author
Harry Kemp
1883–1960
A self-styled tramp poet who turned restless travel into books, verse, and legend, he became one of Provincetown’s most memorable literary figures. His life mixed wanderlust, public notoriety, and a long attachment to the Cape dunes that shaped his reputation.
1 Audiobook
Tramping on Life An Autobiographical Narrative
by Harry Kemp
About the author
Born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1883, Harry Hibbard Kemp was an American poet and prose writer who built his image around movement and adventure. As a young man he traveled widely, worked as a seaman, and became known for a roaming, unconventional life that fed directly into his writing and public persona.
Kemp published poetry and prose in the early twentieth century and was often called the "Poet of the Dunes" or the "Tramp Poet." He became especially associated with Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he lived on and off for many years in the dunes and remained part of the town’s artistic memory.
He died in Provincetown in 1960. Though he is not as widely read today as some of his contemporaries, his life story has remained part of American literary folklore: a mix of bohemian performance, persistent self-invention, and devotion to writing.