UNE Art Gallery hosts 'Maine Branches: Poets Come Home to Read and Reflect on Maine' Aug. 2nd

The University of New England Art Gallery on the Portland Campus is hosting "Maine Branches: Poets Come Home to Read and Reflect on Maine" on Aug. 2, 2012 at 5 p.m.

Poets Margo Taft Stever, Estha Weiner, Jo Ann Clark, and John Perrault will offer poems and reflections on their Maine connections.

Margo Taft Stever, whose family summer home in Biddeford Pool has stood for generations, is the author of The Hudson Line (Main Street Rag, 2012), Frozen Spring (winner, Mid-List Press First Series Award, 2002), and Reading the Night Sky (winner of Riverstone Chapbook Competition, 1996).  Her work has been published widely in anthologies and magazines.  Margo is founder of The Hudson Valley Writers' Center as well as founding editor of Slapering Hol Press.  She serves on the Board of Directors of The Word Works.  Visit her website   

Estha Weiner is from Portland, where her father ran Rines Bros. on Congress Street.  Author of In the Weather of the World (Salmon Poetry, due 2012), The Mistress Manuscript (Book Works, 2009), and Transfiguration Begins at Home (Tiger Bark Press, 2009), she also co-edited Blues for Bill: A Tribute to William Matthews (Akron Poetry Series, 2005).  A 2008 Pushcart nominee, Estha won a Paterson Poetry Prize in 2005. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Barrow Street and elsewhere.  She is founder/director of NY Alumnae Writers Nights for Sarah Lawrence College, and is on Slapering Hol Press' Advisory Committee. Visit her website.

Jo Ann Clark is a Maine graduate of West Buxton's Bonny Eagle High School and of Bates College. Her poems have appeared in The Colorado Review, The New Republic, Prairie Schooner, The Western Humanities Review, an anthology of The UK's Best Young Poets (whose editors hadn't been apprised of her Maine roots!).  The Paris Review has featured her translations of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.  In 2008, she was a finalist for the Hudson Prize of Black Lawrence Press and in 2010 was a Best New Poets nominee. Jo Ann has taught at Bank Street College, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and at international schools in Italy.

John Perrault grew up in Biddeford.  He is a lawyer, poet, and balladeer, and the author of The Ballad of Louis Wagner (Peter Randall Publisher, 2003), Here Come the Old Man Now (Oyster River Press, 2005), and Jefferson's Dream (Hobblebush Books, 2009).  He was co-recipient of the Rosalie Boyle/Norma Farber Award from the New England Poetry Club in 2008, and a finalist in the 2007 Comstock Review Poetry contest.  His poems have been published in numerous magazines.  John was Portsmouth, NH Poet Laureate 2003-2005.  Visit his website.