Stuart Kestenbaum
Repair the World
Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He was the host of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and the host/curator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future. Stuart Kestenbaum has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in numerous small press publications and magazines including Tikkun, the Sun, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and on the Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021.
Former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser has written “Stuart Kestenbaum writes the kind of poems I love to read, heartfelt responses to the privilege of having been given a life. No hidden agendas here, no theories to espouse, nothing but life, pure life, set down with craft and love.”
EDUCATION
1973 B.A. with departmental honors, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Major: Comparative Religion
1971 Hamilton College Winter Study, The London Theater, London, England
1975 Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, in ceramics.
1984 Stonecoast Writers Conference, University of Southern Maine, graduate poetry workshop
SELECTED RELATED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
2012 Visiting Writer, Waring School, Massachusetts
2013 Visiting Writer, Graduate Metals Program, Rhode Island School of Design
2011 Trustee American Craft Council; Chair 2014-2017
2014 Visiting Writer Bowling Green State University, Ohio
2015 Andrew Glasgow Visiting Writer, Penland School, NC
2015 Visiting Writer Penn State University
2016 Visiting Writer Alfred University
2016-2019 Curated and hosted the podcast Make/Time
2016 Visiting Writer Rhode Island School of Design
2016 Visiting Writer, Maryland Institute College of Art
2016 Workshop (with Susan Webster) Penland School of Crafts
2017 Visiting Writer, Virginia Commonwealth University
2017 Workshop (with Susan Webster) Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts
2018 Visiting Writer, Northern State University (Aberdeen, SD)
2018 Workshop (with Susan Webster) Shakerag
2019 Workshop (with Susan Webster) Peters Valley School of Craft
2020 Visiting Writer, Alfred University
2020 Columnist Union of Maine Visual Artists’ Quarterly Journal
SELECTED SPEECHES/KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
Maine College of Art, Commencement 2009
Renee May Memorial Lecture, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland 2011
Society of North American Goldsmiths 2015 (with Neil Gershenfeld)
Cleveland Institute of Art, The Future of Craft conference, Keynote, 2018
AWARDS
2016 Appointed to 5-year term as Poet Laureate of the State of Maine
2020 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellowship
PUBLICATIONS
Poems have appeared in many magazines and periodicals, among these: Kennebec, Maine Times, Black Fly Review, Greenfield Review, Portland Review of the Arts, Beloit Poetry Journal, Texas Review, Habitat, Eggemoggin Reach Review, Tikkun, Puckerbrush Review, wordplay, the Maine Review, Northeast Corridor, the Sun, Words and Images, American Life in Poetry (website and newspaper), Poetry Daily (website), and NPR’s Writer’s Almanac (radio and website) and in anthologies including Good Poems for Hard Times, The Maine Poets, and Take Heart.
Author of five books of poems, Pilgrimage (Coyote Love Press1990) and House of Thanksgiving (Deerbrook Editions 2003), Prayers and Run-on Sentences (Deerbrook Editions 2007), Only Now (Deerbrook Editions 2014), How to Start Over (Deerbrook Editions 2019) and a book of essays, The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press 2012)
Development Team, The Arts Go to School, An Arts in Education Handbook. Published by the New England Foundation for the Arts and the American Council on the Arts.
Selected Articles and Essays:
Catalog Essay, Chris Gustin Circling Into Now, University Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth 2010
Curator and essayist for Society of North American Goldsmith’s Exhibition in Print. Catalog essay Repair and Renewal, Summer 2017
Catalog Essay, Darkness and the Light, Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Summer 2019
