Planning Committee

  • John Paul Caponigro is a writer, speaker and a pioneer among photographers working with digital media. His art has been exhibited internationally and purchased by numerous private and public collections including Princeton University, the Estée Lauder collection, and the Smithsonian.

  • Lucinda is a writer, actor, painter and producer. She received an MFA in writing from Spalding University. As a mixed media artist, her Public Works paintings are in private and corporate collections. She also taught on the Theatre Faculty of Sarah Lawrence College and has appeared in classic and original productions in New York, Los Angeles and Maine. When she is not writing, she produces outdoor events that bring wonder to the communities of Maine.

  • Margaret Haberman lives and writes in Belfast, Maine. She is, by profession, an American Sign Language interpreter, and teaches at the University of Southern Maine in the Linguistics Department. Her poems have been published in the kerning | a space for words, Island Journal, the journal Spiritus, and selected for the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here.

  • Mark S. Burrows is an award-winning poet, translator, and scholar. An historian of medieval mysticism, he is a much sought-after speaker and retreat leader in the US and Europe on spirituality and the arts as transformative channels of creativity. Together with Jon Sweeney, he has published three books of meditative poems inspired by Meister Eckhart’s writings, most recently Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light which was awarded the Gold Medal by the Nautilus Book Awards in 2024. His translations of German poetry include, most recently, the first full-length translation of the German-Jewish poet Hilde Domin’s poems, The Wandering Radiance: Selected Poems of Hilde Domin (2023) and a new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus (2024). He also recently published You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke (2024), cowritten with Stephanie Dowrick. He lives and writes in Camden, ME.

  • Maya Stein is a poet, writing facilitator, and creative adventuress who has traveled several thousand miles by bicycle across various parts of the country towing a typewriter behind her, inviting strangers to respond to writing prompts. She has published two books of poetry, two collections of creative nonfiction, and a handful of writing prompt booklets. Her hobbies include juggling, origami folding, diorama making, hors d’oeuvres creation, and she has recently learned how to play mahjong. Maya currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine.

  • Meg is currently the co-founder and director of The Poets Corner. She retired in January 2020 after 8 years as president of Maine Media in Rockport, Maine, and previously held various leadership positions in the field of business, imaging, and education. Her poetry expresses a passion for geological processes that shape the earth and the stories that shape our lives.

    Meg’s photographs and links to her publications can be seen on www.volcanoes.com.  Meg has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University (2008).

  • Sandy Weisman is a poet and visual artist. Her poetry has been included in two anthologies and several other journals and her artwork has been exhibited locally and in the Boston area .  Her artist books include Ontogeny, Book of Hours; she is currently working with Maine Media Workshops to produce Objects of My Desire, a book of poems, prints and images based on the concept of astonishment.

    Sandy is the owner of 26 Split Rock Cove, a privately-owned artist community of studios, artist living space, and workshops overlooking Mussel Ridge Channel in South Thomaston, ME.

  • Ellen Goldsmith is a poet and teacher. Her books include Left Foot, Right Foot, Where to Look, Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, which won the 1997 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition and was described by Dennis Nurkse as an “incandescent collection.” Her poems have appeared in many journals and in anthologies.

     She earned an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University, has an M.A. in English from City College and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Queens College. She is Professor Emeritus from the City University of New York. In 2006, she relocated to Maine, where she enjoys the rich literary landscape of the Midcoast as well as the always changing views of Broad Cove from her home in Cushing. For her, poetry is essential, a way to explore and discover, uncover and recover.

  • Dave Morrison’s “Poetry Rocks” album was released by Mishara Records in 2015 and has been described as “poems crossing a rope bridge of simple looped guitar grooves.” He has published 17 books of poetry and his poems have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies. https://writerrocker.wixsite.com/davemorrisonpoetry.