Chorale: A poetry Anthology

Nourished by a Maine Arts Commission Lifetime Arts Workshop

Chorale had its beginning ground in 2016 with two grants for a series of poetry workshops in one of the Maine Arts Commission’s Creative Aging programs—myself recipient of the grants as the Teaching Artist. We subsequently changed the workshop group into an independent poetry one (no longer funded by the grants) and myself now an equal member of the group. —Martin Steingesser

These poets write about passages—their own and our country’s—looking deeply at the world as they find it. They investigate those profound memories that shape us throughout our lives and examine the natural world that can transform us every day. They are a community of writers, and their poems at times become a call and response, voices joined together to create images and stories that evoke and complement each other. At a time in our world when darkness feels omnipresent, these poets remind us that there is light in everything as well.
—Stuart Kestenbaum, Maine’s 5th Poet Laureate

Publication date : April 26, 20226 x 9 paperback; 112 pages; $19.00

Available soon for early orders from Deerbrook Editions

Initially the Chorale group came together for a series of workshops I taught in 2016, meeting at a long, rectangular table on the top floor of the Yarmouth Merrill Memorial Library. At some point, we moved to a ground floor niche with wrap-around windows and a round table in the Library’s children section, where we grew into this writing group of 10 poets.That was home base, working together for the grail of poetry winter nights, snow swirling round just beyond the alcove windows, until . . . coronavirus turned all our lives inside out.These last few years we have continued to meet twice a month during Zoom gatherings.

We are deeply grateful for the gift of that round table during those earlier years bonding, especially for the support

of friends Mary Dowd, MD, a poet herself and Library coordinator for poetry; and Heidi Grimm, the Yarmouth Library’s Director. —Martin Steingesser

Thank you to
the Maine Arts Commission
for its Lifetime Arts Program and support for
the series of Poetry Workshops, “Seeing with the Heart’s Ear,”
which provided the soil for the seeding of Chorale.