author
Harry Kemp
1883–1960
A wandering poet who turned tramping, seafaring, and bohemian life into vivid verse, he became known as the "Tramp Poet" and later as Provincetown's "Poet of the Dunes." His work carries the restless energy of someone who preferred open roads and shorelines to convention.
1 Audiobook
Tramping on Life An Autobiographical Narrative
by Harry Kemp
About the author
Born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1883, Harry Kemp was an American poet and prose writer whose life was almost as famous as his books. As a young man he traveled widely, worked a string of jobs, and built a public image around adventure, independence, and a refusal to settle into ordinary routines.
He published poetry and prose in the early 20th century and became widely associated with Greenwich Village and other bohemian literary circles. Readers and journalists often called him the "Tramp Poet," a nickname that fit both his roaming life and the direct, energetic style of much of his writing.
Kemp later became closely linked with Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he spent many years and where he was remembered as the "Poet of the Dunes." He died there in 1960, leaving behind a reputation not just as a writer, but as one of those larger-than-life literary figures whose personality became part of the story of American letters.