LEWISTON — Senior College at USM/LA will host Anna Wrobel as its at Food For Thought speaker Friday Nov. 8, at noon at the University of Southern Maine/Lewiston-Auburn campus, 51 Westminster St., Room 170.
The presentation will last approximately one hour. The date is very close to Kristallnacht, the night and day in 1938 when the Nazi regime made its first full assault on the Jews of Germany before the war began. Wrobel will merge the use of history and original poetry in a program called “Second Generation/First Person: History, Memory and Poetry.” She uses poetry to transmit historical context, personal memoir and impacts upon generations.
Wrobel was born in Brooklyn, raised in the Bronx, and is an American historian, teacher, poet, daughter of post-WWII refugees and Holocaust Studies educator. Her poetry of witness appears in “Cafe Review,” “Lilith,” Off the Coast and Jewish Currents, where she is a contributing writer. Wrobel has two poetry collections, “Marengo Street” (2012) and “The Arrangement of Things” (2018), published by Maine’s Moon Pie Press. Her poetry appeared in University of Maine’s Holocaust and Human Rights Center art and poetry exhibit, “Dilemma of Memory,” and she’s presented for the Puffin Foundation on Jewish resistance in WWII.
Wrobel uses history and poetry education in a variety of venues from high schools and colleges to adult and senior education. Her work as historian/poet/teacher has been featured at the Maine Jewish Museum, Colby College, UMaine-Augusta, University of Southern Maine’s OLLI courses and the OLLI Sage Lectures series. She teaches United States history at elder residences in southern Maine. Poems, taken from her manuscript “Sparrow Feathers,” are used by teachers in several U.S. states, Poland, Germany and Israel. She co-hosts the long-running poetry series, Lowry’s Lodge, with musician/writer Jim Donnelly.
The Food for Thought lecture is free and open to the public, but if attendees would also like to have lunch, they may call 207-753-6510 to sign up by Wednesday, Nov. 6.; the doors will open at 11:30 a.m.
