Revere Beach Stories

In the shadow of the Boston skyline, Revere Beach, Massachusetts, is a life in pictures: the natural blue ocean horizon, the restaurants and the bars, the cars cruising up and down the boulevard, the teenagers in packs on hot summer days, the retired folks walking by the sea wall. This urban beachfront also houses many poetic stories: a honky-tonk history, a revolving door of immigrants, gangsters and gamblers, and an often-crowded beach with folks from many surrounding cities.

The poets involved in this project grew up in Revere in the 1960s and 70’s. They’ve both written extensively about this city and its three-mile beachfront, which is the first public beach in America. A Somerville photographer, originally from California was drawn to this local East Coast ocean and its unfamiliar culture during the pandemic. Thus began a long-term photo project about everyday life in the beach city. After a chance conversation over those photographs and a few poems, this collaboration was born.

This collection attempts to capture the complicated nature of Revere Beach, with the combination of a newcomer’s eye and the personal reflections of these poets who have history here. Often overlooked by metropolitan Boston, Revere Beach is not Cape Cod or Nantucket, and that’s part of what makes it unique. Through still images and poetry, this book paints a portrait of a place that has influenced each of these artists in a profound way and it gives voice to an often-forgotten urban beach culture in a way that has not been done before.

ADDITIONAL EVENTS

FEBRUARY 21

Opening Reception and Reading

6 pm – 8 pm I Commuter Lounge, ECC  



FEBRUARY 26

Artist Talk

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

Reception

1:30 pm – 3:00 pm I Commuter Lounge, ECC  

Kevin Carey’s books include: The Beach People (2014), The One Fifteen to Penn Station (2012), Jesus Was a Homeboy (2016) which was an Honor book for the Paterson Literary Prize, & Set in Stone (2020). His poems have appeared on The Writers Almanac on National Public Radio and on The Academy of American Poets Poem a Day. A crime novel, Murder in the Marsh, from Darkstroke Books, was released in October (2020). A new novel Junior Miles and the Junkman dropped in September of 2023 from Regal House / Fitzroy Books, and a new co-written collection Olympus Heights came out in October 2023 from Lily Poetry Review. He is co-editor of Molecule: a tiny lit mag. kevincareywriter.com

Jennifer Martelli has received fellowships from The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Monson Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Poetry, Best of the Net Anthology, Braving the Body Anthology, Verse Daily, Plume, The Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree (forthcoming, December, 2024, Lily Poetry Review Books), as well as My Tarantella, finalist for the Housatonic Book Award, and The Queen of Queens, which won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Jennifer Martelli is co-poetry editor for MER. www.jennmartelli.com

Stephenie Young is a photographer, writer and a professor in the English Department at Salem State University. She has widely published her writing about trauma, war and social oppression, including a recent essay about the meme and fake news during Covid with Serbian visual artist Vladimir Miladinovi?, "The Reluctant Screen Shot Collector," for the Journal of Visual Culture and Harun Farocki Institute in London. She is currently working on a collection of essays about contemporary photography. She is originally from Southern California and has lived in Somerville, Massachusetts since 2008.