“A Feast of Poetry and Song” in the Reading Room (Camden Festival of Poetry)

Donna Spruijt-Metz is a poet, former MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and classical flutist. She is also this year’s Festival poet-in-residence, spending the month of May at the Millay House in Rockland, ME. Her books include To Phrase a Prayer for Peace (2025), General Release from the Beginning of the World (2023), Scuttle My Balloon (with Flower Conroy; 2025), and an English translation of Lucas Hirsch’s Dutch poems, Wu Wei Eats an Egg (2025). Her writing project while in residency involves working on a book on grief. She will also be offering a workshop on Saturday morning as part of the Festival.

Eric Schow, a Maine Maritime alum from Massachusetts, now lives in Belfast after journeying across North America by sea and land. Though writing never came easily, at 40 he’s finally embracing it. Eric builds boats for a living, enjoys meditation, and time with his girlfriend April. Most days, you’ll find him at the Belfast dog park around 4pm, pondering life and enjoying the moment. 

Tim Sheehy is happily retired from a career in communications. He and his wife live on the Midcoast where they’ve sailed for 25 years, tending lovely gardens when not volunteering at organizations focused on connecting people with each other and nature. He is passionate about sailing, hiking and motorcycling, and is a published travel writer; his creative arts include poetry and acoustic music.

Born and raised in rural Maine, Louisa Stancioff has emerged as a gifted writer with a cinematic eye for richly detailed, emotionally-charged character studies. She grew up learning traditional Bulgarian music from her paternal grandfather’s side of the family and reveled in singing American folk and roots tunes with her friends. After years of touring and recording with her previous indie folk band, Dyado, and a dramatic stint in LA in 2020 that inspired many songs and big move back to Maine, she felt compelled to release music under her own name. Her debut album “When We Were Looking” was released in April 2024 with Yep Roc Records. She has now toured it extensively, opening for renown bands such as Darlingside, Blitzen Trapper, Pokey Lafarge and more, and is in the works of recording her second album. 

Emma Krosschell lives in Brooksville, Maine, with her partner and their dog. She spends her time wandering in the woods and baking as much bread as she can. Her first poetry collection, Hermitage, was published by Littoral Books in 2024.

Jim Krosschell has published poems and essays in some 85 journals, plus two essay collections: One Man’s Maine, which won a Maine Literary Award, and Owls Head Revisited. He lives in Deer Isle, ME and Newton, MA, and volunteers on Boards for Coastal Mountains Land Trust and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.

Linda Buckmaster is former Poet Laurate of Belfast. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in more than forty journals. Her most recent book is Journey Waters. Poems, Prose, Places (Huntress Press 2025), a retrospective of 25 years of writing. She currently leads community-based writing workshops.

Mark S. Burrows, who will M.C. the event, is an award-winning poet, translator, and scholar, as well as co-founder of the Camden Festival of Poetry. Together with Jon Sweeney, he has published three books of meditative poems inspired by Meister Eckhart’s writings, most recently Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light which was awarded the Gold Medal by the Nautilus Book Awards in 2024. His translations of German poetry include, most recently, the first full-length translation of the German-Jewish poet Hilde Domin’s poems, The Wandering Radiance: Selected Poems of Hilde Domin (2023) and a new translation of Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus (2024). He also recently published You Are the Future: Living the Questions with Rainer Maria Rilke (2024), cowritten with Stephanie Dowrick. He lives and writes in Camden, ME.