Poetry Reading: Hans Krichels & Bill Carpenter In-Person / Online

Join two celebrated Maine poets in conversation, sharing work from over five decades of writing and thoughtful observation.

Hans Krichels came to Maine almost fifty years ago. He once asked an old-timer if he’d lived here all his life. “Not yet,” the old-timer had drawled. In 1971, Hans abandoned an academic career and moved to Maine, where he and his family built their own house, raised two fine daughters along with dairy goats and organic vegetables, and did their best to carve a niche for themselves in their community at large. Throughout it all, Hans worked at various jobs – as a teacher, a newspaper reporter, a mason’s tender, a sign-maker, a woodcarver, a photographer, and always, in one form or another, a writer.

Bill Carpenter, born and raised in New England, began publishing poetry in 1976. He won the Associated Writing Program’s Contemporary Poetry Award just four years later in 1980, followed by the Samuel French Morse Prize in 1985 and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He moved to Maine in 1972 to help found the College of the Atlantic, a school dedicated to human ecology and the environment, where he served on the faculty for 48 years.

Bill Carpenter Photo Credit: College of the Atlantic