The Maine State Poet Laureate is appointed for a 5-year term and may be reappointed for a second term. An individual may serve as State Poet Laureate for no more than two consecutive terms, but may be reappointed after a break in service.
The position, which is honorary, was established in 1995 (Maine Public Law 1995, Chapter 264) and codified (Maine Revised Statutes, Title 27, Chapter 15, Subchapter 2).
The law requires that the Poet Laureate reside in Maine and be a poet who has published "distinguished poetry". The nominee is selected by the governor from a list of candidates recommended by the Maine Arts Commission.
Since the creation of the position, five poets have served terms:
Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He, along with his wife visual artist Susan Webster, published A Quiet Book (Brynmorgen Press 2024), a collection of collages and improvised handwritten text. He was the host/curator of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and the host/curator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future.
Stuart Kestenbaum
Stuart Kestenbaum was the director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts for 27 years, where he established innovative programs combining craft and writing and craft and new technologies. He is an honorary fellow of the American Craft Council and a recipient of the Distinguished Craft Educator Award from the James Renwick Alliance.
More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he designed and implemented a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts. Stuart Kestenbaum has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in numerous small press publications and magazines including Tikkun, the Sun, the Maine Arts Journal, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and on the Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021.
Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser has written “Stuart Kestenbaum writes the kind of poems I love to read, heartfelt responses to the privilege of having been given a life. No hidden agendas here, no theories to espouse, nothing but life, pure life, set down with craft and love.”
Wes McNair
Wesley McNair is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Foundations, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in literature, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for Creative Writers, and a United States Artists Fellowship. Other honors include the Robert Frost Prize; the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry (for Fire); the Devins Award for poetry; the Eunice Teitjens Prize from Poetry magazine; the Theodore Roethke prize from Poetry Northwest; the Pushcart Prize, and the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal for his "distinguished contribution to the world of letters." He has received three honorary degrees for literary distinction. A two-time recipient of Rockefeller Fellowships for creative work at the Bellagio Center in Italy, McNair has read his poetry at the Library of Congress and a wide range of colleges and universities. Featured on National Public Radio's Weekend Edition (Saturday and Sunday programs) and 14 times on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, his work has appeared in the Pushcart Prize Annual, two editions of The Best American Poetry, and over sixty anthologies and textbooks. He has served four times on the nominating committee for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Wesley McNair's website: www.wesleymcnair.com
During his five year tenure as Maine’s Poet Laureate, McNair launched several new programs “to bring poetry to the people of Maine.” The first was a series of readings called “The Maine Poetry Express,” a “train” of readings given by poets in all the regions of Maine. McNair's second project was a new column for more than 20 newspapers across Maine, including all the major dailies, featuring one previously published poem a week by a Maine poet from the present, or from the state's illustrious past. The name of the column is Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry. The poems of Take Heart are also posted on the websites of libraries across the state.
Betsy Sholl
Betsy Sholl has published seven collections of poetry, most recently Rough Cradle (Alice James Books, 2009). Don't Explain won the 1997 Felix Pollak Prize from the University of Wisconsin, and her book The Red Line won the 1991 AWP Prize for Poetry. Her chapbooks include Pick A Card, winner of the Maine Chapbook Competition in 1991, and Betsy Sholl: Greatest Hits, 1974-2004, Pudding House Publications. She was a founding member of Alice James Books and published three collections with them: Changing Faces, Appalachian Winter and Rooms Overhead. Among her awards are a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and two Maine Writer's Fellowships. Her work has been included in several anthologies, including Letters to America, Contemporary American Poetry on Race, and a range of magazines, including Field, Triquarterly, Brilliant Corners, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Beloit Poetry Journal. She has been a visiting poet at the University of Pittsburgh and Bucknell University. She lives in Portland, Maine, and teaches at the University of Southern Maine and in the MFA Program of Vermont College.
Baron Wormser
Baron Wormser went to college at the Johns Hopkins University, continuing with graduate studies at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Maine. He taught poetry writing at the University of Maine at Farmington and from 1975 to 1998 he lived with his family in an off-the-grid house, later writing his memoir, The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet's Memoir of Living Off the Grid. In 2000 he was appointed Poet Laureate of Maine, serving for five years and visiting many libraries and schools throughout Maine. He read his poem "Building a House in the Maine Woods, 1971" at Governor Baldacci's inauguration in 2003. Since 2002 he has taught in the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine. In 2009 he joined the Fairfield University MFA program. Wormser received the Frederick Bock Prize for Poetry and the Kathryn A. Morton Prize along with fellowships from Bread Loaf, the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Kate Barnes
Kate Barnes was born in 1932, the second daughter of Maine writers Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth. Taking after her parents, with her mother a poet and children’s author, Barnes cultivated her own voice, producing works that centered on life in Maine. She published two books of poetry with David R. Godine LLC: Where the Deer Were and Kneeling Orion. Her poems also appeared in many literary journals, and she taught writing workshops throughout the state.As Maine’s first Poet Laureate, appointed by Governor King, her work reflected a careful style that spoke deeply to her experiences in the state. During her tenure, she wrote the poems Echoes From the Land, Neighborliness, Why Do You Ask, and Talking to the Dog. Barnes had four children and lived on a farm in Appleton, Maine, where she raised blueberries and hay until her passing in 2013.
The current Poet Laureate of Maine is Julia Bouwsma