RANGELEY — When was the last time you wrote someone a letter? Or received one? When was the last time you truly communicated with someone you didn’t already know?  

Letters are a vital ritual of connection, a communication that extends beyond the words or message themselves to encompass an entire range of sensory experiences. 

An epistolary poem is a poem that is also a letter. The epistolary poem remains a powerful and captivating poetic form – and one that seems particularly crucial to our present moment, in which the intimacy, community-building, and grounding, physical aspects of letter writing can provide us with much-needed antidotes for social polarization and isolation.  

With support from the MWPA, the Maine Arts Commission, The Telling Room, and many public libraries and organizations around Maine, and funding from the Academy of American Poets and the Mellon Foundation, Julia Bouwsma has created a Maine-wide epistolary poetry project that

1) introduces the form through a series of 20-plus free public workshops across the state during the fall and early winter of 2024 and then

2) pairs up participating individuals as “poetry pen pals” to communicate with one another over a period of months. Simply put, this project will pair together people in different parts of Maine to exchange letter poems.

This project is open to anyone who lives in Maine (or is connected to the state) and is ages 18 and up, with additional youth workshops happening through The Telling Room, the Monson Arts High School Program, and assorted Maine high school teachers.   

As part of the Write ME project, poet Sidney Wade will lead a free epistolary poetry workshop at the Rangeley Public Library on Saturday, October 19th from 10:30 to 1:30.  

Wade notes, “This workshop will be a hands-on three-hour program in which we study some examples of epistolary poetry and then begin some new drafts of our own, offering generous and thoughtful criticism to each author.” 

Sidney Wade taught poetry and translation in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Florida for 21 years. She has published 8 collections of poetry, the latest of which is Deep Gossip: New and Selected Poems, from Johns Hopkins University Press. She lives in Rangeley and Gainesville, Florida. 

Please stop by the Rangeley Public Library or call (207)864-5529 to sign up for this free workshop.