Her Words Echo Through The Ages . . . 

“Make use of what I leave in love”
​by Anne Dudley Bradstreet

Thank you so much for inspiring your child
to join in this new poetic project for
the students of North Andover

Staircase Poetry
is a yearly
spoken – word event
for elementary students in the same way
the North Andover High School Chorus
celebrates music and voice

Please have your child to the Smolak Farm Barn
on Friday, April 27, 2018 at 5:30PM

Siblings, grandparents and friends are all welcome
Come join in the fun
in the Valley of the Poets

The program begins at 6PM and runs for 30 to 45 minutes.

August 15, 2007

A way to remember America’s first poet

NORTH ANDOVER – Anne Bradstreet lived, wrote and died in North Andover, but the only memorial to her is a marker in the town’s Old Burying Ground.

Local poet Karen M. Kline hopes to gain attention for Bradstreet, referred to as America’s first published poet, by building a brick walkway and dedicating it to the poet. The walkway would run from the Old Burying Ground down Academy Road to the Old Center.

“Right now, until she has a place of honor somewhere in this town where she lived and died, I’m on a poetic path to honor the original poet laureate in our town,” said Kline, who plans to talk about her idea at an upcoming selectmen’s meeting.

Kline said the walkway also would be a safety measure because many students walk on Academy Road from the middle school to the youth center in the Old Center.

Bradstreet came to America from England in 1630 and lived in Cambridge and Ipswich before coming to North Andover, then known as Andover Parish, in 1645. She resided here in the Valley of the Poets until her death in 1672.

One book of her poetry, “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung up in America,” was published in London without her knowledge when her brother-in-law traveled to England in 1650. A second edition, with her corrections, was published in Boston in 1678 after her death.

Bradstreet scholars said it is about time something is created to honor the poet.

“She is not unheralded, but she is relatively obscure. More people have heard of Emily Dickinson,” said Jeannine Hensley  of Hanover, who edited an edition of Bradstreet’s poems in 1967.

Hensley said that although Bradstreet is becoming more popular in high schools and colleges, it is rare to find any physical reminders of her life here. The house where she lived in Cambridge before she came to North Andover no longer exists and the house where she spent most of her time in North Andover burned down six years before her death.