Maine Speaks featured speaker: Jefferson Navicky. Sponsored by the Maine Humanities Council.

Saturday, February 28 at 1pm at Vassalboro Public Library

Sally (Sarah) Sayward Barrell Keating Wood (1759-1855) – “Madam Wood” – lived more than nine decades, authored four novels and one collection of tales, and was renowned as Maine’s first novelist. Poet and Archivist Jefferson Navicky will talk about Wood’s life, and her impact on Maine as a novelist. He will focus his talk on Wood’s 1827 book, Tales of the Night, which consists of two novellas, “Storms and Sunshine” and “The Hermitage.”

In Katherine Larson’s celebrated new collection of lyric essays, Wedding of the Foxes (Milkweed 2025), she writes, “One could argue that the current environmental crisis is a crisis of vision and visioning—that is, the inability to imagine realities and trajectories other than the ones we are currently living.” 

Larson and poet Miho Nonaka will together talk about their imagined realities and read from their work. Join us for an afternoon of inspiration, thoughtfulness, and vision. Hosted by MHR Board Member Jefferson Navicky, all donations benefit Millay House Rockland.

If you’d like to make a donation we suggest $25.
With every $50 donation, receive a one-year membership to Millay House Rockland with all member benefits. All your donations go directly to Millay House Rockland to help fund programming and support the literary arts.

You will be sent a Zoom link the day of the event.

Please join the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and SPACE and four writers in celebration of Kristen Case’s new book, Daphne.

***This event is rescheduled from July 8 — all existing tickets will be observed.***

In celebration of Kristen Case’s new book, Daphne, from Tupelo Press, four accomplished and award-winning poets and writers will gather to share work and talk about how their work is in conversation with various poems and traditions and what that means. The poets and writers include Kristen Case, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Nina MacLaughlin, Jefferson Navicky, and Jeffrey Thomson.

In Daphne, Case writes, “The story goes like this: a girl/woman is chased after and lost. She becomes a lost thing. The man becomes a poet.”

The editors of Tupelo Press call Daphne “a powerful decolonization of the imagination” and note that in the book she “explores the relationship between predation and the lyric, particularly within the Western canon…[S]he does not merely critique or gesture at problems, but instead, works toward more just and equitable forms of discourse. By challenging the boundaries between literary criticism, prose poetry, hybrid forms, manifesto, and the lyric, Case ultimately works within received literary forms to expand what is possible within them.”

Please join us for what will be a one-of-a-kind reading and conversation. PRINT: A Bookstore will be on hand to sell copies of Kristen Case’s book and books by the others.

On Sunday March 9 from 4:00 - 5:30pm ET, Jefferson Navicky—Millay House Rockland Board Member and archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England—will be presenting a workshop called Millay in War & Peace: Poetic Responses in Tumultuous Times.

The focus will be on Millay’s ability to shape-shift as a poet, and why a poet might choose to do this, how this can be accomplished, and in general, strategies to stay connected with each other and to write poems in difficult times when we may struggle to stay in touch with poetry.

The workshop is open to poets of all abilities and experience, and to anyone who might be curious about the life and work of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The event will be live on Zoom from The Poets Corner. $15 for non-members of Millay House Rockland, and all proceeds will go towards Millay House Rockland.

and use the password: millayhouserockland
to access registration

Join us for an evening of poetry at Stone Broke Bread & Books, sprung from research in the Maine Women Writers Collection (MWWC). Beth Alison Jones will read from an in-progress series of poems inspired by the journals of Isabel Hoffses, a 19th-century school teacher from Waldoboro, Maine.  She suffered bouts of homelessness, poverty, and a debilitating mental illness. The poems explore a powerful and singular mental will that insists on its own freedom.  The Civil War is the unmentioned backdrop.  

MWWC Archivist Jefferson Navicky will read poems inspired by his work at MWWC processing archival collections, assisting researchers, and communing with ghosts and other spirits that haunt the past’s detritus.

Jefferson will be reading as a part of the Camden Festival of Poetry. The festival is FREE and OPEN to the public.

Our Town Photography & Writing Workshop with Sharyn Peavey & Jefferson Navicky In-Person

Meetinghouse Arts will present a Photography and Writing Workshop, at the Freeport Community Library on Thursday May 9th at 6:00PM, featuring photographer Sharyn Peavey and writer Jefferson Navicky.   

Meetinghouse Arts is proud to bring this free workshop with Sharyn and Jefferson to the Library as the first of three photo and writing workshops in support of Our Town: A Community Self Portrait; a community arts documentary project funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. The Self Portrait is a two-week initiative (May 25th-June 8) that invites all residents of Freeport to capture and describe the town’s essence through photography and words. Exhibitions of participants’ work will be held at the end of October at the Meetinghouse Arts Gallery, the Freeport Historical Society, Freeport Community Services, Visit Freeport and the Freeport Community Library.

In Sharyn and Jefferson’s workshop, A Day in the Life: Photography and Poetry Capture the Quotidien, they pose the question: “How often do we let slip by the small things of everyday life? The nesting of a family of bluebirds; the way the sun strikes wet pavement on an early spring day; the pile of muddied clothes after your child's forest adventure.” This workshop invites participants to work to capture the stuff of daily life through photography and poetry. Sharyn and Jefferson will provide exercises and demonstrations to enhance and inspire your abilities to document daily life for Freeport's upcoming Our Town NEA grant. No prior experience needed; please bring something to write on/with, your sense of adventure, and your artistic eye. This event is free and open to Freeporters of all ages and walks of life. 

Sharyn Peavey is a professional photographer with a studio at Pineland Farms. She began her career in 1994 after receiving a BFA in Photography from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Other formal training includes Parsons School of Design, NYC; Pratt Institute, NYC; International Center for Photography (ICP), NYC; Walnut Hill School for the Arts and Wesleyan University Summer Arts & Dance Program. https://www.sharynpeavey.com

Jefferson Navicky is the author of four books, most recently the novel-in-prose-poems, Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands (2023), as well as Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose (2021), which won the 2022 Maine Literary Award for Poetry. He is the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection.  https://www.jeffersonnavicky.com

"Inspiration in the Archives: A Conversation about Poetry"

            with poet and teacher Beth Alison Jones, & poet and archivist Jefferson Navicky

facilitated by Dr. Jennifer Tuttle, Director of the Maine Women Writers Collection

Join us for an evening of poetry sprung from research in the Maine Women Writers Collection (MWWC). Beth Alison Jones will read from an in-progress series of poems called “We Don’t Talk About the War.” Inspired by the journals of Isabel Hoffses, a 19th century school teacher who suffered bouts of homelessness, poverty, and a debilitating mental illness, the poems explore a powerful and singular mentality will that insists on its own freedom.  The Civil War is the unmentioned backdrop. 

MWWC Archivist Jefferson Navicky will read poems inspired by his work at MWWC processing archival collections, assisting researchers, and communing with ghosts and other spirits that haunt the past’s detritus.

The evening will be introduced and moderated by Dr. Jennifer Tuttle, MWWC Director & Dorothy M. Healy Professor of Literature at UNE.

fmi, please contact MWWC Curator Sarah Baker: sbaker8@une.edu

Beth Alison Jones (she/her/hers) is a poet who lives and works in central Maine. A past recipient of an Isabella Gardner fellowship at MacDowell Colony, Beth recently received a Maine Arts Commission Springboard grant for her chapbook, “What It Means To Be A Half-Blind Horse.” Her work has appeared in many journals, including The Georgia Review, West Branch, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, Shenandoah, River Styx, Cimarron Review and The Adirondack Review.  

Jefferson Navicky (he/him/his) is the author of four books, most recently Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands (2023) as well as Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments on Short Prose (2021), which won the 2022 Maine Literary Award for Poetry. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Electric Literature, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Southern Humanities Review.

Jennifer Tuttle (she/her/hers) directs the MWWC as the Dorothy M. Healy Professor, teaches literature at UNE, and publishes literary criticism on archival studies, women’s writing, health humanities, and other subjects. She was the 2021-22 Ludcke Chair of Liberal Arts and Sciences at UNE, was a longtime editor at Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, and co-founded UNE’s Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Program.

Stop by Back Cove Books on May 1!!!

Basketball, Blazes and Bots: Three Poets Explore Sports, Love and the Farthest Reaches of the Galaxy

Jefferson will be reading at the Yarmouth Public Library with fellow poets David Sloan and John Reinhart.

Free lunch!!

At the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland! FMI and tickets: https://www.farnsworthmuseum.org/

Jefferson will be reading with a bunch of excellent poets to celebrate the launch of Mike Bove’s book, EYE. Register for the free event at Mechanics’ Hall HERE.