Join us Saturday afternoon, October 22, for Word’s Poetry Series 2022. We have a stellar line-up of poets, and for the first time, all readings will be held at the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill from 1:00 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. Each poet will read for 20 minutes, and they will appear in the order listed here. There will be a 20-minute intermission at 2:10, during which audience members are invited downstairs to Word’s Poetry Corner in the church basement, where you can purchase books, discuss what you’ve heard, and write an original haiku for the Poetry Post-it bulletin board. Books are also available for purchase on site throughout the festival and at Blue Hill Books.
Free event
Ian-Khara Ellasante (they/them) is a Black, queer, trans-nonbinary poet and cultural studies scholar. Their poems have won the 49th New Millennium Award for Poetry and have appeared in We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, The Feminist Wire, The Volta, Hinchas de Poesía, Nat, Brut, and elsewhere. They are an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies at Bates College in southern Maine.
Zeke Russell was born in Skowhegan and grew up around the zany and energetic artist's community of West Athens. He is a poet and housing advocate operating in greater Boston. His work has appeared in Wyvern Lit, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Freezeray Poetry, Maps For Teeth and Button Poetry online. Russell was a member of the 2016 and 2017 Boston Poetry Slam teams, reaching the semi-finals of NUPIC in 2017. He has published three chapbooks and his debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Game Over Books in 2023. He lives with his partner Milo and returns home to Central Maine as often as he can.
Poet, translator, and essayist Jennifer Moxley’s most recent collection is For the Good of All Do Not Destroy the Birds (Flood, 2021). Author of numerous poetry books, as well as a memoir, Moxley’s poetry book The Open Secret won the 2015 William Carlos Williams award and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts award. She is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of Maine.
A longtime resident of the Midwest, Samaa Abdurraqib has spent the last decade loving and living on unceded Wabanaki/Abenaki land. Her poetry can be found in Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest, Tiny Seed Journal, and Cider Press Review. Each Day Is Like An Anchor (2020) is her first published chapbook.
Jason Grundstrom-Whitney is a poet, writer, songwriter and musician who plays bass, harmonica, and various wind instruments. His poetry collection, Bear, Coyote, Raven (Resolute Bear Press, 2019) was reviewed in The Boston Globe, Publishers Weekly, and The Quoddy Times. The adopted son of Joan M. Dana, the Bear Clan Mother of the Passamaquoddy, Jason currently works as Substance Abuse Counselor/Co-occurring Specialist at Riverview Psychiatric Hospital.
Julia Bouwsma, Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate, lives off the grid in the mountains of western Maine. Bouwsma’s two poetry collections, Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), received Maine Literary Awards for Poetry Book. She currently serves as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME and teaches in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington.
