Rockport Poetry was founded in 2016 to increase the awareness of poetry and literature on Cape Ann and beyond. It started and continues as an Open Mic at Brackett's Ocean View on the second Wednesday of every month.

For the past 3 years we have held The Rockport Poetry Festival in April. We have poet reinactors, a pop-up poetry tour through various businesses and galleries downtown, and poetry contests. This has been done in conjunction with the Rockport Public Schools, the Rockport Public Library, Rockport Art Association & Museum,Spiran Hall, and the Little Art Cinema. The Board of Selectmen declared Barletta Park as Poet's Corner during the festival. We have also given presentations at Rockport New Year's Eve and published an anthology (2020 Vision available on Amazon) with proceeds to go to the Rockport New Year's Eve non-profit. We have also participated in the Motif #1 Day Celebrations and the Harvest Festival. We have run poetry workshops at Millbrook Park with all of the suggested workshop fees donated to their foundation.

The last two years the Rockport Poetry Festival has had to be internet only. Last year was a ZOOM poetry Marathon. This year the festival has gone international via ZOOM... presently we have poets from China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, Nigeria, Ukraine, Poland, Denmark, Scotland, England, Ireland, Wales, the Caribbean, and across the time zones of the United States. We are sponsoring 3 contests with special attention to students in the Rockport Public Schools. There is also a free poetry workshop that is open to all being offered. We coordinate the festival with the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and the Newburyport Literary Festival, The John Greenleaf Whittier Home & Museum, and the Robert Frost Society.

We want to make poetry and literature as prominent in Rockport as are the visual arts and music.

ALL events and contests are completely free and open to the public.