Lowry’s Lodge Summer Open Reading

Sunday, August 18, 2024
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Hosted by: Jim Donnelly and Anna Wrobel

Bring your beach and garden sunshine to light up the little chapel  with words of beauty born from the Earth. We have the pleasure to  present one of the great Earth-loving poets of Maine, Dennis Camire, with a book launch for his newest 2024 collection, Anthology of Awe and Wonder. Dennis’ featured reading will be followed by Open Poetry Hour. Enjoy voices as diverse as Maine’s wildflowers, along with chocolates, seltzers, chips and dips – all of a summer’s day.

Bios:

Dennis is the author of the poetry collections, Anthology of Awe and Wonder (Deerbrook Editions, 2024) Combed by Crows (Deerbrook Editions), and Stone by Stone (Finishing Line Press). He teaches writing at Central Maine Community. The former director of Maine Poetry Central and the founder of The Portland Poet Laureate Program, his work has appeared in many journals including Poetry East, Spoon River Review, Amethyst, Café Review, Hamilton Stone Review, Speckled Trout Review and on Maine Public Radio. He lives in an A-frame in West Paris, Maine and is the “spokes-poet” for the mom-and-pop owned company, “Soil Foods,” which farms worms for worm castings.

Anna Wrobel is a historian, teacher and poet with essays and poetry in journals and anthologies including Cafe Review, Lilith, Off the Coast and Jewish Currents. Anna’s poetry collections, Marengo Street (2012) and The Arrangement of Things (2018), were published by Maine’s Moon Pie Press. Her poetry and history works have featured at UMaine-Augusta’s Holocaust Human Rights Center, Maine State Museum, Puffin Foundation, USM’s OLLI Sage Lectures, Maine Conference on Jewish Life, Jewish Community Alliance, Maine Jewish Film Festival and Maine Jewish Museum. Poems from her manuscript Sparrow Feathers are explored by students in several states and abroad. Anna’s daughter was born on a kibbutz in the Galilee and her son in Maine’s mountains. Anna also studied theater, was an artisan-farmer, construction foreman and teachers’ union president.

Born in New York City in the early sixties (when working class parents could actually afford the Brooklyn rent), Jim Donnelly learned to drive on a forklift, later becoming a Teamster trucker. In between it was factories and loading docks, department stores and catering halls, and nights as a musician. Jim’s poems, stories and essays appear in numerous journals including Cafe Review, Lewiston Sun Journal, Jewish Currents, East Coast Rocker, Lumpen (UK) and Journal of Working Class Studies (University of Sydney). His column, Media Misinformation, published in the Aquarian Weekly, are archived in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Jim’s poetry collections are Rifles, Rumors, Gin and Prayer (2013) and That Mischievous Moon (2017), both published by Maine’s Moon Pie Press.

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