Celebrating the Dead Bards of the Dirigo State

Portland Sun Article Highlights 2014 Holiday

The Portland Sun ran an excellent front page story on the upcoming celebration of Maine's Dead Bards. For the interview Dedgar rolled on up next to Henry for a photo opp!

From the article: "Skold, a poet and filmmaker from Freeport, has visited the graves of more than 400 dead poets across the country since he started his quest six years ago — "it's very informal but growing network of people," he said.

In 2009, he took a three-month tour by himself. Luttrell and some other poets helped kick off a bigger entourage in 2010 with a reading at the Eastern Cemetery, with Luttrell, Grumbling, and former Maine State Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl. That reading launched a six-week tour through 22 states, with Skold visiting and reading poems at 90 graves in 152 days. He has been joined in his endeavors by 13 state poets' laureate."

2014 Dead Poets Day in Portland Announced

The Dead Poets Remembrance Day 2014 celebration in Maine will take place this year in Portland's Western Cemetery at 5 PM, on Friday, October 10th.

"We are so glad to have 3 of Maine's finest poets on hand to help us celebrate our amazing literary history," said Walter Skold, the head of the Dead Poets Society of America. "Annie Finch, Steve Luttrell, and Megan Grumbling are going to be presenting the work of Maine poets Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pat Murphy, and Anne Hazelwood-Brady."

Western Cemetery was chosen because 3 other Maine authors and poets are buried there: Samuel Longfellow, John Neal, and Rev. Elijah Kellogg.

"Each year, besides celebrating our leading poetic voices, we try to bring back the voices of poets either forgotten or less well-known," said Skold. "Both Anne Hazelwood-Brady and John Neal, though more than a century apart, are both connected as activists for feminism in their day."

Read Full Announcement

Our Illustrious Readers for 2014

Join us in Portland's Western Cemetery as we celebrate our illustrious dead poets with the illustrious living poets Annie Finch, Steve Luttrell, and Megan Grumbling.

Anne Hazlewood-Brady 1925-2012

From Anne Hazlewood-Brady Papers, 1958-2001, MWWC

Anne, a poet and a writer graduated from Vassar in 1946. In 1969 she joined the feminist movement in New York after raising five sons. As an active independent she co-founded the New York Women's Center in 1970. Later, as a member of the planning committee of the Strike for Equality she came up with the $1,000 for the Strike office and helped organize the march and other events and wrote the beautiful, "We Took to the Streets Like a River," which commemorates the Strike for Equality march. In 1971 she moved to Maine where she registered as a lobbyist for the ERA (which passed in ME in 1973). She attended the International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City in 1976 and was a delegate to the National Women's Conference in Houston in 1977.  

 

She is a founder of Maine Women in the Arts and was poetry editor of Maine Life from 1979 to 1985. The author of six books of poetry, she also wrote "Matriot/Patriot" for Catherine East.  

Pat Murphy: A Poet From My "Hometown"-- Freeport

Unfortunately, sometimes you learn about people you would have liked to have known after they are dead...In this case, the poet and bookstore owner, Preston L. "Pat" Murphy. Turns out he lived in Freeport just at the time I was launching the Dead Poets Society of America. He died just a week before our April 23rd, 2010 kick-off event of the Dead Poet's Grand Tour 2010, in Portland's Eastern Cemetery.

Funny too that I learned about my old, unknown neighbor, while searching for another famous dead Maine poet: John Neal. It was Cliff Gallant's column about Neal in the Portland Daily Sun that led me to e-mail Cliff, who in turn turned me in the direction of Poet Murphy. Hope to soon pay a visit to his grave in Portland's Brooklawn Memorial Park.

Funny too how I have bought volumes of poetry at YES Books for my Tombstone Art projects; most-lately, books by Jewish-American poet Peretz Kaminsky. Murphy used to run YES books...in fact, I am fairly certain I would have met him during some of my book-shopping forays in Portland during the last three decades.

Here is a remembrance from Strange Maine:

I miss going to yard sales in search of books only to find Pat there ahead of me, hauling off stacks of delicious art books and who-knows-what. I miss the Pat that was, and I hope that young Portlanders in years to come have another Pat to make friends with, in spite of whatever gruff exterior they encounter. Because with your books, you need a bookman, someone who makes a place in the world that you can wander through to make friends with the books before you take them home. 

Pat was many, many things in his life, but these are the things I remember him best for. Thank you, Darlene and Jon, for doing the best that you knew how.

Illustration: A favorite memory from the Danforth Street era of Yes Books: the bathroom toiletpaper dispenser with appropriately bookish and pop culture laden grafitti, recreated from memory.

Maine Poets' Graves Map Updated 8-13

The interactive map with the graves of Maine Poets has been updated.

Times Record Highlights National Dead Poets Project!

Here is a great recent front page article that highlights the Dead Poets Society of America, and the search for poet's graves. You can Download Appreciating poets — past and present | www.timesrecord.com | The Times Record.pdf (462.4K)

Great Article Highlights National Dead Poets Project! April 2013

Yes! A Great front page article today that highlights the Dead Poets Society of America, and the search for poet's graves. You can Download Appreciating poets — past and present | www.timesrecord.com | The Times Record.pdf (462.4K)

2014 Reader : Annie Finch

Annie Finch is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, plays, translation, literary essays, textbooks and anthologies, most recently Spells: New and Selected Poems. Her books for poets include A Poet’s Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Sharing Your Poetry. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Paris Review, and The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, and she blogs regularly on women’s issues for The Huffington Post. Annie has contributed her poetry to many choral and opera works and visual artist collaborations, and her poetic theater projects include the multimedia ecopoetry show Wolf Song, which premiered at Mayo Street Arts.  She has read and performed her work across the U.S. and internationally. Holding degrees from Yale University, The University of Houston, and Stanford University, Annie has taught at several universities, including nine years as Director of the Stonecoast MFA Program. She now teaches privately as well as online at Poetcraftcircles.com. Please visit anniefinch.com for more, including poems, a blog, and “Annie’s weekly spell.” 

2014 Reader: Megan Grumbling

Megan Grumbling is a poet, educator, and critic. Her poetry has appeared in Poetry,The Iowa Review, Crazyhorse, The Southern Review, The Antioch Review, and other journals; was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation; received the Robert Frost Foundation Award for Poetry; and was chosen for the Best New Poets and Best of the Net anthologies. She reviews plays and books for the Portland Phoenix, and is reviews editor of the poetry and arts journal The Café Review. She has written and staged performance works as part of the Sacred and Profane, the Belfast Poetry Festival, and the PortFringe Festival, and her short film Carrying Place, a Sisters Grumbling production, screened in Maine, New York, and L.A. in 2013. She teaches writing at SMCC and UNE, and some of her most recent work appears in Unsplendid, Angle, and the Berlin journalSand. This October, excerpts from her new poetry work-in-progress,Persephone in the Late Anthropocene, will be staged as a spoken opera composed by Denis Nye; and her street theater will be performed as part of the King Tide Party on October 9, in Portland. Read more at megangrumbling.com.

Megan was one of our inaugural readers back in April, 2010, when the 2nd Dead Poets Grand Tour took off out of Portland, ME.

The Fish, By Elizabeth Bishop from Walter Skold on Vimeo.