This year’s Winter Weekend selection, Homer’s The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles, takes place over 51 days, somewhere in the 9th or 10th year of the Trojan War. Amid a huge cast of memorable characters—and a crew of scheming Olympians sublimely indifferent to human suffering — three warriors stand out: the godlike and self-absorbed Achilles, the Tony Soprano-like Agamemnon, and the doomed Hektor, tamer of horses.
Peter Aicher, professor of classics at the University of Southern Maine presented a lecture entitled “Was There a Troy and Why Does It Matter?.”
The Council’s annual Winter Weekend, a humanities seminar on a classic text, provides an opportunity for readers to confront, in a group setting, an important work of literature. Held at Bowdoin College in early March, the program begins with a Friday evening lecture and dinner (a gastronomic taste of the time and culture reflected in the chosen text). The group reconvenes Saturday on various aspects of the book, from cultural context, to critical analysis, to explorations of specific themes.
Winter Weekend 2012 took place March 9 and 10, 2012 at Bowdoin College.
Wonder what writers really think about? Get ready for a literary extravaganza! The Maine Festival of the Book, brought to you by Maine Reads brings together writers and readers to enjoy readings, panel discussions, book signings, and performances. With the exception of Opening Night and Youth Outreach, festival events are first-come, first-served, un-ticketed seating, and are free. Almost 2000 people attended this year’s three-day event. In its four years of existence, the Maine Festival of the Book has featured more than 200 authors, including four Pulitzer Prize winners.
For more information about The Maine Festival of the Book and to join the mailing list for 2011, check out Maine Read’s website.
This lectured entitled “Franco-American Women’s Words in Maine” featured author, Rhea Côté Robbins, reading from works in progress as well as from previously published titles weaving stories of the French woman’s life on the landscapes in Maine. Trudy Chambers Price was unable to attend, but pieces of her works were also read.
The Maine Festival of the Book is an annual festival brought to you by Maine Reads with support from the 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[ 1:18:14 ]Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7456)
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.
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.
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.
Please be aware that the content in these audio files does not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of the Maine Humanities Council or any organization with which the Maine Humanities Council is affiliated. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This year’s Winter Weekend selection, Homer’s The Iliad, translated by Robert Fagles, takes place over 51 days, somewhere in the 9th or 10th year of the Trojan War. Amid a huge cast of memorable characters—and a crew of scheming Olympians sublimely indifferent to human suffering — three warriors stand out: the godlike and self-absorbed Achilles, the Tony Soprano-like Agamemnon, and the doomed Hektor, tamer of horses.
