Acorn Productions Begins Poetry Reading Series, 1/13

Acorn Productions, a company dedicated to developing the performing arts in the Southern Maine area, is pleased to announce a new addition to the company's performance series with the inaugural presentation of "Lowry's Lodge," a monthly series of poetry readings hosted by Jim Donnelly and Anna Wrobel. The company offers the first in a series of public readings at the Acorn Studio Theater in the Dana Warp Mill in Westbrook on Friday, January 13th at 7 p.m. Portland Poet Laureate Bruce Spang and Marcia Brown, whose poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on NPR's Writer's Almanac, will read from their work and take questions from the audience after their readings. The event is free with a $5 suggested donation.

"We are very excited about this new direction for our company," says Producing Director Michael Levine, "Acorn has always been committed to celebrating the spoken word, and this new venture dovetails nicely with many of our existing programs." Readings in the "Lowry's Loft" series will take place on the second Friday of each month, with a few exceptions due to performances taking place in the Acorn Studio Theater. Current listings for each month, along with the names of the featured poets, are available on Acorn's website www.acorn-productions.org.

Bruce Spang, presently the Poet Laureate of Portland, teaches American Literature at Scarborough High School. Author of a libretto, "The White Rose", about the gay man murdered by 3 high school boys in Bangor, he is also writing a novel, putting together another book of poems and a book on putting the art back in language arts-a book on how to merge teaching the craft of writing as a way to teach literature. He is author of To the Promised Land Grocery (Moon Pie Press, 2008), I Have Walked though Many Lives: Young Voices-Scarborough (Moon Pie, Press 2009) and The Knot, (Snow Drift Press, 2005), Tip End of Time (Snow Drift Press, 2004). He has published four books on drug and alcohol education in the schools along with several articles in major magazines. He has taught creative writing for seven years. Prior to that, for 10 years, as an administrator, he worked with Baron Wormser in teaching his staff to teach poetry in the classroom. Each year, his students in his classes, have won major prizes in local and state contests.

Marcia F. Brown, of Cape Elizabeth, ME is the author of three books of poetry: The Way Women Walk, winner of the 2005 Sheltering Pines Press Chapbook competition; Home to Roost, Paintings and Poems from Belfast, Maine with Maine artist, Archie Barnes; and What on Earth published in 2010 by Moon Pie Press. She holds an MFA degree in Poetry from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA Program. She is a frequent reader at Maine festivals and poetry events, and her poems and reviews appear in numerous regional and national journals. Garrison Keillor read three (3) of her poems on NPR's The Writer's Almanac last summer and her work is included in Keillor's latest anthology, Good Poems, American Places published in 2011.