2027 Massachusetts Poetry Festival July 31 and August 1 in downtown Salem. This is the largest poetry festival in New England featuring over 80 events with 1200+ in-person attendees. The majority of events at the Festival are chosen from among these community proposals. Proposals will be evaluated and selected by our Programming Committee, which is made up of poets from across the Commonwealth. For the full guidelines and to submit a proposal, please click here for our event proposal form.
Submit your work to the First Poem Contest!
The 2027 Massachusetts Poetry Festival invites you to submit your work for consideration for our First Poem Contest. The winner of the contest will receive a cash prize of $250, and be invited to read their poem live at the Festival’s opening headline event. The Massachusetts Poetry Festival is the largest poetry festival in New England, featuring over 80 events with 1200+ in-person attendees. Two honorable mentions will be awarded $50 each. Open to anyone who lives in or has lived in New England. Please click here to learn more about the contest or to submit your work!
Have you recently published a book of poetry? Submit to the New England Poetry Prize!
The 2027 Massachusetts Poetry Festival invites you to submit your work for consideration for the inaugural New England Poetry Prize, a post-publication award honoring a book of poetry published after May 2025. The winner of the contest will receive a cash prize of $1000, and be invited to read as a Festival Headliner. The Massachusetts Poetry Festival is the largest poetry festival in New England, featuring over 80 events with 1200+ in-person attendees. Open to anyone who lives in or has lived in New England. Please click here to learn more about the contest or to submit your work!
Help support us in other ways:
We are currently fundraising and seeking sponsors for 2027. Thanks to the generosity of our community, Mass Poetry is able to pay all poets who participate in the Festival. To support the Festival you can make a donation on our website or email [email protected] for sponsorship opportunities. You can also email [email protected] if you would like to volunteer with planning.
Sign up for our newsletter at masspoetry.org to hear the latest programming updates.
Meet the 2025 Headliners
As the biggest poetry festival in New England, the Massachusetts Poetry Festival is committed to celebrating our common threads and to weaving worlds together by providing opportunities for writers to share their work, drawing people from different regions of the state and country to build community, harnessing the power of poetry to inspire collective care and imagine possibilities for social change. Programming themes at the 2025 Festival range from joy and play, the environment, and diversity in all of its forms to grief and care, democracy and the voice of the people, as well as the art of poetry and building a poet’s life.
The Massachusetts Poetry Festival kicked off on May 30th with Common Threads: A Celebration of Massachusetts Poets, a showcase of local poets with readings by distinguished Massachusetts poets and poet laureates, including Elizabeth Bradfield, Porsha Olayiwola, and J.D. Scrimgeour. The high energy continued with community programming held at venues throughout the City of Salem, including the Peabody Essex Museum, Old Town Hall, National Park Service Visitor Welcome Center, and others.
The 2023 Festival introduced the Teen Poetry Track, allowing young talents to shine. The Teen Poetry Track previously included a collaborative mural creation, a poetry showcase, and an exhilarating teen slam series that featured several Massachusetts teams. The Teen Poetry Track had an even larger role at the 2025 Festival, featuring a Community Cento organized by the Teen Council, interactive events, and a teen slam performance by Mass Poetry’s SW@MP team, which opened Danez Smith’s headline reading and Q&A.
This year’s Festival also continued the tradition of offering a Small Press Fair to attendees on May 31st. This fair acts as a platform for small, independent presses and literary organizations to share their books and literary journals, and raise their visibility without having to travel to expensive national conferences. Attendees were also able to buy books by headline poets and featured presenters throughout the Festival and get their books signed, thanks to our partnership with Boston-based bookseller JustBook-ish.
For those who were unable to travel to our in-person Festival, we offered a variety of online programming! Building on the success of virtual programming launched ahead of the 2023 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, Mass Poetry continued the Bridging the Gap series in 2025. Beginning in late April and leading up to the 2025 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, we hosted nine virtual readings, workshops, and panel discussions. Check out the full listing of events facilitated by a dynamic group of local, national, and international poets with descriptions and details here.
We are grateful to all of our supporters for making both virtual programming and this year’s Massachusetts Poetry Festival possible. For those interested in contributing to the ongoing work of Mass Poetry, please donate and support the Festival.
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