Betsy Sholl

Elizabeth "Betsy" Sholl (born 1945)[1] is an American poet who was poet laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011 and has authored nine collections of poetry.[2] Sholl has received several poetry awards, including the 1991 AWP Award, and the 2015 Maine Literary Award, as well as receiving fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission.

Betsy Sholl
Born1945 (age 77–78)
NationalityAmerican
Education
GenrePoetry
Notable works
  • The Red Line
  • Don't Explain
  • Otherwise Unseeable
Notable awards
Website
betsysholl.com

Sholl's poetry has been published in anthologies and in literary journals including Orion Magazine, Field, TriQuarterly, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Ploughshares.

Career

Sholl was one the founding members of Alice James Books, a non-profit publishing house at the University of Maine at Farmington, established in 1973 with the intent of widening women's access to publishing.[3][4] Sholl published her first three poetry collections with Alice James Books: Changing Faces (1974), Appalachian Winter (1978) and Rooms Overhead (1986).[5]

In 1991, Sholl's chapbook Pick a Card won the Maine Chapbook Competition,[6] which was judged by Donald Hall.[7] That same year, her poetry collection The Red Line won the Association of Writers & Writing Programs award for poetry.[8] The National Endowment for the Arts gave Sholl an artist fellowship in 1994.[3]

In 1997, Sholl's collection Don't Explain was selected by Rita Dove to receive the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry.[9] Dove, a previous holder of the position of US Poet Laureate,[10] described Sholl's poems as "what narrative can aspire to – namely, the grace and ease of the lyric rhapsody".[3]

Sholl served as Maine's third poet laureate from 2006 to 2011.[2][4] This is an honorary five-year position, with the laureate chosen in a process overseen by the Maine Arts Commission and appointed by the Governor of Maine, then John Baldacci.[3]

Sholl's collection Otherwise Unseeable won two prizes, the 2014 Four Lakes Prize in Poetry,[11] and the 2015 Maine Literary Award for Poetry.[12]

Sholl taught at the University of Southern Maine for over two decades.[13][14] She teaches in the Master of Fine Arts program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts,[13] and she has been a visiting poet at the University of Pittsburgh[15] and at Bucknell University,[3] and has twice received an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Maine Arts Commission.[16]

Regarding poetry, Sholl has said that its main purpose "is to refresh or renew the language" and that "it renews the presence and aliveness of language".[17]

Personal life and education

Born in Lakewood Township, New Jersey, Sholl grew up in Bricktown, New Jersey.[1][18] In 1967, she gained a BA in English Literature from Bucknell University, in 1969 an MA from the University of Rochester, and in 1989 a MFA in writing from Vermont College.[14][1] She moved to Maine in 1983 after stints in Boston and Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and now lives in Portland, Maine with her husband Doug.[1]

Published works

Full-length poetry collections
  • Changing Faces. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Alice James Books. 1974. ISBN 9780914086055. OCLC 1217580.
  • Appalachian winter. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Alice James Poetry Cooperative. 1978. ISBN 9780914086215. OCLC 464637445.
  • Rooms Overhead. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Alice James Books. 1986. ISBN 9780914086673. OCLC 15001945.
  • The Red Line. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: University of Pittsburgh Press. 1992. ISBN 9780822954828.
  • Don't Explain. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. 1997. ISBN 9780299157203. OCLC 36676000.
  • Late Psalm. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. 2004. ISBN 9780299198930. OCLC 929635289.
  • Rough Cradle. Farmington, Maine: Alice James Books. 2009. ISBN 9781882295739. OCLC 261175896.
  • Otherwise Unseeable. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. 2014. ISBN 9780299299330. OCLC 930854601.
  • House of Sparrows : New and selected poems. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. 2019. ISBN 9780299323042. OCLC 1053147930.

Chapbooks

Contributions in anthologies

Contributions in literary journals

References
  1. Ballard, Sandra L.; Hudson, Patricia L., eds. (2013). "Betsy Sholl". Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia. The University Press of Kentucky. pp. 554–564. ISBN 9780813143583 – via Google Books.
  2. Kestenbaum, Stuart (August 9, 2019). Poems from Here: A rabbi, a minister, and a priest walk into a bar—. Maine Public (radio broadcast). Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  3. Anstead, Alicia (March 1, 2006). "USM professor nominated for poet laureate". Bangor Daily News. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  4. "About Betsy Sholl". Academy of American Poets. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  5. "Poet Betsy Sholl at Water Street Bookstore". The Portsmouth Herald. October 1, 2019. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  6. "Betsy Sholl". The Cafe Review. 11 January 2017. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  7. Lorber, Max (29 September 2019). "MWPA revives Maine Chapbook Series". The Free Press. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  8. "AWP: Award Series Winners". Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  9. "Brittingham & Pollak Prizes in Poetry". Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  10. Lichtenstein, Jesse (12 August 2018). "How Poetry Came to Matter Again". The Atlantic. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  11. Lowe Connors, Ginny. "Otherwise Unseeable (Four Lakes Prize in Poetry)". New York Journal of Books. Retrieved 4 January 2020.
  12. Han, Cindy (April 19, 2019). "Poetry: For National Poetry Month, Notable Maine Poets Discuss Their Work and The Role of Poetry". Maine Public. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  13. Hauser, Scott (2006). "The 'Maine' Poet". Rochester Review. Vol. 68, no. 4. University of Rochester. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  14. "Betsy Sholl". Vermont College of Fine Arts. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  15. "Poet-in-Residence". www.bucknell.edu.
  16. Thompson, Lynn (August 25, 2014). "Betsy Sholl leads poetry workshop". Boothbay Register. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
  17. Fleming, Dierdre (March 10, 2010). "Allusions of grandeur". Portland Press Herald. Archived from the original on 2011-07-15.
  18. Betsy Sholl, Poets & Writers, updated April 28, 2014. Accessed July 22, 2020. "Born in: Lakewood; Raised in: Brick Town, NJ"
  19. "Lit from Inside". NPR. Retrieved 5 January 2020.
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