Nantucket Poetry Festival: 2026 Poets

A man with short brown hair and blue eyes wearing a black t-shirt and headphones, sitting indoors in a room with wooden ceiling beams and a window to the right, with framed pictures on a shelf in the background.

John Bonanni

A Best New Poets, Pushcart, and Best of the Net nominee, John Bonanni is a Cape Cod based writer whose collection retrovirology won the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry in 2025. John founded the Cape Cod Poetry Review in 2011, and his poems have appeared in Foglifter, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Florida Review, Cortland Review, Washington Square Review, Verse Daily, Michigan Quarterly Review, Seattle Review, and Gulf Coast, among others. He is the recipient of artist grants from the Mass Cultural Council, the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod and the NEA; scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown; and residencies from the John Hay Writing Studio and AS220 in Providence, RI. His book reviews have appeared in DIAGRAM,  Denver Quarterly, Rain Taxi, Tupelo Quarterly, and the Kenyon Review.

Related Events: 2026 Program

Find John Bonanni at the events listed below. View the full 2026 itinerary here.

Opening Night: Poetry from the Archives | Thursday, August 27th | Quaker Meeting House, 4 - 6 pm

Publishers Roundtable with Trace Fossils Review| Friday, August 28th | Cafe 22, 3rd floor, 11 am - noon

Poetry Market! at the Nantucket Farmers & Artisans Market | Saturday, August 29th | Cambridge St. — Farmers & Artisans Market, 9 am - 1 pm

Poetry Circle: Critique with John Bonanni | Saturday, August 29th | 5 Wherowhero Lane — Our House, noon - 2 pm | Seats limited, register now

Visiting Poet Reading: Mary Ellen Redmond and John Bonanni | Sunday, August 30th | Mitchell’s Book Corner, 4:30 - 5:30 pm

Closing Night: Reading & Open Mic at the Atheneum | Sunday August 30th | 1 India Street — Nantucket Atheneum — Great Hall 2nd floor, 7:30 pm reading & 8:30 pm open mic

Books Featured at the Festival

A young person with blonde hair and light skin wearing a tan turban, a blue jacket, and white shirt, holding a flaming torch. Behind them, there are yellow daffodils, a vintage orange rotary phone labeled 'POEMS', a black bird, a small fire, green plants, a palm tree, a pool with a red safety ring, and the book title 'retrospect' by john bonanni. There is a circular logo with the words 'AWP' and 'American Writers' and a quote about the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry.

retrovirology

University of Pittsburg Press, 2026

Winner of the 2025 Donald Hall Prize for Poetry

“Committed to ‘remember what everyone wants to forget,’ retrovirology is stirring, persuasive proof that courage and outrage have mattered, and still can. The subjects here: intimacy and revolution, history and our rights, and equally, the slow burn of queer joy, the unstoppable fire of queer visibility. John Bonanni makes from that fire an essential music.”

— Carl Phillips, author of Scattered Snows, to the North