In collaboration with Blue Hill Books, MWPA is pleased to host a conversation between poets Stuart Kestenbaum and Naomi Shihab Nye on Zoom. Of Kestenbaum’s newest book, things seemed to be breaking, a collection of blackout poems just published by Deerbrook Editions, writer and artist Maria Kalman says, “In the less is definitely more department, we have arrived at perfection. Stuart Kestenbaums’s extracted poems are beacons of tender, funny, minimalist illumination.” Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet” and has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. This is sure to be a wide-ranging, indelible conversation.
To order one of Naomi Shihab Nye’s books or a signed copy of Stuart’s latest book, please visit Blue Hill Books.
To RSVP and receive the Zoom link, please click on the button below.
Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, most recently things seemed to be breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He was the host of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and the host/curator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future. He's completing his five-year term as Maine's poet laureate this year.
Photo credit Michael Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People's Poet Laureate of the United States (Poetry Foundation) and lives in San Antonio. Palestinian-American, she has worked in Maine many times, including at Haystack, and in the Mars Hill schools in Aroostook County. Her most recent books are Everything Comes Next, Collected & New Poems, Cast Away, and The Tiny Journalist, which won both Texas poetry awards. She received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle in 2020.