November 11: NAV Arts presents Lee Eric Freedman and open mic

Lee Eric Freedman is the 3rd Poet Laureate of Swampscott, Massachusetts, United States (2016-2018).

Since 2011 he’s been affectionately entitled as the Renegade Poet Laureate of Swampscott (2011- Forever)

When Lee isn’t busy being any type of Laureate he leads the Tin Box Poets of Swampscott Workshop Group, co-hosts the online video podcast series In Other Words with his friend and SpoFest founder James Bryant, and regularly performs at open-mics and readings all over the place. He’s been published in numerous poetry anthologies and journals, including publications from the Netherlands, Ireland, India, South Africa, Bangladesh, and Scotland. In March of 2025, Lee’s poetry was published in the Vagabond Lunar Collection Anthology (Vagabond Books) that was included in the Lunar Codex Project and which landed on the moon aboard the Intuitive Machines / NASA Nova-C Lunar Lander Athena. His latest chapbook, coauthored with Sourav Sarkar, is “Poems” (2024, Cooch Behar Books). Lee is the former host of First Friday Open Mic at ReachArts, Swampscott; his poetry has been translated into American Sign Language, and he’s a three-time winner of the Naomi Cherkofsky Memorial Poetry Contest.