Poets Garrett Hongo and Lauren K. Watel will be reading their poetry for the first event of the 2025 season of Blue Raven Gallery's Poetry Reading Series, Wednesday, June 25, at 7 p.m., at Blue Raven Gallery, in Rockland.

The series "brings some of the most prominent and distinguished voices in poetry to the central Maine coast every year between June until September," said Blue Raven Gallery, in a news release.

Hongo, a poet, memoirist, and audio writer, was born in Volcano, Hawai’i and grew up there and in Los Angeles. He earned his BA from Pomona College and his MFA from the University of California-Irvine, where he studied with the poets C.K. Williams, Howard Moss, and Charles Wright. His poetry collections are Yellow Light (1982), The River of Heaven (1988), which received the Lamont Poetry Prize and was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Coral Road (2011). In non-fiction, he has published The Mirror Diary (2017) and Volcano: A Memoir of Hawaiʻi (1995). His work has been recognized with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is a frequent contributor of audio articles to Soundstage! Ultra and lives in Eugene, where he is Distinguished Professor at the University of Oregon. His new poetry collection, Ocean of Clouds, is out this month from Knopf. The title poem was recently featured in the New Yorker.

Watel, author of the debut collection Book of Potions, won the Kathryn A Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. Her potions, poetry, fiction, essays and translations have appeared widely.  She earned an M.A. in English from Hollins College and a Ph.D. in Women's Studies from Emory University. A native of Dallas, TX, she lives in Decatur, GA. 

The public is invited. There is no charge. The event begins at 7 pm. Books will be available for purchase. 

RSVP: https://form.jotform.com/251136220715143