Apr 27 2018

Poetry REading

Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Location: Vera's Iron and Vine 155 Front street Farmington

Come join two local poets, Kelly Sterns and Audrey Gidman, in celebrating National Poetry Month at Vera's Iron and Vine in Farmington, Maine. Both poets will read from their own ongoing projects followed by open floor time for members of our community to share poetry with one another. Bring your book! Bring your notebook! Bring a guitar and a harmonica and a sax! Let us celebrate the diversity of poetry together! Light refreshments will be provided. A basket will be set out to collect small, generous donations to help us support the space.


About the Poets

Known for her wryly comic look at southern life in past series like "We Oughta Tell Grandma Her Wig's On Backwards (But We Don't)" and "The Porch Is Astroturfed So Mama Won't Fall In The Winter" Kelly Sterns will perform a special series for National Poetry Month at Vera's Iron and Vine. "Goats Eating Books" is based on the true adventures of her goats who occasionally decide to stop eating her mail and devour Shakespeare instead. She has promised no goats will be present at the reading but since she's known for events where people tossed a 60 foot poem out a two story window or used it to do the lindy with, you have to wonder if this is a promise she's actually capable of keeping. It may be best to keep anything paper well hidden. Sterns will also give a sneak peak of a new series "Walking The Maine Road" which includes map poems about her walks along the highways and byways of Maine and the people she meets along the way. If you've ever given a ride to a tired granny on her way home from the grocery, you may just be in one of these poems.
Sterns will have current and past poems on sale ("by the each" she says "just like apples") as well as her book of short stories "Joe Potato's Real Life Recipes: Short Stories and Tall Tales" under her pen name Meriwether O'Connor.


Poet Audrey Gidman received her BFA from the University of Maine at Farmington in 2015 and had since found a true home in Maine, even though she understands that she will always be from "away". She's won a couple contests and been given a couple awards and she can only hope that someday it will all amount to something really cool. Her writing explores the relationship between nature and body as a complex, gorgeous, grieving landscape, drawing from psalms and meditations to move through the liminal realm gently, lyrically and with care. Some of her work can be found most recently or is forthcoming in Smeuse, The Rush, Confrontation, UMF's very own undergraduate-run Sandy River Review and the Portland Press Herald's Deep Water poetry column shepherded by Portland Poet Laureate Gibson Fay-Leblanc. Some of Audrey's letterpress broadsides, crafted in Temple by Foxglove Press, will be available for sale.
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