BELFAST – The 14th Annual Belfast Poetry Festival has announced the finalists in its 2018 Postmark Poetry Contest. More than 150 entries from across Maine were reviewed and ten finalists were chosen.

The finalists are Mike Bove, Portland; Laura Bonazzoli, Rockport; Laurence Anne Coe, Rockland; Erin Flynn, Auburn; Jay Franzel, Wayne; Leonore Hildebrandt, Harrington; Rebecca Jessup, Belfast; James McKenna, Hallowell; Lee Sharkey, Portland; and David Sloan, Brunswick.

Timothy Liu will be the final judge, and results will be decided later in September.  Liu (Liu Ti Mo) was born in 1965 in San Jose, California to immigrant parents from mainland China.

He is the author of ten books of poems, including Of Thee I Sing, selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Say Goodnight, a 1998 PEN Open Book Margins Award; and Vox Angelica, which won the 1992 Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award. His work has been translated into ten languages, and he is currently a Professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey.

The Festival will begin Thursday, October 11 with a reading at Waterfall Arts by poets in the anthology 3 Nations Anthology: Native, Canadian, and New England Writers and continues Friday, October 12 with a reading at Left Bank Books by Belfast Poet Laureate Thomas Moore and John Rosenwald from Farmington.

Activities will be offered all day on Saturday at The Crosby Center, including workshops and a pop-up poetry reading. The Celebration of Poetry and Art will be that evening beginning at 6:30 at the Troy Howard Middle School.

For more information, visit www.belfastpoetry.com.