The 2025 Massachusetts Poetry Festival

The everyday objects we hold close and use intimately carry a poetic imprint of emotional experience.

Our Hands Upon is a roving visual poetry event exploring this idea. Think of your favorite scarf, one you’ve wrapped, draped, cried into, sweated on, and tied around, and think of the poems you’ve left in its threads. Picture the emotional stains left on the aprons and skirts of the women involved in the Salem witch-hunt.

Alexis Fedorjaczenko will be showing and sharing handkerchief poems and a poem-apron made with text from the original documents of the Salem witch-hunt. Handkerchief poem samples will be given out while they last.

Join Alexis throughout the festival, between events, for conversations about poetic textiles, historical poetry, reuse of textual materials, hand printing, and the project’s connections to contemporary experience.