About The Poets Corner
Writing is a journey of discovery, an exploration of our world and our understanding of it. Yet it is often a solitary endeavor. The Poets Corner was created to give us opportunities to make it a communal experience as well.
August 2020 Short Prose and Prose Poetry readers on The Poets Corner. From the top left: co-founder Kathrin Seitz, administrator Gabrielle Attra, poet Eric J. Evans, second row from left: photographer/writer Judy O’Dell, essayist/journalist Peter Imber, co-founder Meg Weston, bottom row: author Phuc Tran, writer/actor Lucinda Ziesing.
Poet Ellen Bass and founder Meg Weston on The Poets Corner.
Summertime Oopen Mic July 2021 Open Mic reading, featuring a musical performance by Elvis & the Mopes.
The Poets Corner was founded in June 2020 to foster community among writers and readers interested in poetry and short prose. Nearly five year later, The Poets Corner has grown to serve a thriving community of over 7,000 people from around the world.
In free monthly readings on Sundays over Zoom, we’ve hosted many amazing poets and writers such as Billy Collins, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Ellen Bass, Richard Blanco, Naomi Shihab Nye, Natalie Goldberg, and so many others reading and talking about their work. We also give emerging writers opportunities to submit through at least two Open Calls each year, where poets are selected to read their work on a particular topic or theme.
Our bi-annual chapbook competition has been judged by Naomi Shihab Nye (2022) and Marie Howe (2024) and gives an opportunity for an individual poet to have their work published by Toad Hall Editions, receive a $1,000 prize, and to read their work on a Zoom group call with the contest judge.
Recently, we’ve added Craft Talks that allow folks, for a reasonable fee, to explore deeply the works of an individual poet, or some aspect of the craft of writing.
After the pandemic, we began partnering with others to bring you local in-person events and opportunities. The Camden Festival of Poetry takes place in May each year in Camden, Maine and has featured keynote speakers including: Richard Blanco (2023), Pádriag Ó Tuama (2024), and Jane Hirshfield (2025). We co-host monthly Open Mics with Toad Hall Editions in Searsport, Maine, and in partnership with Millay House Rockland, we are able to put a spotlight on an exciting Writer-in-Residence program that is open to writers of all genres.
The Poets Corner is a busy hub of activity, designed to connect you to sources of inspiration for your writing and everyday living. Our readings regularly draw audiences of 200 or more, and sometimes more than 2,000! An exciting place to engage with voices that help us explore and understand our world.
The Poets Corner was founded by Meg Weston and Kathrin Seitz. Meg now serves as Director and Host, working with Liz Kalloch as Strategy & Design Director, and Lucas Adair as our Technical Director.
For more information contact thepoetscornermaine@gmail.com
Founders and Directors
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Meg founded The Poets Corner in June 2020, along with Kathrin Seitz, to bring community to the often solitary yet transformational experience of writing poetry and prose. In 2020, Meg retired from her position as President of Maine Media Workshops + College, where she established The Writers Harbor program to complement media arts curricula in photography, filmmaking, and book arts.
In parallel to a successsful career in business and media, Meg Weston has had a lifelong fascination with volcanoes. She’s traveled around the world pursuing her desire to witness the power of the earth in its processes of destruction, creation and transformation. Here work can be seen at www.volcanoes.com. Meg completed an MFA in Creative Writing from Leslie University in 2008, with an interdisciplinary emphasis on creative non-fiction and photography. Over the past ten years she has studied poetry from many wonderful teachers including Richard Blanco, Kevin Pilkington, Tess Taylor, and Ellen Bass. Meg is now focused on writing, teaching, and engaging with other writers, artists, and creative thinkers. Meg has published three volumes of poetry including a chapbook Letters from the White Queen in 2021, Magma Intrusions, from Kelsay Books in 2023, and To the Point and Back: Swimming Poems with Margaret A. Haberman in 2024. All of these are available in our shop.
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Kathrin Seitz is a co-founder of The Poets Corner, although she is no longer involved due to health constraints. She’s had a career as a writer, editor, producer and professional coach who spent thirty years as a creative executive in the publishing, television, film, animation and toy industries in Los Angeles and New York City. As a coach, she worked with private clients around the country and conducted Method Writing Workshops (jackgrapes.com ) in Midcoast Maine, New York City and Florida.
Her writings have been published in Evergreen Review, Lear's Magazine, Onthebus, Method Mad (a magazine she created with her students), The Herald Gazette and Maine Home+Design. Kathrin received an MFA in Fiction at Spalding University (Class of 2015) and subsequently worked on finishing her novel.
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Liz Kalloch is a book designer and abstract multi-media artist. After art school {with a minor in comparative literature}, her early design years were spent as an in-house designer with several publishers, but her “real” work began when she started her own design business, collaborating with authors and artist, to find the thread that would weave together the ideas and the words into the visual and concrete.
Liz is the co-founder and design director at Toad Hall Editions, a small press in midcoast Maine founded in March 2021. She was also the co-founder and design director for a creative arts and literary magazine called Mabel: Making a Living Creating a Life. She has published one book called Tools and Talismans: 100 Conversations in Watercolor— the story of how she created a still-life studio diary, a record of stories from 100 women about their most treasured tools and talismans.
Curiosity, enthusiasm and restlessness are her cornerstones, and though she’s been looking for the fourth for quite some time, she’s made peace with the fact that there may only ever be the three. She enjoys odds more than evens.
