Please join Mechanics’ Hall, the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and Longfellow Books for a launch of Betsy Sholl’s latest collection of poems, As If a Song Could Save You. Award-winning poet Martha Collins writes of the book, “Keenly alert to a world where ‘the light that falls is knit with shadow,’ Betsy Sholl creates an encompassing vision of nature and spirit, past and present, self and others, music and word. Always ‘going griefward’ toward the gorgeous elegiac poems of the last section, she offers us difficult but sustaining wisdom. ‘Yes, it is hard, but there are gifts’—including these exquisite poems.”
Poets Linda Aldrich, Gretchen Berg, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Zanne Langlois, and Marita O’Neil will each share a poem and help celebrate Betsy’s new book.
This event is free, and RSVP is required—please click on the button above to save your seat.
Books will be sold by Longfellow Books.
Betsy Sholl served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011. Her ninth collection of poetry is House of Sparrows, New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Otherwise Unseeable won the 2015 Maine Literary Award for poetry. Other awards include the AWP Prize for Poetry, the Felix Pollak Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, MWPA’s Distinguished Achievement Award, and an Honorary Doctorate from USM. She currently teaches in the MFA Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts, and lives in Portland.
Linda Aldrich has published three collections of poetry: Foothold (2008), March and Mad Women (2012), and Ballast (2021). She served as Portland, Maine’s Poet Laureate from 2018-21. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, among them Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, Elixir, Hole-in-the Head Review, The Denver Quarterly, Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, and Wait: Poems from the Pandemic, published by Littoral Press. She received a 2017 Hewnoaks writing residency, and her poem “Woman-without-Arms” won the Emily Dickinson Award from Universities West Press.
Gretchen Berg is a Maine-based performance artist/educator and writer. Currently the lead teaching artist for arts organization Side x Side, she has taught performance and education courses at Bowdoin College, Bates College and the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is one-third of Portland's modern dance company Berg, Jones & Sarvis, works in rural schools through the Local Stories Project and is most interested in creating new works. Many of the poems in her first book, So Far (Moon Pie Press, 2022), were written in residencies at Monson Arts and Hewnoaks.
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc’s first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, won the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by Poets & Writers as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. His second book, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. Gibson’s poems have appeared in magazines including The New Republic, Tin House, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and Orion, and his prose in Kenyon Review online, Portland Magazine, and Slice. He currently serves as executive director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland with his family.
Suzanne Langlois’s chapbook Bright Glint Gone was chosen by award-winning poet Martha Collins as the winner of the 2019 Maine Chapbook Series. Her poems have appeared in The Maine Review, NAILED Magazine, Cider Press Review, The Fourth River, Off The Coast, Rattle, and on the Button Poetry channel. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Independent Best American Poetry, and the Pushcart Prize. She holds a BA in English from Tufts University, an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She lives in Portland and teaches high school English in Falmouth.
Marita O’Neill has an MFA from Vermont College and teaches at Yarmouth High School. Her book Evidence of Light. was published by Moon Pie Press. Her poems have appeared in many magazines and journals.