Poetry on Windows | Elphie Owen
Poetry on Windows is here again, as timely as the spring sunshine. Phenomenologically speaking (and we all know this is changing, but for the record), the poems appear at the same time the apple blossoms begin to bud, when warblers arrive in their migrations, when spring beauties appear in the Camden Hills. For your calendars, poems will be appearing around May 12th. They will be legible on store windows throughout Camden and surrounding towns by May 18 th , coinciding with the Camden Festival of Poetry. They will be washed off or allowed to fade with the rain around the time that cranesbill geranium bloom, sometime in mid-June.
The poems are conceived of and crafted by our local school children of all ages. They are scribed by a generous crew of people-with-good-handwriting – and some actual calligraphers – on windows in shops throughout Camden, Rockport Village and Lincolnville. We may even begin to see them over at Hannaford’s and other locally frequented venues. If you are visiting the area, you will experience our community through an unusual lens. If you are a local, the sense of our community’s voice that emerges is one where adults, via the scribing, show up to support the poetic expressions of our children. It is a seasonal mending and threading-together. This is how community happens!
Poetry on Windows is in our fifth year as part of the work of the Stewardship Education Alliance whose mission is to increase awareness about ways to be better stewards of our watershed. We are indebted and so appreciative of the support from our sponsors in this year’s installation: Youth Arts and the Bisbee Fund. Moreover, we have entered a partnership with the Camden Festival of Poetry and The Poets Corner for the second year, a fitting “hand in glove” kind of collaboration for these organizations.
On May 18th we will gather at the Camden Opera House at 10 am to begin a “street reading” of the poems. The poets will be invited to recite or read their poem to eager audience members as we walk from window to window through downtown Camden.
The rest of the Camden Festival of Poetry is happening that very day beginning at 1 pm at the First Congregational Church of Camden (55 Elm Street). That event is free and open to the public (to register: www.thepoetscorner.org/festival). If you are interested in helping out with this project by scribing or washing windows or donating to costs, please contact her at elphie.owen@fivetowns.net (or visit www.stewardshipeducationalliance.org).
Spring ephemerals are a class of flower that appears in early spring, when the sun still reaches the forest floor through the budding canopy. Spring ephemerals are exactly that: fleeting and impermanent. But they are also disarmingly beautiful and unforgettable. We look for them as reassurance that the sun has reached dark and still places, and, through no work of ours, brought forth a treasured thing. May the poems land with us in that way as well.
Elphie Owen grew up in the wide-open western landscape of Colorado. She moved east in her 20s and to Maine in her mid-40s. She teaches at Camden Rockport Middle School where she runs an environmental club along with her teaching duties. Elphie has been on the board of Stewardship Education Alliance since its inception five years ago and tends to a large messy garden when she can get to it. She has two grown children, Mads and Henry, both of Maine.
