To slow you down and make you pay attention: a reading with Stuart Kestenbaum

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share, explore, and celebrate poetry, hosted by John Gillespie. This episode features Stu Kestenbaum. He reads his poems "Prayer in the Strip Mall, Bangor, Maine," "In Praise of Hands," "Theology," "Song of Ascents," and "Holding the Light." Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, Pilgrimage (Coyote Love Press), House of Thanksgiving (Deerbrook Editions), Prayers and Run-on Sentences (Deerbrook Editions) Only Now (Deerbrook Editions), How to Start Over (Deerbrook Editions), and Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions). He has also written The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press), a book of brief essays on craft and community. In 2024, he and visual artist Susan Webster published A Quiet Book, collaborations in writing and visual art (Brynmorgen Press). He has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in small press publications and magazines including Tikkun, The Sun, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The New York Times Magazine. He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021 and hosted Poems from Here on Maine Public Radio/Maine Public Classical and was the host/creator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future. Stuart was the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine for over twenty-five years, and was elected an honorary fellow of the American Craft Council in 2006. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he designed and implemented a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts. Learn more at stuartkestenbaum.com. This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes. Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com