Revere Beach Stories: Photographs and Poems by Stephenie Young, Jennifer Martelli and Kevin Carey

Special to The Advocate

In the shadow of the Boston skyline, Revere Beach, Massachusetts, is a life in pictures: the natural blue ocean horizon, the restaurants and the bars, the cars cruising up and down, the teenagers in packs on hot summer days, the retired folks walking the boardwalk. This urban beachfront also houses many poetic stories: a honky-tonk history, a revolving door of immigrants, gangsters and gamblers, and an often-crowded boulevard teaming with beachgoers from surrounding cities.

Poets Kevin Carey and Jennifer Martelli (who died in the fall) grew up in Revere in the 1960s. They’d both written extensively about this city and its three-mile beachfront, which is the first public beach in America. Stephenie Young, a Somerville photographer, is originally from California. During the Covid epidemic, Young was drawn to this local East Coast ocean and its unfamiliar culture. Thus began a long-term photo project about everyday life in the beach city. “I wanted to use my camera to show my own vision of Revere Beach—the diversity of people, the beauty of the ever-changing color of the sky and the water.”

 After a chance conversation over those photographs and a few poems, a collaboration was born. “We met at a bakery on Broadway and kicked around ideas about how the photos and the poems could interact with each other as stories,” Carey remembers.

This exhibition attempts to capture the complicated nature of Revere Beach, through the combination of a newcomer’s eyes and the personal reflections of poets who have history here. Often overlooked by metropolitan Boston, Revere Beach is not Cape Cod or Nantucket, and that’s part of what makes it unique. Through still images and poetry, it shows the spirit of a place that has profoundly influenced each of these artists, bringing to life an often-forgotten urban beach culture, its memories and its enduring presence.

“We dedicate this show to poet Jennifer Martelli,” Young says, “it’s bittersweet to be doing it again without her, especially in Revere, since Jennifer’s passing in the fall…”

“We miss her greatly,” Carey added, “but we know her spirit lives on in this show and the unique voice she brought to her poems.”

After events at the Winfisky Gallery at Salem State University and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem (as part of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival), this exhibition will be at the Revere History Museum, which is located at 108 Beach St. in Revere. It opens with a reception on July 16 at 6:30 and will remain on display through July 19.

More info about Kevin Carey can be found at kevincareywriter.com. More info about Jennifer Martelli can be found at poets.org. More info about Stephenie Young can be found at salemstate.edu.