After hinting for weeks, autumn finally seems to be settling in. Though only a few leaves have reddened, the air, even under noon sun, breathes an undercurrent of coolness. Grass and the garden are shabby and tired, and I am tired of tending to them. Autumn is a naturally untidy season, and that is a relief for its housekeeper.

Changes, changes . . . I've got some changes to tell you about.

After more than a decade at the Frost Place, I've made the painful decision to resign from my position as director of the Conference on Poetry & Teaching. Anyone who knows me understands how hard it is for me to leave a place I’ve loved for so long. There have been tears, and tears, and tears. But I’m confident that I’ve made the right decision.

 

A place is a place, but a community is much more. At the Frost Place we created a community of poets, teachers, students, and searchers who came together, and stayed together, despite all odds. I won’t be teaching next summer at the Frost Place, but that doesn’t mean I’ve left my community. I’m simply walking through a new door.

 

In the summer of 2024, I’ll be directing the Conference on Poetry & Learning at Monson Arts. The format will be familiar: a five-day conference (July 6–10) followed by an optional two-day writing retreat (July 10–11). Teresa Carson will serve alongside me as associate director, and Maudelle Driskell will be our visiting poet.

 

Registration for the conference will open this fall, and I’ll let you know as soon as that link is live. Be assured that prices will remain affordable, and we’ll still be offering professional development credits. For now, jot down the dates on your calendar, and start imagining a comfortable, collegial week in a gorgeous setting.

I talk a lot here about my work with the kids at Monson Arts, but I haven't talked much about the place itself. Monson Arts is a world-class artists’ residency and workshop center located on Lake Hebron in Monson, Maine, in the heart of the north woods. The town is situated just south of Moosehead Lake, the largest mountain lake in the eastern United States, and is the gateway to the Hundred Mile Wilderness, the final leg of the Appalachian Trail. Monson is also twenty-five miles north of the town of Harmony—where I lived for more than two decades, raised my children, and learned to be a poet. In other words, this is my homeland.

 

Monson has a long history as a destination for artists and wanderers. As early as the 1840s, Henry David Thoreau traveled to the region and wrote movingly about the landscape, and artists such as Berenice Abbott and Carl Sprinchorn later lived and worked here. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the town thrived as a center for slate quarrying and furniture making. But by the turn of the millennium, its industrial base had eroded, and the town was fading away.

 

Monson Arts was conceived as a way to reverse this course. It began as an initiative of the Libra Foundation, a Maine-based philanthropic organization. The idea was to construct a center for the arts that would also spur economic development in Piscataquis County, currently one of the state’s poorest. With foundation support, Monson Arts planners purchased and renovated much of the downtown and began programming in 2018.

 

The mission of Monson Arts is to provide time and space for creative work via residencies, workshops, community and school programs, and exhibitions. Its studios are state-of-the-art; lodging and meals are offered on site; the chef won a 2023 James Beard Hospitality Award. Travelers who don’t want to make the drive can fly or take a bus to Bangor, and staff will pick them up and bring them to town. Yet, despite these wonders, I will be able to keep the conference price affordable. That’s because the Monson Arts staff and board are committed to arts education and steadfast in their support of teachers, students, and makers. I have been leading their high school writing program since 2019, and I can affirm that they are welcoming in every way. 

 

Stuart Kestenbaum, a poet and arts administrator who has been instrumental in the design of Monson Arts, tells me, “We want this to be a happy home for you.” It will be a happy home. I’m thrilled to have found such a magnificent landing place. At the same time, I’ll continue to mourn that house in the White Mountains. It’s another of those both-and conundrums.

I know this change will be good for the program, assuring that it will not only survive but thrive. But of course I'm sad. Of course. Making this transition has been excruciating, and it's a relief to finally be able to tell you about it, after months of work and anxiety.