Belfast Poetry

Poem by Festival Poet Jonathan Skinner

2009-10-05T12:50:00.000-07:00

Thousands of Eyes Catch the Light
Through Your Open Door

mascots of the bizarre
cosmopolitan cannibals
foot & stomach in one
gastropods designed
to eat what they cover
in pedal waves rasping
the low hung green
they move the whole world
through their muscular
and glistening flanks
each day, leaving trails
of absorbent signs
to weave a manifesto
in slow and close biting
contact, where lovers
eat many penises
in a climate controlled
by viscous discharges
and fattening on the vapor
sinking above the land
from Mesozoic Asia to
just past the Holocene
their stalks tipped with ovals
and wet curb feelers are
in touch with the human

First Prize Poem in the 2009 Belfast Poetry Festival Postmark Contest!

2009-10-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

Industrial remains

Judy Kaber

Beneath the shadow of the new bridge where the Passagassawakeag

rides salt into the sea, a counterpane of mud covers the bones

of ten thousand chickens. Wings, thighs, legs, feet scattered

in layers among mussel shells and glistening clams. They whisper

of past lives, spread rumors of how it used to be. One skeleton,

oddly whole except for the head, remembers another life --

lying limp and full of feathers, riding a conveyor belt,

fingered by calloused hands -- and writes the story in odd runes

sculpted from claw fragments left by the moving tides.

Don’t believe it, a darting alewife cries. It’s all lies.

But the bird continues the backward tale unperturbed. Carving

a saga recalled of the slats of a crate, the careening predawn ride

through the streets, feathers gilding lawns, beaks drawn

and screeching, bumps, and brakes, and breezes from the sea.

Crazy, skinless fowl, hawks a diving herring gull.

But the beakless bard continues. Back into the chicken barn,

windowless, squinting in the hard electric light, warm

in the company of hundreds, fed, watered, watched,

hearing the tread of booted human feet, smelling the sharp

odor of acrid droppings, feeling the bite of wire against wings.

Fishing lines drop from above, even the nightcrawlers

snicker. But the bones press on, to write this legacy.

Back to the time beneath a mother’s breast, the warmth

of down, the hopeful cheep, the drying and quick pull

of air into lungs. Back again, back and back,

into the egg, the dark round beginning, the echoing sea,

fine pulsing red lines, food raw and golden, birth sounds

beating in waves, membranes of comfort, movements

like small comets, kicking thick, liquid sky.

poem by Festival Poet Dave Morrison

2009-09-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

Black Crow

Black crow.

Black crow by a white fence.

Black crow by a white fence on Mechanic Street, a Wednesday afternoon near the end of August, the crow so black, so black it looks like someone cut a crow shape out of the day with scissors and the Universe is showing through, made more black by the white bars of the fence and the grass made electric in the blast of the slanting sun, black crow stands absolutely still by the side of the road, pickup goes by, scooter goes by, Buick losing paint goes by, black crow is searching while trying to appear nonchalant, disdainful even, anything but desperate while his belly grinds on itself, there must be something by the side of the road, car-jetsam, animal or bird or bug too slow to cross, there must be something to justify crow's obsessive curiosity – crow doesn't like the traffic but will abide it, and uneasy truce – the traffic gives him squirrels and cats and possums and stupid birds, and gristle and bun and milkshake, but in his crow heart he doesn't want to be on Mechanic Street, but by the water, riding a thermal like a hawk, or even diving like a crazy osprey, or standing on the top of a tall mast in the sun like a carved God.

Could crow keep his balance on top of the mast under full sail? That would be glorious, feeling as if he were dragging the great wooden fish beneath him, until the land fell away and the ship was the only solid thing and he was at its highest point, shiny black King in the belly of a cloud, obsidian star, carved coal angel, heaven above, earth below.

Black crow.

Black crow by a white fence.

Black crow by a white fence on Mechanic Street, hungry, dreaming.

Poem by Belfast Poet Laureate and Committee Member Linda Buckmaster

2009-09-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

Webcam Osprey

“Osprey has laid an egg!”

Electronic marquee outside a restaurant

Is there no dignity left? Bad enough they

have watched me all winter: hunkering down

in the cold and wind, surveying my flat stretch

of tidewater where I know the rhythms of each run, building

the nest for our family. (How lucky the camera can’t follow the flight

of love, the moment we seal our future.) And now, just

in time for tourist season, my body unwittingly becomes

a performer while they sit at the bar

or table, even those without a water view, waiting

for their lobster, the staff laconic in the slow

early spring season and all watching

my sacred offering, an event

they can talk about

on their cell phones or perhaps even

send a picture of the picture on the screen

above the decorator fishing net.

And when the little one finally breaks

through to this world, a moment that should be

ours, only ours, how will I explain the world

he is breaking into? How can I tell him -- free-born spirit expecting

his birthright -- that he is already captured?

(Previously published in Off the Coast.)

Poem by Festival Poet Ellen Goldsmith

2009-09-07T07:18:00.000-07:00

AWAY

Crows caw, the rumble

of a plane overhead,

bird sound and bee buzz.

I came here to read,

uninterrupted by phone,

dusty tables, unmade beds.

There is nothing I need

to do for the cove. I can

leave the grasses as they are.

The water comes and goes.

The wind makes its own decisions.

published in Wolf Moon Journal, Fall 2009

Poem by Committee Member Nancy Carey

2009-08-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

Late Thoughts on

an August Afternoon

I don’t want to fall

down the steps

to the sea

where the bleached

bones

of the sailors lie

beyond all touch.

I want to ride

the school of fish

buried in the swell

watch a crab crawl

from a water cave

feel barnacled pebbles

that shift my feet

and algae bloom

on pimpled rocks.

I want to find

the teal blue ocean-glass

sea-blown onto sand

jagged edges smoothed

by salt wave weather tide.

And if aging beauties

hold the treasured necklace

to their throats

on this spit of land

under the newborn sun

seaweed woven

in their dying hair

they simply want to dream

of rage and time

before the bony

sailors come.

Poem by Festival Poet Lauren Murray

2009-08-21T08:12:00.000-07:00

Rant for the Sad Old Chairs

A chair sticks around the house awhile,
takes its space,
runs the household if you let it.

I have burned a few chairs on a cold day,
chairs I especially hated.
Just to get them off my mind.

I like to set ugly ones at the end of the driveway
for people to take away for free—
oh they do.
I have a few good candidates piling up.
That horrible green one on wheels from Bela
(he’s off in Montreal).
The one whose bottom sags
that Jim’s grandfather sat in—
cats threw up on that cushion too many times.

The busted cane rocker...that will burn nicely.

It’s a vendetta of some kind.
I’m just waiting for Grandma’s brocade
to act up and out it goes.

I’m not fond of chairs.

Poem by Committee Member and Former Belfast Poet Laureate Elizabeth Garber

2009-08-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

The Man Who Looks Like Elvis

No one remembers when the man with the pomade-combed

crescendo of jet black hair first appeared, but we all quietly

pay attention to him. Two summers ago a guitar was strapped

over his back when we eyed him wandering miles along Route 1.

Last year, when his hair was bleached reddish blond, we privately

wondered if he’d given up on Elvis. This spring, his hair was black

again. All over town, we nodded the same quiet nod: Elvis is back.

Passing him on High Street we notice his carefully-shaved long

sideburns, before our gaze skirts off to study the bike shop window.

He’s leaving the supermarket as we arrive. A strange discomfort

twists our faces away. Opening night of Hairspray, in the art deco

neon glow of the movie theater, the crowd is thick with bleached

blond beehives, sculpted hair rising like curvaceous mounds of soft

ice cream. Elvis appears with his blunt heavy brows, the rough

carved mouth, the deep plowed wrinkles under his eternal pompadour.

In the contest for the biggest, tallest hair, we cheer on contestants

in rhinestone glasses, peddle pushers, bobby socks. Later, when we chat

and smile, trying to hide the searching hunger of our loneliness, he slips

through the forest of lacquered ratted hair, a silent king passing us, searching

for his subjects, his promised land, a place where he, too, will be recognized.

A poem from Festival poet Joel Lipman

2009-08-19T10:42:00.001-07:00

ISADORA’S

Ernie Kovacs, radar, austere criticism, no one in my lifetime
disappears into wilderness behind oxen. What madness and loss
in the nerve gas, mow-em-down-n-cover-em-up world, tabletop
poetry shrunk to hideous memorization – that’s nothing.
My heart’s ice melts before Bugs Bunny and an afternoon of animation,
dancers midst the obituary columns.

I turn the computer off in the rain –
no true artist falls in love with a machine.
Houses fill with doowah music and fluorescent canisters.
I’m in love with youthful Picasso and mystic wings,
in love with Lenin, anarchism, everything
against bland catechisms, misery and profit.

So I throw my hands up and down, up and down, crazy flapping
in a way unknown before the d.j. Ooooooh,
my hot arms wrapped around your neck, hips charging
like Spike Jones doing Swan Lake I change the world
from bumbling curiosity to a humming, jerky, Fred Astaire boater,
the Houdini of feet. Name something better than instinct.

I put hot slithery jazz on, slide into the next room
to find someone better dressed than discipline and fear.
Critics spasm as I dance before the mirror naked
singing “I am too voodoo for you – voo, vooo, voooo, too voodoo for you.”

Thank god there is no poetry of religion. Ugh,
imagine a long unadventurous life, never desperate
blues eating your heart out. Long live risk
and joy, aggression, sexual prancing, fabulous feathered robes.

I’ll spin the seven dances of revolt against repression
and symbols of cold. The dancing cop
is a stupid, impossible dream. When, phfffft…
we enter realm without dogma – vast
intuition, unconscious, grand revelatory rhythm of
boom charms, rituals, spells, the acrobatic
be-bop elaborated protest against miserabilism.

Here is Mona Lisa’s electrical system hung from a star,
here storm, here Harpo Marx, here Karl, here the rising phoenix.
Some people hit the streets for a lifetime.
This is my dance.

2009-08-19T08:59:00.000-07:00

The 2009 festival has an impressive group of poets and artists from around the state of Maine, many of whom have never read in Belfast, and some interesting collaborations.

Adrian Blevins The Brass Girl Brouhaha won the 2004 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Blevins is also the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer's Foundation Award, a Bright Hill Press Chapbook Award for The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes, and the Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction. A new book, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Blevins teaches at Colby College.

Arielle Greenberg is the author of My Kafka Century and Given, as well as several chapbooks, and the co–editor of several poetry anthologies, including, with Rachel Zucker, the forthcoming Starting Today: Poems for Obama's First 100 Days. and Women Poets on Mentorship: Effort and Affections. She is an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago and also teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program through the University of Southern Maine.

Carl Little is the author of 3,000 Dreams Explained and Ocean Drinker: New and Selected Poems. His poems have appeared in many publications, including The Hudson Review, Paris Review, Off the Coast, Puckerbrush Review and Narramissic Notebook, and in The Maine Poets, edited by Wesley McNair. His poem “Ten Tourists Visit Baker’s Island, ca. 1900” won the 2002 Friends of Acadia poetry competition. Author of several art books, including Paintings of Maine, he lives and writes on Mount Desert Island.

David Sloan helped found, and is the lead teacher at Maine's only Waldorf high school – Merriconeag Waldorf High School in New Gloucester. He graduated from the Stonecoast MFA program in poetry, and is the author of two books on Waldorf education—Stages of Imagination: Working Dramatically with Adolescents, and Life Lessons: Reaching Teenagers through Literature. He has also had numerous articles published in Renewal, and poetry in Western Poetry Quarterly and Infinity Limited.

Helen Tirone has lived in Maine since the age of two, when her parents moved their family from Philadelphia to Mt. Desert Island. She always told her father it was the greatest decision he ever made. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a dual B.A. in Creative Writing and Geography. Upon returning to Maine she pursued a career in Garden Design/Landscaping. She and her family live on a farm in Freedom.

More bios coming soon for Stephen Petroff and Mark Melnicove.

Ellen Goldsmith is the author of two chapbooks – Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, which won the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center 1997 chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and magazines including Bangor Metro, California Quarterly, the Kerf, Off the Coast and Wolf Moon Press Journal. She is the recipient of Creative Incentive Awards from the City University of New York. A resident of Cushing, she is a professor emerita of The City University of New York.

Joel Lipman is Professor of Art & English at the University of Toledo, and Poet Laureate of Lucas County (Ohio). His poetry, which has been published since the 1960’s with independent press books, include Machete Chemistry/Panades Physics (Cubola New Arts, with Yasser Musa), and the Luna Bisante Prods chapbook The Real Ideal and Ransom Notes. Among his bookworks, mail art and visual poems are the lengthy sequences, Jesse Helms’ Body, and Origins of Poetry, a selection of which was published in Poetry and republished in Harper’s.

Dave Morrison is like a carpenter missing fingers — do you worry about his ability or applaud his devotion? A high school graduate and above-average guitar player, Dave has published two novels and three books of poetry, and his poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies.

Lauren Murray was advised by her grandmother to make sure she had an interesting life if she wanted to be a poet. She moved to Maine in 1983 and works as an occupational therapist. She is a collaborator with Ova Dreams.

Jonathan Skinner’s poetry collections include With Naked Foot and Political Cactus Poems. Skinner edits the journal Ecopoetics and teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Bates College in Central Maine.

Karin Spitfire’s full fledge debut as a poet came in 2005 with the publishing of her first book, Standing with Trees. Her poetry includes rants, prayers, polemics and free verse influenced by her years as a dancer, healer and activist. She has enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with visual artist Susan White, Kenny Cole and performing artist David Dobson in previous Festivals and the Women’s Work Dance Collective Summer 2009 “Landscapes Show.”

2009 Collaborative Artists

Dyan Berk holds an art/ art education degree from the University of Miami. Her mixed media paintings and soft sculptures have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout New England. For the past 8 years she has been working on a series of collages and 3D work. She presently lives and works on Monhegan Island and Lincolnville. This summer she will be installing her first Percent for Art installation entitled "A Story Inside" at the Mt. View Elementary School in Thorndike.

Richard Mann made his way back home to Maine after studying intaglio,lithography and papermaking at the University of Hawaii. He lives in Belfast and is a partner at Aarhus Gallery.

Paul Oberst earned a BA in Studio Arts from Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. He worked for 4 years at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (now Cleveland MOCA) and was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The subject of his work is the architectural "temple" (imagined sacred space) in sculptural form or in graphic studies, dance costume/set designs and museum site-specific installations. His pieces are in private, foundation, corporate and museum collections and have been shown in gallery, university and museum exhibitions.

Willy Reddick grew up in an encouraging family of professional artists. She studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and has been working professionally as a painter and white-line woodblock printmaker for over 20 years. Currently she has been combining miniature paintings with semi-precious metals as brooches and other two-dimensional or sculptural pieces. She also designs and manufactures her own line of Willy Wires jewelry, is a freelance designer and a founding partner of Åarhus Gallery in Belfast.

Abbie Shahn thinks of herself as the last of the "artists with a summer place in Maine" and the first of the “back to the landers;” or maybe she’s neither. She paints. She gardens. She agitates. She reads. She thinks. Shahn was a co–host on a radio show of world music for over 20 years. That music had a great influence on her art.

David Estey is an award-winning painter/printmaker in Belfast. He has a BFA degree from Rhode Island School of Design and a MSA degree from George Washington University, with extensive study in Rome, Italy, at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. His work is primarily abstract oil paintings and charcoal figure drawings. He has exhibited widely in Maine, Mid-Atlantic Region, and North Carolina.

Jan Owen is a Belfast calligrapher and book artist who often collaborates with Maine poets. She shows her work nationally and is a Finalist for the Minnesota Center for International Book Arts Award.

Abbie Read moved to Maine in 1998, after (what felt like) a lifetime trying to find a way to live here. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College and her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan School of Art, majoring in Mixed Media. While making art has been a lifetime pursuit and passion so has gardening, and in 1995 she received a degree from Michigan State in Landscape Design; as a result she has owned and operated ARTgarden, a landscape design and maintenance business.

Brian Reeves Certified Master of Fine Arts, is cofounder of the thriving multinational retail giant Slop Art Dot Com and inventor of the Painting Simulator and other compact innovations in Premium Expression distribution, including engineering quality Slopware for the iPhone. Through elevating contemporary "Fine Art" to the level of consumer culture, Slop Brand has provided shelter from the advancing norm since 1995, promoting the production of less forgettable work.

2009 Performers

Also, in the mix, a diverse group of performers. Come and enjoy the sights and sounds of poetry, art, music and dance. The Grand Opening at 11 a.m. on Saturday will be a jazz and poetry writing and reading jam with Agharta Quartet at Waterfall Arts. The event is open to anyone who would like to write in response to live jazz, maybe read their new work with the band, or just listen.

Tom Luther (pianist and composer) lives in Union, Maine, where he composes solo works as well as for his group Agharta. He is also as a performer. Recent projects include recordings of keyboard music of Johann Sebastien Bach, an ambient soundscape video project, and his own large scale solo piano collection “Watersongs.”

Leslie Stein (keyboardist) has been a musician since her early days, playing piano and guitar in a wide range of bands and singing in vocal groups of all sorts. She has also enjoyed acting with local theater groups over the past ten years and is a collaborator with Ova Dreams.

Joan Proudman (dance) studied with the Classical Ballet Academy of Connecticut and later performed with the Boston Ballet at the Music Hall and with the Lyric Opera Company of Chicago. She moved to Portland in 1980, joined the Ram Island Dance Company and the Portland Ballet, and later moved to the Belfast area where she continues to dance with Women's Works and Ova Dreams.

Jeffrey Densmore (percussionist). More info coming soon.

2009 Festival Locations

2009-08-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Participating Venues for the 2009 Festival

Downtown Belfast Maine (google maps)

Åarhus Gallery
50 Main Street, Belfast, Maine
207.338.0001
website

Baywrap (aka The “Hub”)
20 Beaver Street, Belfast, ME
207.338.9757
website

Belfast Dance Studio
109 High Street,, Belfast, Maine
207.338.5380
website

Belfast Free Library
106 High Street, Belfast, Maine
207.338.3884
website

Darby's Restaurant
155 High Street, Belfast, Maine
207.338.2339
website

Roots & Tendrils
2 Cross Street, Belfast, Maine
207.338.5225
website

Unitarian Universalist Church of Belfast
37 Miller Street, Belfast, Maine
207.338.4482
website

Waterfall Arts Center
256 High Street, Belfast, Maine
207.338.2222
website

2009 Festival Schedule

2009-08-19T08:55:00.001-07:00

Festival Schedule
(check back for updates!)

Friday, October 2, 5 – 8pm
Exhibits open in galleries for First Friday Art Walk Downtown.

Friday, October 16, 7pm; Reader's Signup 6:30pm
"Old Home Night" for Waldo County Poets; Belfast Free Library. Waldo County poets of all stripes and persuasions are invited to read their work. Sign up to read that evening or just listen.

Saturday, October 17, 11am
Grand Opening Poetry and Jazz improv with Agharta Quartet; Waterfall Arts. Come to write, read or just listen.

12 noon
Light Lunch; Waterfall Arts

12:30 – 5:30pm
Poetry & Art Walk; Downtown Belfast
Complete schedule later this summer

6pm
Poets & Friends Dinner
Unitarian Universalist Church of Belfast

6:30 – 8pm
Poetry Contest Winner
Reading and Open Mic Round Robin
Unitarian Universalist Church of Belfast

The 2009 5th Annual Belfast Poetry Festival

2009-08-19T08:54:00.001-07:00

Here's what's coming up at this year's festival:

Fourteen poets, ten visual artists, four performing artists, and more will participate in the 5th Annual Belfast Poetry Festival October 16 and 17, 2009 in downtown Belfast, Maine.

One of the only community-based, non-academic poetry festivals in the country, the event features established, professionally recognized poets and artists from throughout Maine along with emerging poets to create a lively mix.

A unique feature of the Festival all five years has been the Gallery Walk, in which the audience moves among seven downtown galleries to view the collaborative exhibits by artist/poet teams and hear the accompanying poetry.

New this year is the Maine Postmark Poetry Contest.
Over 160 poets from around Maine submitted entries by the July 4 deadline. The winner will be announced in August and will read at the Festival. Calligrapher and book artist Jan Owen will create a calligraphy version of the poem for the winner.

Also new is “Old Home Night” for Waldo County poets of all stripes and persuasions to come out of the woods and off their boats to read from their work.

Join us in October in Belfast for an inspired and inspiring weekend.

2009-08-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

Welcome! This blog will serve as a sister site for the activities, fun and folks associated with the Belfast Poetry Festival. Check back for musings from Belfast's esteemed Poet Laureate and one of the 2009 festival's key organizers, Linda Buckmaster, plus poems by festival participants, contest news, info about area readings, festival updates, and more!