Poet in High Street Park: Prose & Poetry for Modern Salem

Poet in High Street Park is a love song to Salem, Massachusetts, by a writer who has grounded himself in the everyday realities of living in the city for the past 30 years, from playgrounds to classrooms to ballfields. It is testimony that, beneath the Halloween hoo-ha and the historical tours crowding the sidewalks, people live here. Finding the university in the local, this book asks who we are and who we want to be.

J.D. Scrimgeour is the inaugural poet laureate of Salem, Massachusetts, and has lived in the city since 1996 with his wife, Eileen FitzGerald. He the author of six books of poetry, the most recent being Small, Rectangular, Reflected World (Nixes Mate, 2025). His previous collection was the bilingual 香蕉面包  Banana Bread, written as a way to practice learning Mandarin during the Covid pandemic. Scrimgeour’s second book of nonfiction, Themes for English B: A Professor’s Education In & Out of Class won the Association of Writers and Writing Program’s (AWP) Award for Nonfiction. Scrimgeour has also done various interdisciplinary work. With musician Philip Swanson he released Ogunquit & Other Works, a CD blending music and poetry, and with his two sons, Aidan and Guthrie, he wrote the musical, Only Human, which was performed in Salem’s Ames Hall.