June 21: Pioneering Poets of Cambridge: A Guided Tour

Saturday, June 21, 2025
2-3:30 pm
Free; registration required
Limited space available
Weather date: Sunday, June 22 at 2 pm

About the tour

Join authors Karen Weintraub and Michael Kuchta for a series of free tours exploring Cambridge’s legacy of innovation, adaptation, and revolutionary ideas. Based on their book Born in Cambridge: 400 Years of Ideas and Innovators, these tours will uncover the people, places, and events that have shaped the city’s unique role in history. Explore the “secret sauce” that has made Cambridge the home of so many creative people and new ideas.

On June 21st, 2025, Weintraub and Kuchta will lead a 90-minute tour west from Harvard Square, exploring some of the well-known poets and authors who have been part of Cambridge’s “literary-industrial complex.” The tour will begin and end at the former Out of Town News kiosk in Harvard Square. Learn about the first printing press in English America; poet Anne Bradstreet, one of Cambridge’s first colonial-era residents; slave narrative author Harriet Jacobs; and 20th century poets Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, T. S. Eliot, Adrienne Rich and May Sarton. And learn why Cambridge poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow became one of the most famous Americans in the 19th century.

This tour is supported by the City of Cambridge and MA 250.