“This past calendar year has been hard,” said the College of Maine in Augusta, in a information release. “We have been quarantining, masking, ‘pivoting,’ growing up, breaking down, and just making an attempt to retain it collectively.”
To mark the activities of this moment, the once-a-year Plunkett Maine Poetry Pageant will split out of its normal format, Friday, April 30, to celebrate the University of Maine at Augusta’s (UMA) 2020-2021 academic theme of “Outbreak,” a subject inclusive of viral outbreaks, outbreaks of social justice, and outbreaks of creativeness.
To be part of this Virtual celebration: https://maine.zoom.us/j/84500105702
The Plunkett Festival will companion with the UMA Danforth Gallery to supply a virtual multifaceted literary and arts occasion on April 30, 2021. Supplemental information on the Danforth Gallery Exhibition are out there at www.uma.edu/information/the-outbreak-challenge-exhibition-april-6-30-2021/
Providing the keynote for the celebration will be Maine’s former poet laureate (2000 – 2006), Baron Wormser. Wormser is the writer of 9 collections of poetry, as well as two texts on pedagogy, a memoir, and two collections of essays. He is an avid defender of poetry, peace, and the electrical power of language to make collective alter. Wormser will discuss on UMA’s educational topic of Outbreak, as well as browse some of his perform.
The April 30 celebration will be filled with readings, art reveals, an art set up, and a effectiveness by artist and UMA component-time lecturer, Patricia Brace.
The event will also figure out these chosen to acquire awards in the annual Student Poetry Contest, which invitations College of Maine Procedure undergraduate students and Maine substantial university college students to post poems for recognition.
This 12 months two extra contests have been extra, the Outbreak! Creating Undertaking, which will identify prepared parts including poems, flash fiction, shorter tales, innovative nonfiction, essays, or any mix of blurred genres from the group and the Outbreak Task Exhibition, which invited Maine visible artists from UMA, high faculties, and bordering communities to submit operate for a juried exhibition at the Danforth Gallery. Outbreak Task Exhibition awards will be announced throughout the April 30 programming.
All those acquiring awards will examine or show their operates as part of the method.
A tentative plan plan* for April 30 follows:
2:00 pm Welcome
2:15 pm Student Poetry Contest Readings and Awards
Superior College Plunkett Poetry Contest Awards
UMS Plunkett Poetry Contest Awards
2:45 pm Gallery General performance by Patricia Brace followed by a Zoom Q&A with the Brace and Liz Rhaney, Heather Lyon and Riley Watts, artists who also have performed during the Outbreak Exhibition.
3:45 pm Musical Interlude
“The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman
Scored by the College of Maine at Augusta’s World Rhythms Ensemble
Directed by Brian Shankar Adler
4:00 pm Outbreak Exhibition Project Awards
4:30 pm Outbreak! Creating Job Readings and Awards
5:00 pm Baron Wormser Keynote: “Outbreak Time, Three Poets from A person 10 years: Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Bob Dylan” by way of livestream
5:30 pm Baron Wormser Reading and Q & A through livestream
*Moments are estimated and issue to change.
The Terry Plunkett Maine Poetry Festival, held in April every yr, was founded in 2002 to honor the memory and accomplishments of Terry Plunkett, an English professor at the College of Maine at Augusta for approximately 30 yrs.
An outstanding instructor and mentor to many college students, Plunkett was also co-editor of Kennebec: A Portfolio of Maine Writing, an once-a-year journal revealed by the university from 1977-1992 and dispersed cost-free throughout the point out. A lot of Maine writers first noticed their operate in print in Kennebec, thanks to Terry’s encouragement and advice.
A poet and fiction author as nicely as a trainer and editor, Plunkett served arrange and direct the Maine Poets Festival, a hugely common celebration of poets and poetry, which ran from 1976-1983 at UMA, the Faculty of the Atlantic, and the Maine College of Art.