Description
At 7pm on Tuesday February 7th, at First Church Cambridge, 11 Garden Street, the Hastings Room Reading Series will be holding a special event to celebrate and remember the Cambridge Poet Populist program, which supported a “Poet Populist” designated to engage the community with the art of poetry. From 2007 to 2015 four Cambridge poets held the honored position: Peter Payack (2007-2009), Jean-Dany Joachim (2009-2011), Toni “Bee” Brooks (2011-2013) and Lo Galluccio (2013-2015).
The program, modeled in part on Seattle Washington’s Poet Populist project, was initiated by City Councilor Brian Murphy in 2007 and launched in the same year. The “Populist” idea differed from other cities’ Poet Laureate programs in that the poet was not appointed by the City but rather voted in by the community. The Poetry Populist program was streamlined by Cambridge Arts in 2015 into the Poetry Ambassador program, which promotes seasonal poetry events curated by different poets.
While the Ambassador program continues to engage the public with the art through public readings organized by talented area poets, the Poet Populist program will be remembered for bringing Cambridge residents in on the election and promotion of the four exceptional poets mentioned above. These poets have been invited to the Hastings Room Reading Series at First Church to read from their poetry and to remember highlights of their tenure as the city’s leading voices in poetry.
The Hastings Room Reading Series, established in 2014 by Steven Brown and Michael Steffen, has hosted many of the area’s leading poets, including Martha Collins, David Ferry, Fred Marchant, Joan Houlihan, Daniel Tobin, Marc Vincenz, David Blair, Doug Holder, Gloria Mindock and Pulitzer Prize poet Franz Wright. The readings are free and open to the public.