Bangor North News by Annaliese Jakimides
SUMMER 2011
I am considering how much things stay the same even as they change—and for those of you who read Joshua Bodwell’s shout-out about the new grandbaby (mine, not his), nope, not going there. This is about the distance thing, the Bangor/North thing, and the written word. Bangor/North covers a lot of miles, and a relatively small number of people for those miles, and so it creates these pockets that defy boundaries and categories, places in which there’s never a reading that’s within what might be considered reasonable driving distance (not to be confused with the distances I will drive for one).
Without the Bangor Public Library, there wouldn’t even be a reading in the area’s biggest city (population 30,000; next biggest Presque Isle at about 10,000). And so I’ll start with a huge thanks (picture standing-O on the page here) to its librarian-in-chief, Barbara McDade, for all she does to make sure that authors and live readings can be a regular part of everyone’s life if you want it to be.
In recent months, the Bangor Public Library has been host to readings and discussions by the following writers: Tim Caverly (Wilderness Wildlife and Allagash Tales), Janet Chapman (New York Times bestselling romance writer of the Midnight Bay series), Ardeana Hamlin (Abbott’s Reach, a sequel to her novel Pink Chimneys, set in 19th-century Bangor), Carolyn Locke (Always This Falling), Dave Morrison (Clubland), Dan Harrington (Who’s at the Door? A Memoir of Me and the Missionaries), Angela Nickerson (Hector), Allen S. “Chip” Teel, MD (Alone and Invisible: Averting Disaster in Aging America), and Matthew Kiell (Monhegan Windows).
BPL is also the organizing arm of the Bangor Book Festival, in the works for its fifth year, with, for the first time, active support from MWPA. I am looking forward to what that will mean. The first year of the festival, it took to the streets with writers reading all over town in restaurants and bookstores, on the stage of the Penobscot Theatre, at the library. In subsequent years, the activities have all occurred in the library itself. No matter the location, the lineup has been impressive from year one.
Put it on the calendar: keynote address September 30 by Colin Woodard; and all other activities October 1, including readings and talks by Charlotte Agell, Dawn Potter, Dave Morrison, Ellen Booraem, Melissa Coleman, Anne Sibley O’Brien, Paul Doiron, and Susan Conley, among others.
Here’s where I get to the “stay the same” thing: If I want to hear an author read, I often drive a distance. Short of the BPL, I have to.
So if you find yourself looking to get in the car and light out in search of a literary adventure, head to Searsport and the amazing Left Bank Books. An architecturally compelling old brick building—a former bank—on a corner of the little downtown Main Street. You know it’s a beautiful space before you even open the door: the windows, the signage, all the details. It’s intimate, and every reading comes with delicate sherry glasses (with the sherry), and whatever strikes owners Marsha Kaplan, Lindsay McGuire, and Barbara Klausmeyer as the right munchy combo on the table. You can call ahead to reserve a seat (intimate, remember) or an autographed book if you can’t make it for the event.
Recently, the house was packed for the launch of the book Somalis in Maine: Crossing Cultural Currents, edited by Kimberly Huisman, Mazie Hough, Kristin Langellier, and Carol Nordstrom Toner, all of whom read from and spoke about the book, from its inception to its publication. It has been praised for its weaving of the actual voices of the people and their stories in the diaspora with the voices of social scientists. The academic and the personal sit at the same table, and have meaningful conversations on these pages.
Other recent readings at Left Bank included a reading by poets Bob Brooks (Unguarded Crossings), Ellen Goldsmith (Such Distances), and Kathleen Ellis (Narrow River to the North); and one by Linda and Martha Greenlaw (The Maine Summers Cookbook). Upcoming is a reading by Angus King at Searsport Town Hall from his new memoir, Governor’s Travels: How I Left Politics, Learned to Back up a Bus, and Found America, on July 27 at 7 p.m. Future Left Bank readings at the bookstore: On August 5 at 7 p.m., Jane McCloskey, daughter of Robert McCloskey ((Blueberries for Sal, Make Way for Ducklings) will read from her new book, Robert McCloskey: A Private Life in Words and Pictures; on August 26 at 11 a.m., Beth Gutcheon will talk about her work, including her most recent novels, Leeway Cottage and Goodbye and Amen; and sometime in September—date still to be determined—David McCullough will be signing his new history, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, 1830–1900.
And I can’t leave Left Bank without mentioning the amazing conversation a SRO crowd had with publisher David Godine a few months ago. So, put this little gem on your list.
Dawn Potter (How the Crimes Happened, from CavanKerry Press) may live in my sort-of backyard, but I drove to Damariscotta in a blinding rain for a reading by her and our former poet laureate Baron Wormser (Impenitent Notes, also from CavanKerry, a press with a great ear). And please note that if you don’t read these two poets, you are definitely the less for it.
The sweetest little book store on a side street in Orono, Front Porch Books hosted a reading by Kathleen Ellis from her new collection of poems, Narrow River to the North, with cellist Lisa Nielson. Other readers included Lisa Panepinto, Lisa Desrochers, Anthony Gray, Sarah Lingo, Aya Mares, Steve Martin, Davis McCarthy, and Steve Morin.
Bill Lippincott has shuttered the brick-and-mortar bookstore in Bangor that was the go-to place for so many readers in the area, but its life continues online. A final reading was the book launch party for Kathleen Ellis’s Narrow River to the North and included readings by Linda Buckmaster, Cheryl Daigle, Elizabeth Garber, Annaliese Jakimides, Megan London, Steve Martin, Lisa Panepinto, Bruce Pratt, Catherine Schmitt, and others.
Eastport’s Sarah Graves is part of a new blog group (www.mainecrimewriters.com) which includes Kate Flora, Lea Wait, Paul Doiron, Gerry Boyle, Vicki Doudera, Julia Spencer-Fleming, Jim Hayman, Barbara Ross, and Kathy Lynn Emerson/Kaitlyn Dunnett.
Bangor Daily News columnist and editor Dana Wilde has published a collection of essays, The Other End of the Driveway, which includes essays from his column Amateur Naturalist.
Sheila Grant’s book, 50 Great New England Family Fishing Vacations, has just been published by North Country Press.
About five years ago, Gordon Cunningham launched an entertainment website, www.mainemusiciansexchange.org, and he’s looking for writers to create content for it, including reviews and features. If this is something that might fit in your writer toolkit, holler.
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction in 2008 and the recipient of many awards, including the Andre Dubus Award for short fiction, Bruce Pratt has published his first novel, The Serpents of Blissful. Also the Northern Writes New Play Festival, in its fifth year at the Penobscot Theatre in Bangor, showcased Pratt’s play Beaching.
Every year the Northern Writes New Play Festival has been an incredible event at the end of June, beginning of July—although I normally warm the seat almost every night for the duration, this year I had the grandbaby conflict, but others report it was a standout showing. In addition to Pratt and playwrights from Alabama, Kansas, Illinois, New York, Texas, California, and Massachusetts, other Maine writers featured were Allen Adams, Andrew Frodahl, and Mark Upton.
And here’s that geography thing again. Alice Bolstridge, the winner of the Maine Literary Award in the short works category for poetry this year, lives in Presque Isle, 300 miles from Portland, and so she didn’t attend this terrific event (good food, sweet company, plenty of opportunity to socialize, well-attended and well-organized, great work, and fun). A past finalist for the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and the winner of MWPA’s poetry contest in 2005, Bolstridge has had recent work published in The Café Review (in Portland, too, but the words can travel without the body, touch us from the page—how blessed we are).
“For years, they were telling me to play commercial, be commercial. I'm not commercial. I say, play your own way. You play what you want, and let the public pick up on what you were doing, even if it takes 15, 20 years.” —Thelonious Monk
Bangor North Network News is compiled by Annaliese Jakimides, whose work has been published in many journals and magazines, including Beloit Poetry Journal, The Utne Reader, and GQ Italy, and in anthologies such as This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women and About Face. Her work has been cited in national competitions and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, most recently for 2010. After 27 years on a dirt road in northern Maine, she now lives in downtown Bangor.
Please send your Bangor North literary news to Annaliese at: amamama@usa.net or at PO Box 741, Bangor, Maine 04402.