KINGFIELD — Rolling Fatties’ Word Buzz series continues from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 1, with Poetry Night, featuring four local Julia Bouwsma, Kristen Case, Meg Willing and Shana Youngdahl.
The four distinct and powerful poets each has work that’s been informed, in various ways, by living in western Maine. Offering a wide range of voices and styles (there may even be a visual component) as well as an opportunity to talk about process and craft in poetry, the event is not only for dedicated poetry lovers, but also the poetry curiou, and those who simply like to relax in a warm atmosphere surrounded by other lovers of language, organizers said.
Word Buzz is an informal once-a-month chat with people in the word biz. Rolling Fatties donates 10 percent of sales during the event to Webster Library in Kingfield. Rolling Fatties is at 268 Main St.
Bouwsma is the author of the collections “Midden,” (Fordham University Press, forthcoming fall 2018) and “Work by Bloodlight”_ _(Cider Press Review, 2017). Her poems appear in Bellingham Review, Grist Online, Muzzle, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She lives and works on an off-the-grid farm in the mountains of western Maine, and is book review editor Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and library director for Webster Library.
Case’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Chelsea, Brooklyn Review, Pleiades, Saint Ann’s Review, The Iowa Review, Wave Composition, Eleven Eleven, Wildness, Rust + Moth, BOAAT, and The Harvard Review. Her chapbook “Temple,” was published by MIEL in 2014, and her full-length collection, “Little Arias” (New Issues, 2015) won the Maine Literary Award for Poetry.
Willing is a poet, artist, editor, and designer. She explores the relationship between visual art and text through erasure poetry, collage, book design, and other mediums. The former Managing Editor of Alice James Books, she is art and design editor for Gigantic Sequins: A Literary Arts Journal; chapbook dditor and designer for BOAAT Press; and associate director for CSArt Maine, Maine’s first community-supported art share program.
Youngdahl is the author of the book “History, Advice and Other Half-Truths” (SFASU Press) and three chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared widely in journals including Third Coast, Shenandoah, The Briar Cliff Review, The Journal, and RHINO. A 2017 American Antiquarian Society atist fellow, she is working on a manuscript of poems about tin and tinware colonies. She teaches writing at the University of Maine, Farmington where she also directs the Longfellow Young Writers’ Workshop.
