Nature poets to read at Borders series

BANGOR – Two local poets will come in from the country Thursday evening to read from their works at Borders Books and Music. Leon Raikes of Steuben and David Wells Brainerd of Howland will read beginning at 7 p.m. on the second floor of the bookstore on Bangor Mall Boulevard.

Raikes, chairman of Husson College’s English department, is the author of “The Lip of Awareness,” published earlier this year by Finishing Line Press of Kentucky. Raikes’ mostly open-form poems draw their energy from images and observations of the natural world, and seek to evoke the senses of value and mystery that seem to fill nature and people’s perceptions of it.

Brainerd’s poems depict a universe parallel to Raikes’, in which signs of the divine are noticed in the fields, woods and stars, from a subtle Christian cosmological view. Classic senses of awe and humility at the powers of nature, along with persistent good humor, unfold from the traditional and open-form poems in Brainerd’s saddle-stitched volume, “A Turn of the Wheel,” which he published in 2003 from his one-room cabin in Howland.

Raikes’ poems have appeared in literary publications such as the Atlanta Review and Oberon, and he holds a master’s degree from the American University of Beirut and doctorate from Michigan State University. Brainerd has worked as a journalist in Maine and served as co-editor of the Maine Monastic Foundation Newsletter. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts and a master’s of divinity from Bangor Theological Seminary.

The two poets’ Thursday night appearance kicks off Borders’ fall season of poetry readings, and will be followed next Tuesday evening, Sept. 28, by an open microphone event. For more information, contact Borders General Manager Troy Casa at 990-3300.