On Sunday, Sept. 10, from 4 - 5:30 p.m., author Meg Weston will read from her first full-length collection of poetry, Magma Intrusions, published by Kelsay Books. She will be joined by former Maine poet laureate Betsy Sholl reading from her 10th collection of poetry, As If A Song Could Save You.

Sholl was Weston’s first teacher in a poetry class that was offered to USM undergraduates and open to the community. Meg was working as Vice-President of Advancement for USM at the time, and decided to venture beyond the genre of her MFA degree in creative non-fiction, and learn about the craft of poetry. Under the guidance of Sholl’s insightful teaching, Weston fell in love with the essence of language and form that is poetry and has been studying the craft and writing it for more than 10 years now.

After reading poems from their respective works, these two poets will engage in a conversation about the call of obsessions and harmonies in their work, poetic influences and writing practices, and other topics that intrigue us as poets. There’ll be time for Q&A from the chat.

More about these poets:

Betsy Sholl’s tenth collection of poetry, As If a Song Could Save You, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in the fall of 2022, won the Four Lakes Prize for Poetry. Her ninth collection of poetry is House of Sparrows: New and Selected Poems (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019). Her eighth collection, Otherwise Unseeable (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), won the 2015 Maine Book Award for Poetry.

Her previous volumes include Rough Cradle (Alice James Books, 2009) and Late Psalm (University of Wisconsin, 2004). Don’t Explain won the 1997 Felix Pollak Prize from the University of Wisconsin, and The Red Line (University of Pittsburgh Press) won the 1991 AWP Prize for Poetry. Among her other awards are a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and two Maine Writer’s Fellowships, and the 2020 Maine Literary Award for Distinguished Achievement. In 2022 she was awarded the degree of Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Southern Maine.

Her work has been published in many anthologies, including Letters to America, Contemporary American Poetry on Race, Best American Poetry and Best Spiritual Writing, and a range of literary journals, including Plume, Brilliant Corners, Field, On the Seawall and Image. She has taught in a range of institutions, from elementary schools to prisons to MIT, and for thirty years at the University of Southern Maine. She currently teaches in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts. She served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011.

Alongside a successful career as a leader in business and education, Meg Weston pursues her lifelong passion for the geological processes that shape the earth and the stories that shape our lives, expressed in poetry, non-fiction, and photography. Weston has an MFA from Lesley University (2008) and in 2020 co-founded The Poets Corner along with Kathrin Seitz. Weston’s photography can be seen on her website www.volcanoes.com. She lives in Camden, and retired in January 2020 after eight years as president of Maine Media Workshops + College where she launched The Writers Harbor program to complement the media arts curriculum in photography, filmmaking, and book arts.

In December 2020, Weston published a limited-edition book of poems entitled Letters from the White Queen, reflections on letters written by her mother in 1969 just shortly before her sudden death at the age of 48. Weston’s poems have been published by Hawaii Pacific Review, Trouvaille Review, Red Fez, The Mountain Troubadour, and the anthologies Writing the Land: Maine and Goose River Anthology. Her poem Her Skates received an award in the 2021 Carol Lee Vail poetry contest.

To register for this Zoom event (and access the recording) and for more information: www.ThePoetsCorner.org/events

The Poets Corner is a platform created to foster community among writers and readers of poetry and short prose. Founded by former Maine Media Workshops + College president Meg Weston and author/writing coach Kathrin Seitz, The Poets Corner is based in Midcoast Maine, and hosts virtual readings monthly on Zoom.