NEW PORTLAND — For Julia Bouwsma, Maine’s newly appointed Poet Laureate, poetry is an expression of community and an act of connection.
“Like many of us in Maine, I have a lot of jobs and roles,” she said. She is a homesteader, a librarian, an editor, a teacher, and a poet. “Poet is probably the top of the list because it encompasses all of those.”
One of the first things she did when she accepted the job as library director for Webster Library in Kingfield was host a poetry contest for all ages. Bouwsma has continued to use poetry as an outreach program, creating an environment of community and creative expression that can sometimes be hard to find in rural Maine. Ultimately, the goal of the poet laureate is to support, promote, and celebrate poets and poetry across the state.
Her first poems—which she describes as ‘terrible’—were written when she was about eight years old and took a poetry class offered by a volunteer at her elementary school. That was the beginning of a life-long relationship with poetry.
Bouwsma is the sixth poet laureate to serve Maine and was selected following a review by a panel of five judges including Gov. Janet Mills, North Haven author and poet Susan Minot, Maine Humanities Council Assistant Director Samaa Abdurraqib, Maine Writers and Publishers Executive Director Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, and Maine State Library Executive Director James Ritter.
“Poetry is really about connections, and about active listening,” Bouwsma said. She sees poetry as a way to explore difficult conversations and find fresh perspectives.
Bouwsma has two published books of poems and a third that she is starting to seek a home for. She has received writing residencies from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, and Annex Arts in Castine. During her writing residencies, she can express on paper the poems that she has been collecting in her mind as she works through her daily life. Often she writes intensely in a short period of time, then goes a few weeks to a few months before writing again. “I used to be very scared of writer’s block, but I’m really not now… because I know I am a writer.” The words are there, even if they take time to emerge.
She describes her poetry writing process as an ongoing act of creating and connection; the hard work required in the garden and on the farm flows into the poems she writes. Her world is richly colored with the circle of life and it emerges in her writing: a weasel in the henhouse stains a page of her first book, Work by Bloodlight, while life, love, and loss trace the lines in Midden, a book of poems about Malaga Island off the coast of Maine.
When asked her favorite poet, Bouwsma explained that she doesn’t pick favorites; she draws inspiration, encouragement, and knowledge from whatever poems and poets she needs at the time. “Poetry is an enormous toolbox,” she said.
Bouwsma and her partner, Walker Fleming, own a farm on Millay Hill in New Portland. There is a small cemetery on the lot which holds the grave of Sarah Millay; the paternal great-grandmother of another Maine poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. They are in the process of reclaiming the farm, and currently raise chickens and pigs, manage a sugarbush, and grow a garden for fresh fruits and veggies.
Bouwsma grew up in New Haven, Conn. She met Fleming in college in Pennsylvania and they traveled the country together after graduation; after exploring the whole of the country, they determined the place they wanted to settle was Maine, Fleming’s home state.
“Maine is my home,” she said. “I’ve never felt more at home than in Maine.”
While Gov. Mills does not know Bouwsma personally, she felt a connection with her poems.
“I deeply appreciate Julia Bouwsma’s ability to capture the courage and spirit of our state, including life in rural Maine and the resilience of Maine people,” she said. “With unflinching honesty, her poems explore the history, the heartache, and the hope of people who seek to build a better life for themselves here in Maine, with dirt under their nails and grit in their souls.”
Since the inception of the position, Maine’s poet laureates have included: Kate Barnes (1996-1999), Baron Wormser (2000-2005), Betsy Sholl (2006-2011), Wesley McNair (2011-2016) and Stuart Kestenbaum (2016-2021).
Kestenbaum recently completed his term as poet laureate, and spoke highly of Bouwsma’s qualifications for the role.
“Julia is a wonderful choice to be Maine’s poet laureate. Her poems are remarkable in their focus and intensity and her training as a librarian will bring an added dimension to projects that she will develop,” Kestenbaum said.
