Spoken Word

Saturday, October 21, 2017
7:00 PM 9:00 PM 19:00 21:00

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Hear incredible spoken word performances from story-tellers, slam poets, actors, and more, featuring performances by Catherine Weiss, born and raised in Blue Hill and Grand Slam Champion of Northampton Poetry, and by Jude Lamb, a Down East area storyteller who specializes in stories from the viewpoint of women from Maine's past - some that history overlooked, and others that time forgot.

This event is free and open to the public.

BOB QUINN has been a fisherman, lighthouse keeper and operator of the Eagle Island mail boat, traveling to nearby islands, year-round on his 38-foot lobster boat, The Last Straw. He’s been caretaker for a dozen summer cottages on the Island as well as for houses on five other islands between North Haven and Deer Isle. The Quinns have owned Eagle Island for almost 200 years. He is at home entertaining an audience by recounting stories, reciting poems and prose inspired by life with his wife on the remote and tiny, island, which lies in Penobscot Bay. If someone were to drive a tractor the length of the island it would take around fifteen minutes. The Quinns first settled Eagle Island in the 19th century. Bob is a fifth generation islander. Of his more than seven decades on the water Bob quips, “It’s like walking or breathing. With time, it’s just what you know.”

STEVE PICKERING knows a great deal about crime, and that is the subject of his novel, Bad Moon Rising (2015). He knows of what he speaks (or writes). His twenty-eight year law enforcement career took him from patrolling Washington and Hancock counties, to detective, the joint DEA-Maine State Police Anti-Smuggling Task Force, Criminal Investigation Division III, to Sergeant and supervisor of the Bangor office of CID III. Pickering retired in 2006, began and continues his second career as a private investigator. But his third, successful career is writing. According to one critic, Pickering “has mastered the craft of writing fiction, and he’s particularly good with dialogue...masterful.” His novel, Bad Moon Rising is published by North Country Press in Unity. Pickering, who is currently working on his next novel, resides in Blue Hill, Maine with his wife, Betty; he has three sons, twelve grandchildren and a great grandchild.

JOHN DENNIS of the Eskasoni Mi’kmaq Nation is a tribal member of the Aroostook Band of Micmacs. Dennis is a musician, storyteller, and drummer who offers songs, stories and teachings that he has learned throughout his life in order to help preserve and to pass on his knowledge to the youth of the Mi’kmaq and other Wabanaki Communities. He is a former Cultural Director for the Micmac tribe and is truly a keeper of tradition.

JUDE LAMB is a storyteller who delights in portraying historic Maine women. Her story performance of her fourth-great-grandmother, Eunice Lakeman Hoar, is based on a true family story passed down orally, then recorded in several small publications. She has taken the story to the next level by researching and fleshing out the people and the times, and performing their story while dressed in period clothing. This is part of Jude’s growing series of performances featuring historic Maine women, and is told through the eyes of Eunice.

Luther and Eunice Lakeman Hoar, and their children, were the first permanent settlers on what became Rangeley Lake. Jude first heard this story at the annual Lamb Family Reunions, as a child in the mid-1950s.

In 1817 Eunice and Luther walked the 20 miles, with their nine children (ages one to fourteen), from the valley below Rangeley, to what became Rangeley Lake. They hauled all their worldly possessions on moose sleds, up over the mountains, on the late winter snow. In the process the baby, who was bundled into the large family dough bowl and tied to the top of a loaded moose sled, went missing. They had crossed wolf tracks, and the journey would have been at night to take advantage of the frozen crust to haul their sleds. One can only imagine their frantic search!

Jude hopes that her story may inspire others to share their own family stories in creative ways. She holds a degree in Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, and lives with her husband in an old Maine farmhouse in Lamoine.

AMY GRANT is best known to the Blue Hill area as owner of Peninsula Metamorphic Arts and Learning, Inc., a creative and educational resource for the rural communities of the Blue Hill Peninsula, and which offers a variety of classes, workshops, academic consulting and individual learning opportunities as well as theatrical performances so that residents and visitors to the Blue Hill Peninsula can have expanded access to quality, innovative, and affordable artistic and educational experiences. Most recently, theater artist Grant has written and performed an original piece entitled Wading In, a show about doing it anyway. Emmett Scott accompanies her. This is a spoken word and music piece that touches on many topics through the lens of doing the work that must be done - even when it's hard.

AMY ROEDER is the Director of Education at Penobscot Theatre Company where she has been seen in Doctor Cerberus, Calendar Girls, and August: Osage County. As part of her work at the theatre, Amy was privileged to collaborate with members of the Penobscot Nation on Transformer Tales: Stories of the Dawnland, a world premiere. She has also spearheaded Penobscot Theatre Company’s new corporate training program, using improvisation to help businesses develop a more agile workforce. Amy has also been a company member of Bar Harbor’s ImprovAcadia for thirteen seasons. She holds her BFA from the University of Evansville, her MFA from the University of Georgia and is a certified teacher of the Michael Chekhov acting technique. Amy is a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association and SAG-AFTRA. Look for the union label!

CATHERINE WEISS was born and raised in Blue Hill. Catherine wants you to know she loves poems. And Lord of the Rings. And crying jags. Sometimes she loves them all at once. Catherine is known for her signature poetic mix of humor and heart, and definitely not for punching through walls like the Hulk when she doesn’t win a slam. Her work has been published in such journals as Voicemail Poems, Melancholy Hyperbole, Jersey Devil Press, Yellow Chair Review, and Gravel Mag. PS-Catherine lives in Western MA with her husband, two dogs, and a cat. Catherine also doesn’t know how to prioritize a bio.