Maine’s Poet Laureate position is an appointment designed to promote poetry throughout the state while honoring an eminent Maine poet for his or her achievements. The position was established by Maine statute in 1995. To be considered for this appointment, poets must be full-time Maine residents and have a distinguished body of poetic work.
Julia Bouwsma
Poet Laureate - Julia Bouwsma
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). She is the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
Bouwsma is the recipient of the 2019 and 2018 Maine Literary Awards for Poetry Book, the 2016-17 Poets Out Loud Prize, the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award. She has received writing residencies from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, and Annex Arts in Castine.
She contributes poems and book reviews to Cutthroat, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. Bouwsma, a former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, currently serves as an instructor at University of Maine at Farmington and on the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
Learn more about the history of Maine’s Poet Laureate, and enjoy reading some more poems by Julia Bouwsma.
Where did you go?
To hallways
of sweat and bleach
to white walls and
locked doors
to brass bed frames
and the endless folding of sheets
to the thin lips of strangers
at the market
to back doors
of summer mansions
to mudflats
and shanty camps
to clusters of islands
too tiny to name
to house rebuilt
with the same old boards
but smaler this time
and the windows
all in the wrong place.