There is nothing like a poem to inspire, heal and provoke. As Major Jackson says, "a poem advances our humanity in language". Blue Raven Gallery's Reading Series brings to the central Maine coast a reading series steeped deep in poetry's oral tradition featuring some of the most prominent and distinguished voices nationally and regionally. Housed in Blue Raven Gallery's one-of-a-kind space and surrounded by a curated collection of some of the country's best painting, photography, sculpture and contemporary art.

For Questions or Additional Information Contact at [email protected]

Schedule of Events

June 19, 2024

Series #1 - Edward Hirsch With Gibson Fay-Leblanc

Ed Hirsch
Ed Hirsch has published ten books of poems, most recently Gabriel: A Poem (2014) and Stranger by Night (2020). He has also published six prose books about poetry, including 100 Poems to Break Your Heart (2021) and The Heart of American Poetry (2022). Hirsch has won, amongst other things, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Medal of Honor, and a MacArthur Fellowship. He taught at Wayne State University and the University of Houston and now serves as President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Gib Fay-LeBlanc
Gib Fay-LeBlanc's first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist won the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by Poets & Writers. His second, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. His poems have appeared in magazines including the New Republic, Tin House, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and Orion. He has helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, and Hewnoaks and currently serves as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance

July 24, 2024

Series #2 - Jennifer Grotz With Samaa Abdurraqib

Jennifer Grotz
Jennifer Grotz is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Still Falling (Graywolf Press, 2023). Also a translator from the French and Polish, her newest translation is Everything I Don't Know, the selected poems of Jerzy Ficowski (World Poetry, 2021). Her poems, reviews, and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, Ploughshares, New England Review, and in five volumes of the Best American Poetry Anthology. The recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, Grotz has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is the Director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conferences and teaches at the University of Rochester.

Samaa Abdurraqib
Samaa is a writer, poet, and a lover of the outdoors. She's spent the last 10 years working with many organizations as a facilitator and a leadership coach (for leaders of color). Samaa's recent writing can be found in Cider Press Review, Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic, Writing the Land: Maine, and in her recent chapbook, Each Day is Like An Anchor. She is the editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast (2023). She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council and spends her spare time exploring the woods, waterways, mountains of Maine.

August 7, 2024

Series #3 - Tim Seibles With Adrian Blevins

Tim Seibles
Tim Seibles was born in Philadelphia in 1955. He is the author of several poetry collections including Hurdy-Gurdy (1992), Buffalo Head Solos (2004), published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center and Fast Animal, published by Etruscan Press, which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award and winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Prize. Tim is a former NEA fellow and recipient of a fellowship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. He completed a two-year appointment as Poet laureate of Virginia (2016-18). Voodoo Libretto, a collection of his new and selected poems was released by Etruscan in 2022.

Adrian Blevins
Adrian Blevins's most recent book of poetry is Status Pending, out this fall from Four Way Books. Her other full-length collections are Appalachians Run Amok, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, and The Brass Girl Brouhaha. She also co-edited Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean, a collection of essays by new and emerging Appalachian writers, and is the recipient of many awards and honors including the Wilder Prize from Two Sylvias Press, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and a Rona Jaffe Writers' Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.

September 18, 2024

Series #4 - Major Jackson With Albert Abonado

Major Jackson
Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, including Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023), The Absurd Man (2020), Roll Deep (2015), Holding Company (2010), Hoops (2006) and Leaving Saturn (2002), which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize for a first book of poems. His edited volumes include: Best American Poetry 2019, Renga for Obama, and Library of America's Countee Cullen: Collected Poems. He is also the author of A Beat Beyond: The Selected Prose of Major Jackson edited by Amor Kohli. A recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, John S. Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, Major Jackson has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writers' Award, and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. He has published poems and essays in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Orion Magazine, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry London, and World Literature Today. Major Jackson lives in Nashville, Tennessee where he is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and serves as the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.

Al Abonado
Al Abonado is the author of the poetry collection JAW (Sundress Publications 2020) and the forthcoming Field Guide for Accidents (Beacon Press 2024), which was selected by Mahogany Browne for the National Poetry Series. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in the Bennington Review, Colorado Review, Poetry Northwest, Zone 3, and others. He lives and teaches in Rochester, NY.

Date:
June 19, 2024
July 24, 2024
August 7, 2024
September 18, 2024

Time: 7:00pm

Location:
Blue Raven Gallery,
374 Main Street,
Rockland, ME 04841.

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