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Jennifer R. Martelli, a Marblehead poet whose award-winning work explored feminism, politics and personal history through an Italian American lens, died Sept. 25. She was 63.
Her death was confirmed in an obituary published by her family in The Boston Globe, noting that she “passed with gratitude.”
For more than two decades, Martelli moved at the center of Marblehead’s literary life —reading in seaside salons, lending her ear to fledgling poets, judging the town’s Festival of Arts literary contests. The salt air and shoreline seeped into her lines, but she carried her native Revere with her always. The pull between the blue-collar city where she was born and then the affluent coastal community she later called home gave her work its tension — an undercurrent of belonging and estrangement that never let her rest easy in one place.
“Parts of it are working class, aren’t they?” interviewer Doug Holder asked about Marblehead during a 2016 conversation. “Oh, yeah, it really is,” Martelli replied. “I think people — they look at the (Marblehead) Neck, and they think all of Marblehead is like that, and it isn’t. It’s just, it’s very regular … people don’t drive down my street to go look at the houses.”
This geographic and cultural contrast between Revere and Marblehead became a central theme in her poetry, particularly in collections like “The Uncanny Valley” (2016), which explored questions of identity, belonging and place. In that collection’s poem “Hump,” she depicts Marblehead’s everyday life alongside road construction and development: “There’s a lady in front of me in a black, shiny as a hearse, smart car. We have to stop to let a big old turtle cross the narrow road from the pond to the hill. The men in orange vests blow up little by little every day at noon.”
Born Jennifer Colella in 1962 in Revere, Martelli earned her bachelor’s degree from Boston University and later an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, where she studied with poet Ellen Bryant Voight. She described her letters from Voight as “like a textbook” in her interview with Holder.
A defining aspect of Martelli’s life was her 36 years of sobriety. She was active in Narcotics Anonymous, which her Globe obituary noted “forged great friendships.” This experience informed her work, particularly her final collection.
Martelli is survived by her husband of 37 years, Vincent Martelli Jr.; two children, Mia, a dancer, and Michael, a drummer; sisters Joan Bullock and Liz Kirk; and several nieces and nephews.
Renee Keaney, a fellow activist and friend, said Martelli’s loss “is devastating to all who knew her. Our hearts are broken for Vinny, Mia and Michael.”
Keaney described Martelli as “a unique, truly authentic, irreplaceable soul,” whose wide circles of family, neighbors, poets, activists, Democrats and people in recovery now feel “a sea of grief.” She recalled Martelli’s humor that “always brought you higher” and a “warrior spirit for justice” that called others to live with more compassion.
A prolific literary voice
Her literary achievements accelerated in the past decade. Her 2022 collection “The Queen of Queens” won the Italian American Studies Association Book Award and was shortlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her final collection, “Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree,” was published by Lily Poetry Review Books shortly before her death.
She was the author of several earlier works, including “In the Year of Ferraro” (2020) and “My Tarantella,” which the Massachusetts Center for the Book named a “must read.” Her first chapbook, “Apostrophe,” was published in 2010.
She noted her writing often utilized pop culture references, religious imagery and personal history to examine emotional landscapes and political realities. She incorporated coastal imagery from her North Shore surroundings, particularly in poems like “Devil Tide,” which she described to Holder as “a conglomerate of a lot of beaches. I’ve always lived by a beach. I always will. I grew up on Revere Beach. I live in Marblehead. There’s a beach there. There’s Lynn beach in between Swampscott, and then there’s Gloucester, all the beaches up there.”
In that prose poem, Martelli writes: “There are rocks off the coast shaped like eggs. There are rocks shaped like misery, and one like a skull … Too many villages are connected by thin causeways, pinched on either side by the Atlantic. Devil tides cut them off from the world. Folks go out and never come back.”
Discussing “The Uncanny Valley,” which was originally titled “Melochio” (Italian for “evil eye”), Martelli explained to Holder: “An ‘Uncanny Valley’ is a term in aesthetics that describes things that look right but don’t feel right. That describes my 54 years on this earth.”
Her poems appeared in prestigious outlets including Poetry magazine, Plume, Verse Daily, Best of the Net Anthology and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day series. She received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Monson Arts.
Beyond her writing, Martelli taught high school English and women’s literature at Emerson College. She served as poetry co-editor for MER: Mom Egg Review and as associate editor for The Compassion Project: An Anthology.
“Jenn was a brilliant, unique poet, an astute editor, a brave and principled person, a gifted teacher, a loving family member and warm and dear friend,” wrote her colleagues at MER in a Substack tribute published Sept. 28. “She was valiant in her fight against cancer, and in her political activism.”
Among those who remembered Martelli was Marblehead resident and friend Kathy Hempel, who first met her while canvassing for Democratic candidates in Lynn in 2018. A stranger walked into the campaign office that day, unable to recall where she had left her car after hours of knocking on doors. The two set off together down Lynn’s Walnut Street, slowing at each cross street until the car appeared.
“We laughed and laughed until we located it,” Hempel said. “It was serendipity that I met Jenn that day, and it was the start of a friendship I will always treasure.”
Over the years, Hempel came to admire Martelli’s pride in her family, her growing literary career and “her strength of character as she fought the disease that ultimately took her far too soon.”
Poetry and political conviction
Martelli’s political activism was deeply intertwined with her life in Marblehead. In June 2022, she joined protesters carrying flags and signs following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. “I’ve lived in Massachusetts my whole life and was able to have a safe abortion,” she told the Marblehead Current as she waved a “My Body, My Choice” flag. “Now my daughter won’t be able to do that.”
That same evening, Martelli participated in a candlelight vigil on the lawn of Abbot Hall that drew more than 150 people, where state Rep. Jenny Armini, a then candidate for state representative whom Martelli strongly supported, also spoke. Their connection went beyond local politics; Martelli had earlier worked with Armini through the organization Elect Blue, formed after the 2016 presidential election.
Armini wrote in a social media tribute following Martelli’s death: “She was most definitely a queen to all who knew her, and I feel so fortunate to be one of them. She was an energy source and a lifeline … with spirit, sass and sisterhood.” Armini recalled scrolling through photos of Martelli “protesting in masks at the monument, protesting the death of Roe in Salem, campaigning in Marblehead and Swampscott — dozens of images of Jenn living out loud and showing the world what a badass really looks like.”
A remembrance will be announced by the family. According to her obituary, donations may be made to North Shore Animal Shelter or Planned Parenthood.
