30 years: telling the stories of our state
Maine Humanities Council reading programs roam across the globe: Let’s Talk About It groups discuss Indian and Cuban literature; New Books, New Readers shares stories from Uganda, Mexico, and Haiti; and Born to Read distributes Chinese and African folktales to children.
At the same time, programming at the Harriet P. Henry Center for the Book is attuned to the rich literary tradition found right here in Maine. Let’s Talk About It offers series including “Defining Wilderness: Defining Maine” and “The Mirror of Maine: The Maine Community in Myth and Reality” to libraries across the state. The 2006 summer institute on Hawthorne and Longfellow was the latest in a long line of teacher enrichment programs to explore Maine literature in the context of region and history. In the 1990s, the Born to Read program worked with Portland Adult Education on A Somali Alphabet, a bilingual book written by a refugee from Mogadishu. Born to Read also uses picture books such as The ABCs of Maine to instill pride of place in young readers.
These programs have emerged from a long tradition of Council support for regional literature. In the early eighties, the Council sponsored two projects that demonstrated a renaissance of interest in Maine writers. In 1982, a conference entitled “A Spirit of Place: 200 Years of Maine Poetry,” organized by the College of the Atlantic and the University of Maine at Augusta, brought panels of scholars to over 600 people in eight sites, from Orono to Alna. A 1986 project on the Maine novel in the 20th century was the first of several collaborations with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance (MWPA). Symposia on “Women Pioneers” and “The ‘Real’ Maine” turned a spotlight on lesser-known writers. (This project received an unexpected boost when a proclamation from Governor Brennan declared a Week of the Maine Novel to recognize that “the Maine Humanities Council has chosen to support the Maine Novel in the 20th Century Conference with major funding as part of its commitment to the cultural life of Maine” and that “the voice of Maine people and their ways and habits are uniquely revealed through works of the creative imagination.”)
In 1988, the Council supported the MWPA, along with the Maine Council for English Language Arts, in the creation of an anthology of Maine literature for use with middle and high school students. The resulting handsome volume, Maine Speaks, was enormously successful and continues to be reprinted. In August 1989, Down East magazine praised “the unity of imagination” in the anthology’s arrangement. “Maine does speak,” wrote the reviewer, “compellingly, its voice rich and lean, simple and complex, poignant and wry, defiant and inviting.”
Maine Speaks is not the Council’s only effort to disseminate Maine literature for a wider readership. At the conclusion of The Century Project (see timeline), the Council reprinted As the Earth Turns by Gladys Hasty Carroll and sponsored a reading by the 92-year-old author. It also reissued Lura Beam’s A Maine Hamlet. Maine literature projects have emerged in other formats, too. Students in Aroostook County produced a coloring book based on Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” Following a major conference on Edwin Arlington Robinson, the Gardiner Public Library created a walking tour of the poet’s hometown, now enhanced by a virtual tour accessible through the library’s website. And just this very autumn, the Council has produced a 30th Anniversary collection of audio interviews with several contemporary Maine writers, conducted by Charlotte Albright (many from the Maine Public Broadcasting Network archives) called Maine Writers Speak. This CD is a gift to the state of Maine, in recognition of its literary icons (and iconoclasts) through the ages.
