Poet: Leonore Hildebrandt lives “off the grid” in Harrington and teaches writing at the University of Maine at Machias. Her poetry has appeared in several magazines, including the Puckerbrush Review, The Café Review, Northwoods Journal, and the Beloit Poetry Journal.

Artist: Cathy Melio is an artist, educator, and radio producer who lives in Stockton Springs, Maine. She has exhibited widely, including Courthouse Gallery, University of Maine Museum of Art, Maine Art Gallery, Unity College, and elsewhere. She is currently education director at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA)in Rockport.

Poet: Ellen Goldsmith is a poet and educator. Her poems have appeared in a number of magazines and journals. No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect won the Hudson Valley Writers' Center 1997 chapbook contest. A professor emeritus of The City University of New York, she recently relocated to Cushing. Her current work explores change, continuity and transformation.

3 Belfast Coop Gallery 123 High Street
Artist and Poet: Beth Schaab – Artist Statement

I paint in a minor key.
I utilize what is there in a space.
An image
impacts me
whether a portrait, still life, or shadowed wall
and the story begins to unfold
layering colors and temperatures to a depth of satisfaction.

The weight, and transparency, the warmth and the age of skin
is what I look for.
An egg is skin made solid.
A flower, watery skin.
Some people have skin like this.

A suitcase carries your worldly belongings
or your sins.
How it sits on the floor
how heavy it appears
will make a difference.

There is a quiet attitude to my work.
Not that life is sad, but more a time of rain.
My work asks a question.
I paint a moment of concern before the answer is understood.

4 Phoenix Row 157 High Street
Artist: Archie Barnes has lived in Belfast, Maine, for 11 years. Opening the Phoenix Loft Gallery in 2001, the artist continues to paint and exhibits as well as host art events in the new gallery located at 159 High Street.

Poet: Marcia F. Brown’s chapbook, The Way Women Walk (Sheltering Pines Press 2006) was selected first prize winner in the 2005 Sheltering Pines Press Chapbook Competition. A graduate of the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program, her poems and reviews have appeared in Poet Lore, Animus, Off the Coast, Words and Images and Lyric Magazine among others. Her work was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2005 and 2006.

This is Marcia’s third year of collaboration with Archie Barnes, for the Belfast poetry Festival. The team plans a book of their poetry and artwork previously featured in the festivals.

Artist: Jan Owen is a Belfast artist whose work incorporates calligraphy, brush marks, colors and texture. She is also exhibiting at the Carver Hill Gallery in Rockport during October.

Poet: Lee Sharkey's latest book is A Darker, Sweeter String, just out from Off the Grid Press. She lives in Farmington, where she edits the Beloit Poetry Journal, which. will be available at the Festival.

Artist: Stephen Florimbi "I am an abstract expressionist. But even the most abstract of my works relate to recognizable forms, mostly figures, faces, and landscapes. At first glance they may seem loosely drawn but the whole composition, palette, and layers become tangibly deliberate. Color, light, and line vie for dominance; volume and space search for balance. There is no linear progression among my works. They mirror life’s multitude of layers and relationships, reflecting a beautiful, sensuous world that is often humorous and light but sometimes a little dark and sarcastic. Making art expands my inner vision and therefore my awareness of both my physical world and my emotional and spiritual self. I hope that it’s catching."

Poet: Mandi Locke, Belfast poet, has a BFA in Writing from Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont, where she completed her first manuscript of poetry and won the Robert Marsh Award for Excellence in Writing. She has participated in many literary events throughout the community including poetry slams, readings and The Fifteen Minute Festival with the writer’s group Rising Sound. She aspires to publish children’s stories and keep bees.

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Poet: Annaliese Jakimides is a writer and visual artist. Her prose and poetry have been published in many journals and magazines like Utne, GQ, Hip Mama, and Beloit Poetry Journal, and included in collections, most recently The Other Side of Sorrow and the forthcoming The Long Meanwhile. Her essays continue to be broadcast on public radio. She writes the arts interview and essay for Bangor Metro magazine. Maine poet laureate Betsy Sholl recently cited her work for the Diner poetry prize. She grew up in Boston, spent 25 years on a dirt road in Patten, and now lives in Bangor. 

Artist: Kevin J. Johnson received his first camera, a Canon AE-1, as a high school graduation gift. His work has been exhibited at Unity College, Perimeter Gallery, CMCA, University of Maine in Augusta, and Opus Gallery. Kevin works primarily in nature and is carving out his own niche as a modernist landscape photographer.

5 Waterfall Arts 256 High Street
Artist: Kenny Cole grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York, 100 miles north of NYC. After winning the Charles Burchfield Scholarship for Art I attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1976. I studied under many interesting professor/artists, but Howard Buchwald seems to stick out as having had made the strongest impression on me. I was very influenced by his idea of how a painting's support or structure needed to be thought of carefully if one was to truly make a fully realized work of art. Since moving to Maine in the early ’90s I have continued to exhibit in alternative venues and become involved with two arts organizations: the Union of Maine Visual Artists and the Waterfall Arts center. Please visit my site kennycole.com

Poet: Karin Spitfire is the current Poet Laureate of Belfast and is the organizer of the festival. Her first book Standing with Trees came out in November 2005. Her poems are polemics, prayers, shouts and cries for mercy. Spitfire is now combining her words and paintings into artist books.

Artist: Dudley Zopp's work joins a fascination with geological formations to an obsession for locating image through process. Recent exhibitions include "Erratic Locations," an installation at the University of Southern Maine/Lewiston-Auburn (2006), and the August Show at Coppershed Gallery in Warren, Maine (2007). She has collaborated on a variety of projects with artists from Maine, Kentucky, Connecticut, and Mainz, Germany, and has work in the collections of the Farnsworth Art Museum and the Boston Athenaeum. Visit online at dudleyzopp.net

Poet: Linda Buckmaster doesn't write about what she sees, but rather what she thinks she sees * the imagination of place. Growing up in Florida, thirty-three years in Waldo County, and international travel deeply inform her work. She has published three chapbooks of poetry, most recently Heart Song & Other Legacies, and her work has appeared in numerous literary journals.

Artist: Kimberly Callas has been sculpting the figure for over fifteen years. Drawing from her rigorous figurative training and her interest in indigenous sculptors’ use of natural materials, Callas combines representation and abstraction to explore the body’s ecological relationship with spirit and earth. Visit online at jonathanfrostgallery.com

Poet: Gary Lawless grew up in Belfast and now co-owns a bookstore in Brunswick. He is the editor of Blackberry Books and has published poetry widely. You can see his recent writings at mygrations.blogspot.com

Map of Belfast
The numbers indicate the locations of the participating galleries.

Contact Info
Questions about the Festival– 207.338.1701 or email lsbuck@maine.edu