The Camden Public Library warmly welcomes poets Dennis Camire and David Sloan for a duet poetry reading experience on Tuesday, December 17, at 6:30 PM in the Picker Room. Cozy refreshments will be provided!
“In Anthology of Awe & Wonder, each ode, each murmuration, each sly revelation exists in a lexical realm all its own, pushing the limits of what the heart and the intellect can do. Camire sends the reader on one hundred raucous rides that always, as if by magic, gracefully resolve.
This collection plumbs terrestrial soil while pressing its hand to the border wall of that other realm, daring to answer Jack Gilbert’s call to “risk delight.” In Camire’s hand, this dense, textured testament to wonder is deviously shadowed — it buzzes with a playfulness that belies its essential heartache. When awe unfolds its intricate geometries and shows its magnificent interiors, it can alter you. This stunning text does just that.”
—Michelle Lewis, Animul/Flame, Winner of Marystina Santiestevan Book Prize
“In his compelling collection, Earth School, Maine poet and educator David Sloan takes us deep into the earth’s human narrative, from ancient Greece to the war-torn 20th century to the cynical present, extracting memories and stories, and weighing lessons learned in this strange world we inhabit. How do we live with so much suffering, so much violence, so much sorrow, nearly all of which is of our own making?
In the poem, “To My Grown Son, Outlasting His Anxiety,” Sloan describes how his son got over his fear of flying by jumping out of an airplane: “It was no miracle. You kept calling out the fear/steadied your breathing/ plunged into ice baths, found tiny footholds,/ inched up a rockface/ that dared you to look down. You didn’t stop/ at the summit; next stop,/ the sky,” and it is this boldness, this determination to look truth in the face that threads through Sloan’s work.
From investigating our cultural myths to decrying the state of current events, Sloan’s powerful and resonant poems explore what it means to be human at this particular time in history, making meaning of the vastness, finding solace in the people we love, creating courage to live in the act of writing poems “turning free-fall into flying.”
—Meghan Sterling, author of Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions) and View From a Borrowed Field (Lily Poetry Review)
Dennis Camire is the author of the poetry collections, Anthology of Awe and Wonder(Deerbrook Editions, April, 2024) Combed by Crows (Deerbrook Editions), and Stone by Stone (Finishing Line Press). He teaches and tutors 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 The Mid-American Review, Poetry East, Spoon River Review, Lothlorien Review, Alluvium, Amethyst, Café Review, Canary, Hamilton Stone Review, Speckled Trout Review and on Maine Public Radio. He lives in an A-frame in West Paris, Maine. He is also the “spokes-poet” for the mom-and-pop owned company, “Soil Foods,” which farms worms for worm castings.
A master Waldorf teacher of 45 years, David Sloan debuted his poetry collection—The Irresistible In-Between in 2013, and A Rising and Other Poems in 2020, both published by Deerbrook Editions. He has also written three Pedagogical books: Stages of Imagination: Working Dramatically with Adolescents (AWSNA Publications, 2000), Life Lessons: Reaching Teenagers through Literature (AWSNA Publications 2007), and The Community Speaks: A Survey of Waldorf Parents (AWSNA 2023). He continues to enjoy life’s latest delight—grandparenting.
In the spring of 2024, David published his third poetry book —Earth School–also by Deerbrook Editions.