CAMDEN — An evening of poetry and music will be held Tuesday, May 13, at 6 p.m., in the Reading Room at Camden Public Library, to kick off the 3rd annual Camden Festival of Poetry. This event features a line-up of accomplished poets and performers including Sandra Lynn Hutchison, Kristen Lindquist, April Messier, Carl Little, Ben Rooney, and Mark S. Burrows. Free to attend. Learn more at librarycamden.org.

Sandra Lynn Hutchison has published three books: Chinese Brushstrokes (a memoir), The Art of Nesting (poetry), and A Tale of Love (a translation). She has been the recipient of various literary awards and recognitions, including the Emily Dickinson Poetry Award and a Jane Kenyon Poetry Fellowship. Her most recent chapbook The Beautiful Foolishness of Things was a finalist in the 2022 Poet’s Corner chapbook contest.  

Kristen Lindquist lives in Camden and Monhegan Island. Her poetry and essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Her first poetry collection, Transportation, was a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. Her other books include Tourists in the Known World and Island: Haiku, which received a Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America.

April Messier is currently working on her master’s thesis, a manuscript of original poetry and poetics. Her work explores the relationship between lineage and identity as well as the healing capacities of language and the natural world. She gathers inspiration from her deep connection to this land that her ancestors have stewarded for many generations, and which she herself has farmed for over a decade. April lives with her partner Eric and two dogs in Belfast, Maine.

Carl Little is the author of Blanket of the Night: Poems (Deerbrook Editions, 2024). His poetry has appeared in The Café Review, Maine Arts Journal and Maine Sunday Telegram, among other publications, as well as in several anthologies edited by Wesley McNair. In 2021 the Rabkin Foundation awarded him a Lifetime Achievement Award for his art writing. Little lives on Mount Desert Island.

Ben Rooney is a farmer and carpenter. He loves geeking out on nature, outdoor recreating and all things that ferment.  Artistic expression is something he strayed away from during adolescence.  Only recently has writing poetry and music come back into practice, after a 10-year hiatus.

Mark S. Burrows, who will M.C. the event, is an award-winning poet, translator, and scholar, as well as co-founder of the Camden Festival of Poetry. Together with Jon Sweeney, he has published three books of meditative poems inspired by Meister Eckhart’s writings, most recently Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light which was awarded the Gold Medal by the Nautilus Book Awards in 2024. His translations of German poetry include, most recently, the first full-length translation of the German-Jewish poet Hilde Domin’s poems, The Wandering Radiance: Selected Poems of Hilde Domin (2023) and a new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus (2024). He also recently published You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke (2024), cowritten with Stephanie Dowrick. He lives and writes in Camden, ME.