THE SUMMER READING
Mark your Calendar! The next HITHr poetry reading featuring poets Claire Millikin & Mihku Paul is Thursday July 27, 2023, 7pm at The Maine Jewish Museum. Come for the reading a few minutes early and view the current exhibits.
Claire Millikin is the author of nine collections of poetry as well as two early chapbooks. She lives in coastal Maine and teaches art history and American studies for the University of Maine and for Bates College. Three of her poetry books have been noted as finalists for the Maine Literary Award, and her book Dolls was selected as a 2022 semifinalist for the PSV Poetry Book Award for North American Writers and Publishers. Of her newest book, Transitional Objects, Kirkus Reviews notes the "deep artful sorrow in the manner in which the poet notes the passing of time...a profound understanding of suffering and resilience." Critic and poet Wayne Koestenbaum writes of "[Millikin's] quiet austere music and its metaphysical dignity, and the subtle threads of danger and damage running beneath the poised surfaces," while poet Jeri Theriault describes Millikin's poetry in Elegiaca Americana, as "a dirge not only for her own childhood or her family but for the whole country." Publishing as Claire Raymond, she is the author of nine books of feminist scholarship.
Mihku Paul is an Indigenous Wolastoqey poet and visual artist born and raised on the Penobscot river. Recent work includes Msi-te ktahkomiq Kintagot (The Whole Earth Resounds) for Whitman on Walls and Thrall, Her Signal Skin and Pomegranate (Atlantic Vernacular). Her work has been published internationally and translated to French and Spanish. Forthcoming are two poems in the anthology Root to Seed, and an ekphrastic experimental film for the Belfast Poetry Festival in October 2023 which includes footage shot in Greenland, original score and spoken word with film-maker Dawn Nye at UMaine Farmington. Mihku Lives and works in Portland.
The Maine Jewish Museum Celebrating Maine's Jewish Art, History and Culture in a Restored 1921 Synagogue - www.mainejewishmuseum.org