September 5th, 2018: Kevin McLellan and Linda Aldrich
October 3, 2018: Jeri Theriault and Matt Miller
November 7, 2018: UNH MFA poets
December 5, 2018: Mark DeCarteret and Kathleen Clancy
January 2, 2019: Youth Hoot
February 6, 2019: Maggie Dietz and Joel Carpenter
March 6, 2019: Cassandra de Alba and Alice Radin
April 3, 2019: David Surette and Mercy Carbonell
May 1, 2019: Incoming laureate Tammi Truax and Outgoing Laureate Mike Nelson
June 5, 2019: Rachel Contreni Flynn and Fred Marchant
—September 5th: Kevin McLellan and Linda Aldrich
Kevin McLellan is the author of Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, forthcoming), Ornitheology (The Word Works, 2018), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his writing appears in numerous literary journals. Kevin lives in Cambridge Massachusetts. His website is available at https://kevinmc66.wordpress.com/
Linda Aldrich has published two collections of poetry, Foothold (2008) and March and Mad Women (2012), and was selected to be the new Portland Poet Laureate in 2018.
Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, among them Crazy Woman Creek, Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, Elixir, The Denver Quarterly, Ellipsis, The Florida Review, The Ilanot Review, Poet Lore, Third Coast, Puerto del Sol, Snake Nation Review, The Best of Write Action, and Words and Images. Her poem “Woman-without-Arms” won the Emily Dickinson Award from Universities West Press, and her Mary Dyer poem sequence was a recent finalist for the Dana Award in Poetry.
Linda is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire (English and French), Florida State University (MA Theatre Arts), and Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA/ Poetry). She was director of the Young Conservatory and a member of the repertory at the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco for ten years and later was Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado. Currently, Linda teaches English at Southern Maine Community College and lives in Portland with her husband, David Miller, and their exceptional dog, Simba.
—October 3th: Jeri Theriault and Matt Miller
Jeri Theriault’s full-length collection, Radost, my red, was published by Moon Pie Press in 2016. Her chapbook, In the Museum of Surrender, won the 2013 Encircle Publications Chapbook Contest. She has two previous chapbooks, Corn Dance and Catholic, and has published in journals such as the Paterson Literary Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Rattle, The Atlanta Review and the American Journal of Poetry. Her work also appears in anthologies including French Connections: An Anthology of Poetry by Franco-Americans, The Return of Kral Majales, Prague’s International Literary Renaissance 1990-2010, and, most recently, Three-Nations Anthology.
A Fulbright recipient and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jeri holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her teaching career included six years as the English department chair at the International School of Prague. She lives in South Portland.
Matt W. Miller is the author of the collections The Wounded for the Water (Salomon Poetry), Club Icarus, selected by Major Jackson as the winner of the 2012 Vassar Miller Poetry Prize and Cameo Diner: Poems. He has published poems and essays in Harvard Review, 32 Poems, Narrative Magazine, Notre Dame Review, Adroit Journal, Southwest Review, and crazyhorse, among other journals. Winner of the River Styx Microbrew/Microfiction Prize and Iron Horse Review’s Trifecta Poetry Prize, he is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University and a Walter E. Dakin Fellow in Poetry at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He teaches English at Phillips Exeter Academy and lives with his family in coastal New Hampshire.
—December 5th: Mark DeCarteret and Kathleen Clancy
Mark DeCarteret has appeared next to Charles Bukowski in a lo-fi fold out, Pope John Paul II in a hi-test collection of Catholic poetry, Billy Collins in an Italian fashion coffee table book, and Mary Oliver in a 3785 page pirated anthology. He has been published in the anthologies: American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 (Black Sparrow Press) and Under the Legislature of Stars: 62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press) which he also co-edited. He has had some luck recently at 2 Bridges Review, American Journal of Poetry, Common Ground Review, The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, Fence, Gargoyle, Map Literary, Mojo, and Timber. His latest book, For Lack of a Calling, was published over the summer by Nixes Mate Books. He was Portsmouth’s seventh Poet Laureate.
Kathleen Clancy started writing poems with crayons before the age of 9. Her first mentor was Robert Cording, with whom she studied at Holy Cross College. After college she studied at the Frost Place in Franconia NH for 8 summers with poets such as Meg Kearney, Ted Deppe, Baron Wormser, and Jeffrey Harrison. Kathleen got her MFA at the University of Southern Maine-Stonecoast, where she was drawn to continue her studies with those and other Frost Place poets, including Gray Jacobik and Jeanne Marie Beaumont. At Stonecoast, Kathleen also wrote formal poetry for a year with mentor Annie Finch. She most recently placed poems in Good Fat, Café Review, and Cider Press Review. In 2012, her sonnets were used as part of the text of a multi-media dance-drama, Shackled Spirits, which was performed at Holy Cross College and the Bali Arts Festival in Indonesia. She has lectured at Bryant College and interned at The Manhattan Review. She is a City Hall Poet and a founding member of the Connecticut River Advanced Conference on Poetry and Poetics, an annual event co-taught by participants that is based on the teaching and learning philosophies of the Frost Place Festival and Seminar, and particularly Donald Sheehan.
—February 6th: Maggie Dietz and Joel Carpenter
Maggie Dietz is the author of That Kind of Happy (2016), and Perennial Fall (2006), which won a Jane Kenyon Award and a Wisconsin Library Association Literary Award. She previously taught creative writing at Boston University and served as assistant poetry editor for Slate from 2004 to 2012. She has also served as director of the Favorite Poem Project, founded by Robert Pinsky during his terms as United States poet laureate. With Pinsky, she coedited the anthologies Americans’ Favorite Poems(1999), Poems to Read (2002), and An Invitation to Poetry (2004). Dietz is the recipient of a Grolier Poetry Prize, a George Bennett Fellowship at Phillips Exeter Academy, and fellowships from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She is Associate Professor in the creative writing concentration at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Joel Carpenter is a poet based in Portland, Maine. Joel’s poetry roots stem from being a singer/songwriter in bands for over a decade.
While working with children at an after school program Joel started a poetry club. The club exceeded expectations and caught the eye of a publisher. Together they released “Never Ending Fall,” an anthology of poetry by children, released in 2015.
Following the success of Never Ending Fall, Joel released his first work of poetry “Things We Lost.”
The debut poetry books pulls influences from a mixture of Bukowski, John Keats and Jim Morrison, which always makes for an interesting reading.
Joel is also the founder of Underground Writers Association, a non profit publishing company that helps local writers share their poetry. UWA was founded in November 2017 and is set to release five books by the end of the year.
—March 6th: Cassandra de Alba
Cassandra de Alba is a poet living in Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in The Shallow Ends, Underblong, Big Lucks, and Smoking Glue Gun, among other publications. Her chapbooks habitats(Horse Less Press, 2016) and ORB (Reality Hands, 2018) are about deer and the moon, respectively. She is a co-host at the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge and an associate editor at Pizza Pi Press. You can find her online at www.cassandradealba.com.
Alice Radin has been making poetry since before she could read or write. Despite various distractions (earning three degrees in Comparative Literature, teaching Ancient Greek and Latin, and publishing scholarly articles and short fiction) she has never stopped writing poetry. She can be found on the first Wednesday of the month at the Portsmouth Hoot.—April 3: David R. Surette and Mercy Carbonell
David R. Surette’s new book of poetry is Malden, selected and new poems that feature his hometown Malden, Massachusetts. He is the author of five other collections includng Stable which was named an Honor Book at the 2016 Massachusetts Book Awards. His poems are recently featured in the anthology 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian & New England Writers which won a Maine Book Award. He lives on Cape Cod.
Mercy grew up in Chadds Ford, PA, earned her BA in English from Brown University in 1992, where she played Varsity Squash, studied Literary Theory, Literature and Art, and wrote her honors thesis titled, “The Implications of Language in Joan Didion’s Play It As It Lays: A Personal Essay in Feminist Criticism.” Mercy holds a Masters’ in Education from Stanford University where she specialized in teaching writing using the “Harkness” method developed at Phillips Exeter Academy and studied alternative forms of Assessment for Student Writing and Curricular Design. As a member of the English faculty at Phillips Exeter from 1993-1996 & 2000-present, she has regularly taught the Advanced Senior Creative Writing Workshop as well as writing workshops for Parents of the Academy, Saturday Class on Writing for members of the community and Alumni. Mercy has developed writing workshops for student speakers for the annual MLK, Jr. Day Assembly, directed and co-authored the 25th Anniversary of Title IX Assembly, submitted Art combining Text and Image for the Faculty Installation in the Gallery and has delivered six Meditations to the Academy Community in Phillips Church, one of which was published in Book of Meditations II. From 1997-2000 she taught English and Creative Writing, coached Varsity Field Hockey, Girls’ Squash and Girls’ Lacrosse at Milton Academy in MA. At Phillips Exeter, Mercy is co-Chair of the MLK, Jr. Day Committee, co-Advisor for The Council on Social Justice & Equity and Assistant Girls’ Varsity Field Hockey and Girls’ Squash Coach. She is now working as an Assistant Coach for Varsity Girls’ Lacrosse at Portsmouth High School. Mercy rejoined the Exeter Summer Program as a Creative Writing Teacher, Mentor Teacher and Coordinator for Harkness Workshops. As well, she often teams up with Sarah Anderson to lead writing workshops in the Anderson’s Word Barn in Exeter. In recent years, Mercy served on the Board at Seacoast Outright and still volunteers for Portsmouth Pride. In 2017, she was on Sabbatical in San Francisco where she was doing research on Students in Social Justice Activism, writing and volunteer teaching/tutoring at 826 Valencia Writing Spaces. In 2019, Mercy joined the Board at Robinwood Center in Stratham, NH, a farm and non-profit organization to further sustainability, justice, healing and community in the seacoast of NH and Maine.
—June 5th: Rachel Contreni Flynn and Fred Marchant
Rac
hel Contreni Flynn is the the co-editor of Beloit Poetry, Journaland, the author of two award-winning full-length poetry collections, Ice, Mouth, Song (Tupelo Press 2005) and Tongue (Red Hen Press 2010) as well as a chapbook, Haywire (Bright Hill Press 2009). In 2015 she won a Maine Literary Award and has also been honored with a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and two grants from the Illinois Arts Commission. Flynn recently taught creative writing at Colby College. More information about Rachel can be found on her website, rachelcontreniflynn.com
Fred Marchant is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent of which is Said Not Said (2017). Earlier books include The Looking House, Full Moon Boat, and House on Water, House in Air. His first book, Tipping Point, won the 1993 Washington Prize, and was reissued in a 20th anniversary second edition. Marchant has translated works by Vietnamese poets Tran Dang Khoa and Vo Que. He has also edited Another World Instead: The Early Poems of William Stafford. An emeritus professor of English, he is the founding director of the Suffolk University Poetry Center in Boston. Marchant is the winner of the May Sarton Award from the New England Poetry Club, given to poets “whose work is an inspiration to other writers.”
