Betsy Sholl

Betsy Sholl cofounded Alice James Books  in 1973, a nonprofit poetry press meant to provide women with greater access to publishing. Alice James Books published Sholl’s first three poetry collections, Changing Faces (1974), Appalachian Winter (1978), and Rooms Overhead (1896). Scholl’s most recent book of poetry, Otherwise Unseeable (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), was awarded the 2014 Four Lakes Poetry Prize. Her poetry is influenced by her Catholic faith and by her social activism, which she came to through her husband, Doug Sholl, who is a social worker. She is the recipient of an AWP Prize for Poetry, a Felix Pollak Award, the Maine Arts Commission Chapbook Competition, two Maine Artists Fellowships, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2006, she was chosen to be the Poet Laureate of Maine, a position she held until 2011. She teaches at the University of Southern Maine and at Vermont College, and she lives in Portland, Maine.

Poetry

Beehive Huts

Dunquin Dingle Peninsula, Ireland Little stone domes no matrix, no glue, monk-built, by crevice and heft, taut little sheep fold, where men sat in their sheep clothes, with wooly tongues, holding Continue reading

Poetry

Power of Cuba

A cellar collection of electric meters, hook-ups to power with so many wires in makeshift highjack, it’s hard to tell what’s unraveled, what’s attached among the crisscrossed and slung, power tapped, Continue reading