A Talk on Writing Creatively from History
Maine poet Julia Bouwsma will give a talk about the process of writing creative work based on real historical events. Bouwsma is the author of the 2019 Maine Literary Award-winning poetry collection Midden, which explores the state of Maine’s 1912 racially-motivated, forcible eviction and erasure of the Malaga Island community. Drawing on her own experience writing this book, Bouwsma will consider the process of turning research into language that is both evocative and honest, that simultaneously honors and interrogates the past.
How do writers decide which histories to explore? How can they balance fact against imagination, allowing room for both, and for the layers and complexities that exist between the two? How might they approach writing about history responsibly, particularly histories to which they have only a very tenuous relationship? How do they negotiate an incomplete archive and their own distance from history in order to create writing that recognizes both the known and the unknown?
This talk will consider these questions and more, and will be accessible to both writers and non-writers alike. It will conclude with a brief Q&A session.
Co-sponsored by: Bangor Public Library
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, editor, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). Honors she has received include the 2019 and 2018 Maine Literary Awards; the 2016-17 Poets Out Loud Prize, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver; and the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award, selected by Linda Pastan. Her poems and book reviews can be found in Cutthroat, Grist, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, Verse Daily, and other journals. She serves as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.