Jamaica Pond Poets is a collaborative poetry workshop that meets every Saturday morning in the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, to creatively comment on one another’s poems.

Members of Jamaica Pond Poets (JPP) have all been published in literary magazines. Several have won awards for their work and published books or chapbooks. They frequently read at various regional events as individuals and also as a group.

JPP has been running constantly for 17 years. As of summer, 2011, members of JPP include Dorothy Derifield, Carolyn Gregory, Holly Guran, Audrey Henderson, Susanna Kittredge, Alice Kociemba, Dorian Kotsiopoulos, Jim LaFond-Lewis, Jennifer Markell, Sandra Storey, and Gary Whited.

JPP co-sponsors Chapter and Verse, a literary reading series at the historic Loring-Greenough House, and Word on the Street, a summer poetry reading series in the business district of Jamaica Plain. One member organizes Calliope, a reading series in West Falmouth, (Cape Cod), Massachusetts.

JPP has also donated dozens of full-length poetry collections by contemporary Boston-area poets to the Jamaica Plain Branch Library at 12 Sedgwick St. in Jamaica Plain for the public to read and check out.

Jamaica Pond Poets often read their work and do workshops as individuals and as a group. Recently, they were invited to read as a group at the Winter Solstice event at Jamaica Pond, at Forest Hills Cemetery's Poetry in the Chapel Series and to conduct a workshop at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. For more information about the group's availability, see Contact Us.