Poet helps preserve Maine’s literary past

Pieces of Maine’s literary history are being assembled in a little town in rural New Mexico. Bruce Holsapple, who grew up in Dexter and during the 1970s was one of Maine’s most visible nonacademic poets, has in the past year been editing and copying onto CDs tape recordings he made in the past three decades of writers he has known, many of them associated with Maine’s literary past, and present.

During the 1980s and ’90s, Holsapple taped a number of Maine writers, such as Jim Bishop of Orland and Timothy Wright (who died in 1997) of Machias, as well as nationally known writers with literary ties to Maine, and he is now in the process of burning those recordings onto CDs.

Holsapple, 56, views the project mainly as part of his ongoing exploration of poetry. “I’m interested in the expressive possibilities of using voice in poetry,” he says. “Part of what elevates language to the level of poetry is the way we use our voice. It’s key to the emotional involvement a poet speaks from.”

In addition to bringing poetic voices to life, the noncommercial undertaking promises to contribute to understanding and preserving an important part of Maine’s literary past. Most of the readings are by writers who have been associated with Contraband Press, which Holsapple founded in 1971.

Contraband had its origins at the University of Maine in the late 1960s, where Holsapple was one of a group of students who together discovered their keen interest in writing. Their numbers included Stephen King, Tabitha Spruce (now King), Michael Alpert (now editor of the University of Maine Press), Michael Barriault, Sherry Dresser and George MacLeod (now of Bucksport). Their equally intense young instructors included Burton Hatlen and Bishop, who nearly 40 years later are still writing and teaching at UM.

After graduating, Holsapple moved to Portland, where he and Barriault started Contraband Press. With the encouragement of Hatlen, Bishop and well-known Maine writers such as Ted Enslin, now of Milbridge, Contraband magazine gained a national reputation among underground writers and became Maine’s first important contribution to the explosion of “little magazines” in America. Contraband published books by David Empfield and Peter Kilgore of Portland, Dan Raphael (now of Portland, Ore.), Wright, Bishop and others. Holsapple, Empfield and Kilgore were among the founders of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance in 1975.

The last issue of Contraband magazine appeared in 1985, but Contraband Press persisted through Holsapple’s sojourns in Burlington, Vt., Seattle and Buffalo, N.Y., where he earned a doctorate at the State University of New York. After teaching in Texas, Holsapple retreated to rural New Mexico to become a speech therapist.

The CDs are Contraband’s current project. The earliest tapes were made in 1980 by Contraband authors Wright and A.F. Moritz, now of Toronto. Bishop made a living room tape in 1983, and novelist Empfield made a recording in 2002. In 2004 Holsapple began transferring readings of his own poems, written as early as 1968 and as recently as this year, onto CD. Recent recordings also include readings by nationally known poets Gene Frumkin and Mary Rising Higgins.

When asked what prompted him to make the CDs, Holsapple replies, “My tapes were deteriorating.” But also, they are helping preserve Maine’s literary past.

Anyone interested in the recordings or in the history and availability of Contraband Press publications can send inquiries to Contraband Press, c/o Bruce Holsapple, P.O. Box 594, Magdalena, NM 87825. Dana Wilde can be reached at dana.wilde@umit.amine.edu.