Celebrating the Dead Bards of the Dirigo State

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.