In 1948, poet and frame-maker Vincent Ferrini (1913–2007) moved to a one-room studio at 126 East Main Street in Gloucester. Over the next seven decades, in this place, Ferrini wrote some thirty volumes of poetry, as well as plays, an autobiography, and—like his friend, Charles Olson—countless letters to the editor of the Gloucester Daily Times.

Prolific, outspoken, Ferrini was a vivid figure here in Gloucester—a public, proletarian poet and a near-constant presence at City Council meetings. He also cultivated an astounding circle of writers, artists, and thinkers for whom 126 East Main Street became a cultural salon. Friends and peers traveled to Gloucester to visit Ferrini. Olson returned to Gloucester and stayed; Vincent connected him with Robert Creeley, and the history of American poetry was forever changed. Late in life, Vincent was named Gloucester’s first poet laureate—a recognition of his remarkable body of work, as well as his key role in making Gloucester a 20th-century literary hub, alongside writers Peter Anastas, Jonathan Bayliss, Gerrit Lansing, and others.

Vincent Ferrini (Photo: Paul Foley)

Following Vincent’s death in 2007, a small group of friends organized an effort to preserve his home as a living memorial and place for writers to gather in the spirit of poetic inquiry and civic engagement modeled by Vincent and his circle. They were: Henry Ferrini (Vincent’s nephew), close friend Annie Thomas, Unitarian Universalist minister Paul Sawyer, and writer André Spears.

The Gloucester Writers Center was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 2010, just before Sawyer’s death. In its first decade the GWC quickly developed into a hub—a place, in the words of poet and artist Ed Sanders, that “shouts YES to poetry, writing, rumination, study, and planning.”