Poet Laureate Program
Furthering Amesbury’s poetic legacy
Amesbury’s Poet Laureate Program was established in 2014, building upon a foundation established by local 19th-century Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier.
In partnership with the John Greenleaf Whittier Home and City of Amesbury, the Amesbury Cultural Council is pleased to provide support to Amesbury's fourth Poet Laureate, Lisa Usani Phillips. Lisa will serve through January 2026.
Like the Poet Laureate Facebook page for the latest happenings, upcoming events and readings.
What does a Poet Laureate do?
"As Poet Laureate, my mission is to support poets from Amesbury and the local area, bring a diverse range of established and promising poets to Amesbury audiences, and foster literary citizenship and community."
–Lisa Usani Phillips, Amesbury Poet Laureate 2024–2026
Meet Lisa Usani Phillips
Amesbury’s fourth Poet Laureate, January 2024–Present
The fourth Amesbury Poet Laureate, Lisa Usani Phillips, was born in 1970 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and spent much of her youth in Manchester, Connecticut. After receiving an MFA in writing from Emerson College in Boston, she lived in Roslindale, Massachusetts, before moving to downtown Amesbury in 2004.
A longtime writer and editor, Lisa edited textbooks for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Pearson before becoming an instructor and marketing communications specialist for Crafters Quarters, a local fiber-arts studio. She has worked as a senior content editor at EBSCO Information Services in Ipswich since 2011. Her debut hybrid poetry collection, Guest People, was published by Wheeling Tern Books in October 2022.
Some Amesbury residents may recognize Phillips as the companion of her dog, Lloyd (2007-2020), a Great Pyrenees mix whom some hailed as the city’s unofficial canine mayor. Phillips and her husband, Justin Harris, moved to Amesbury’s Point Shore neighborhood in 2019, where they live with a family of four cats, the Marmingtons.
Ellie O’Leary
Amesbury’s third Poet Laureate, 2020–2024 (two terms)
Ellie O’Leary, 71, grew up in Freedom, Maine, and moved to Amesbury in 1986. The mother of three worked as a real estate agent in the city for many years and now teaches workshops for first-time homebuyers. “I have got to be the most business-minded writer that I know,” O’Leary said. “I have all of my poems on a spreadsheet.”
O’Leary moved back to Maine in 2004 and hosted “The Writers Forum” on community radio station WERU-FM and taught writing at Senior College at Belfast. She also co-founded the Fall Writerfest at the Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, New York. “I probably really got started writing in 1996,” O’Leary said. “I always wanted to be a writer, but I thought you had to somehow be chosen as a writer. Then, I decided to just start writing.”
O’Leary received the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance’s Martin Dibner Memorial Fellowship in poetry in 2013 and moved back to Amesbury in 2017. In 2020, the author saw her poetry manuscript “Breathe Here” published by North Country Press.
“It’s a validation,” O’Leary said. “You like your own work anyway but when someone picks it up for publication, especially if it is a really attractive publication, it is just good to see. Your real estate friends will always love it. But they’re not quite sure what they are reading. They just think it’s nice.”
O’Leary holds a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Southern Maine.
(Excerpted and condensed from a 2020 Newburyport News article by Jim Sullivan.)
Stephen R. Wagner
Amesbury’s second Poet Laureate, 2018–2020
As an office administrator at an energy efficiency consulting firm, Wagner began his literary career by firing back original poetry to his engineers who kept submitting late time sheets. Encouraged by his co-workers, Wagner turned his office notes into the independently published poetry book, "Time Sheets: A Collection of Poems," which was published in 2014.
Lainie Senechal
Amesbury’s first Poet Laureate, 2016–2018
An Amesbury native, Senechal spent just about her whole life living in the city. She worked throughout Massachusetts as a teacher and a poet and was prolific in authoring poetry books, anthologies and journal articles. She was the co-founder, with Michael Brown, of The Culture of Peace, an art and poetry exhibit of international artists/poets to celebrate the United Nations mandate for a Decade of Peace.
Senechal is also the co-founder, with Harris Gardner, of Tapestry of Voices, a Greater Boston organization whose mission is to “weave poetry into the social fabric.”
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