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.
Reading, writing, and listening to poetry or prose is a way for us to come together in conversations that foster connection.
The Poets Corner fosters community among writers and readers interested in poetry and short prose. Based in midcoast Maine, The Poets Corner serves this community with readings and other offerings of interest.
Founded by Meg Weston and Kathrin Seitz in June of 2020.
For more information contact thepoetscornermaine@gmail.com
Screenshot of July 2021 Open Mic reading, featuring a musical performance by Elvis & the Mopes.
Screenshot of poet Ellen Bass and founder Meg Weston on The Poets Corner.
Screenshot of December 2020 readers on The Poets Corner. Clockwise from the top right: poet John Paul Caponigro, co-founder Meg Weston, co-founder Kathrin Seitz,
Screenshot from Ekphrastic Poetry reading (a collaboration with Page Gallery) in November 2023.
Screenshot of August 2020 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.
Screenshot of reading from the anthology Essential Queer Voices in U.S. Poetry : 100 Poets for our Present and Future. From left to right, top to bottom: Meg Weston, Founder/Director TPC, Chris Nelson, Founder/Editor Green Linden Press, and poets: Rick Barot, Ellen Bass, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Charif Shanahan, and Richard Blanco.
Founders and Directors
Liz Kalloch, strategy and design director
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.
Meg Weston, co-founder and director
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.
Kathrin Seitz, co-founder
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.
About our Advisory Board
The Poets Corner Advisory Board comprises a number of writers and lovers of poetry and prose who bring their expertise and enthusiasm to the planning and future of The Poets Corner. Our Advisory Board members are as follows:
