Maine Humanities Council

Denise Pendleton, Maine Humanities Council’s Program Director of Born To Read and poet, sat down at the Belfast Free Library with two of Maine’s best-known poets, Elizabeth Garber and Dawn Potter. In addition to reading from their memoirs, the poets spoke about why they turned to prose and how their poetry background has influenced their current writing. Elizabeth W. Garber is the author of two collections of poetry and is currently writing a memoir, The Architect’s Daughter, about growing up in a modern glass house in the 1960’s. Her chapter “Stones” won the Maine Writer’s and Publishers Alliance 2009 Literary Award for unpublished Non-Fiction.  She was voted 2009 Best Writer in Waldo County in a Reader’s Poll conducted by The Village Soup/Republican Journal. Dawn Potter is the author of two collections of poetry and, most recently, a memoir, Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton. It recounts her project of copying out every word of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost while living an everyday life in the central Maine town of Harmony. According to writer Sam Pickering “Potter writes beautifully. . . . [Her book] made me ponder my life as well as literature, as a good book should but few books do.”

 

 Poets Writing Memoir: A Conversation with Elizabeth Garber and Dawn Potter [78:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1085)

Thin Blue Lines is a project of Portland’s Arts & Equity Initiative. The project brings local poets and photographers together with Portland police officers and detectives to create poems and photographs that increase the public’s knowledge and appreciation of police work. The first product of this collaboration was a calendar that was sold as a fundraiser for the family of Sgt. Rob Johnsey, who died of an accidental gun discharge in May of 2008.

This recording is from a reading that the participants—poets and police officer-poets—gave at the Portland Public Library. To learn more about this project, or to obtain a copy of the 2009 calendar, please visit Arts & Equity online.

 

 Thin Blue Lines [48:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (377)

Patricia Smith is a 2008 National Book Award Finalist for Blood Dazzler, also the basis of a forthcoming dance/theater performance with Urban Bush Women. Her other books of poetry are Teahouse of the Almighty, winner of the National Poetry Series, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize; Close to Death; Big Towns, Big Talk; and Life According to Motown. She has read her work at venues around the U.S. and around the world, including Carnegie Hall, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and tours of Germany and Austria. Smith is a four-time national individual Poetry Slam winner, the most successful competitor in slam history. Her first children’s book, Janna and the Kings, was a Lee & Low Books New Voices Award winner.

A graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, Smith joined the Stonecoast faculty in January 2009. Annie Finch, Director of the Stonecoast program, introduced her for this, her first reading as a faculty member.

 

 Patricia Smith [46:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (407)

Poet Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of twelve books and three chapbooks. She has won numerous awards, including two Boston Globe—Horn Book Awards, and is a three-time National Book Award Finalist. From the American Library Association, her books have received Newbery, Coretta Scott King, and Michael L. Printz Honors. Other honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, two Pushcart Prizes, three honorary doctorates, and a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut; founder and director of Soul Mountain Retreat, a small writers’ colony; and the former (2001-2006) Poet Laureate of the State of Connecticut.

Nelson was a visiting writer at the winter residency of the Stonecoast MFA program when she gave this reading in January 2009.

 

 Marilyn Nelson [41:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (393)

This episode is the continuation of the Stonecoast MFA Faculty “flash reading” from the winter residency in January 2009, in which each writer gets three minutes in which to share his or her work before introducing the next writer in the queue.

The first reader is Richard Hoffman, who writes in multiple genres and here shares both a short short, “Phototaxis,” and two poems, “A Good While” and “Watching.” Fantasy fiction writer Nancy Holder reads a short story about the character Zorro, and Charles Martin reads his poem “Poison.” April Ossman closed the reading with two poems, “Whose Fragile Lips” and “The Name of the Mold,” from her collection Anxious Music.

 

 Richard Hoffman [4:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (261)

 

 Nancy Holder [7:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (134)

 

 Charles Martin [7:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (132)

 

 April Ossman [3:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (143)

One of the highlights of each 10-day residency in the Stonecoast MFA program is the “flash reading” by faculty members. Each writer gets three minutes in which to share his or her work before introducing the next writer in the queue.

The flash reading from the winter residency in January 2009 began with Jaed Coffin reading an excerpt from his memoir, A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants. The next reader was David Durham, who read from his forthcoming novel The Other Land. Annie Finch shared one poem from her collection Calendars, and another from her new manuscript, American Witch. Poet Jeffrey Harrison read “Ivan Ilyich at the Lake” and “Shaking Off the Snow.” This reading continues in the next episode of the podcast.

 

 Jaed Coffin [4:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (262)

 

 David Durham [4:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (133)

 

 Annie Finch [5:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (136)

 

 Jeffrey Harrison [4:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (132)