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Creation Theories: Inside the writing process of former Maine Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl
For Betsy Sholl, poetry is an exercise in ventriloquism. On the pages of her notebook—she starts each draft with pen and paper—she channels a voice different from the one that carried across the table to me in her cozy Portland kitchen. I had asked, perhaps unfairly, to what extent the voice of her poems is her own.
“I would hope on some level the voice is mine,” she laughed. “But I do try to get the first person pronoun out of my poems—I want to be an ‘eye’ more than a capital ‘I’.”
Sholl has not always emphasized such an observational voice. In her earlier years, her mouth overpowered her eye.
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Creation Theories: Chef of Trattoria Athena crafts culinary art with Greek and Italian flavors
Chef Tim O’Brien of Brunswick’s Trattoria Athena Restaurant washed the crab off his hands before shaking mine. He had been cracking shells and scooping out the meat to prepare the filling for handmade crab ravioli. It sounds delicious, yes, but you won’t find the dish on the menu.
“It’s the birthday of one of our bartenders over at the Enoteca, and she’s coming in tonight with some friends,” he explained. “She loves crab, and I wanted to do something special for her.”
Enoteca Athena is O’Brien and his partner Marc Provencher’s new wine and small-plate bar situated behind chic glass doors at 97 Maine Street. But the tiny Trattoria, O’Brien’s first restaurant, occupies a one-room space on Mill Street just around the corner. Its location speaks to his vision: the restaurant is cozy, hidden and hospitable—it’s a place one comes home to and finds a surprise waiting. The restaurant is, after all, modeled on a very real home. O’Brien grew up rolling pasta dough in his Italian grandmother’s kitchen.
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Creation Theories: Portland writer’s book animates nonfiction
It’s a familiar trajectory: the first saccharine notes of the madeleine seep into the tongue, and its eater sinks deep into the recesses of his own memory. Or at least that’s how it works for Marcel Proust’s narrator in “Remembrance of Things Past.” For Portland freelance writer Mike Paterniti, a bite of Páramo de Guzmán—an artisanal sheep’s milk cheese—dispatched him to rural Spain, into the cellar of a cultural memory that was not his own.
Paterniti’s most recent nonfiction book, “The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese” chronicles Paterniti’s journey to the tiny, Castilian town of Guzmán and the stories he was told in the confines of the contador—that is, the telling room.
“[Telling rooms] are these caves they built on the north side of the village. It’s like a little hobbit hole,” Paterniti explained.
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Creation Theories: Maine-based photographer thrives on unexpected inspiration
It was on his way down from the summit that Brunswick photographer Howard Search got his view. In true Mainer fashion—in true Maine photographer’s fashion—he had ascended
Pemaquid Lighthouse in Bristol, hoping to get a shot or two from the top. That was the first mistake: planning the scene.
“My pictures are not pre-planned,” he said, “They happen. I may be looking for something but something else finds me.”
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Creation Theories: Portland painter Holly Ready uses landscape as vehicle for light
Portland artist Holly Ready keeps her gallery door open. Outside, Congress Street buzzes with the hum of motors, the stomping of feet along the sidewalk, and an incessant beeping as a truck pulls over to the loading zone. Inside the gallery, dozens of seascapes hang on the white walls, reflecting pockets of light back to the street outside. Occasionally, one pair of stomping feet will step inside to take in the light from up close.
“I love it when people come in just to look, when someone comes in and interrupts me,” said Ready. “As an artist, I get so focused on what I’m doing. It’s great to get jolted like that every now and then.”
This columnist had jolted Ready mid-smear. She was adding a smidgen of white to “Blue Violets,” a 30x30 inch oil on canvas piece. The top 80 percent of the painting is sky, thick with rolling, purple clouds. Below, a strip of trees lines a calm pool of ocean.
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Creation Theories: Poet Linda Aldrich works with intuition, not formula
I can’t seem to wrap my head around the idea of our campus encapsulated by a bubble—reflective and self-important in the mid-coast light, bearing the threat of an imminent pop the moment a student stretches a toe past the barrier.
Bowdoin is the most permeable of all the places I’ve called home. We depart—home for Spring Break, to a foreign country for a semester, to Katahdin for a weekend hike—and re-enter with such excitement and frequency that one could classify it as restlessness. If such a proverbial bubble were to exist, we’ve surely already punctured its soapy film.
Portland poet Linda Aldrich has a thing or two to say about place and metaphorical models that may resonate with Bowdoin students.
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Creation Theories: Muralist paints under public's watchful eye
Francine Schrock is painting murals for Schooner Estates Assisted Living Community in Auburn, and she’s still getting used to the feeling of eyes on her back as the residents watch her work.
“‘We want you to put in a cat!’ they’ll say, so I’ll add a cat,” she said. “Hearing these things becomes part of the process of painting.”
Whether or not she sees the suggestion as an aesthetic improvement or thinks the work would have been better off sans feline, Schrock has come to appreciate the often brutally honest comments that the experience of public painting invites.
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Creation Theories: The fine art of comfort food at 555
I feel as though I’ve already dined at 555, though I have yet to make an official reservation. The moment I step into the space on Congress Street to meet with executive chef Steve Corry, I’m overcome by a sensory overload. And this is before the topic of food is even put on the table. The restaurant’s interior is a configuration of brick and wide windows divided by sleek black panels. It is at once open and intimate, sophisticated but practical. It subtly gestures to both the cosmopolitan and the rustic, reconciling the dual personality of Portland itself.
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Creation Theories: Intersecting planes: the collages of Robin Brooks
Something happens when suddenly we can count the degrees on one hand. It comes with the securing of a hat, the coiling of a scarf. It’s a gaze downward and a shuffle of boots along the path, marking with percussive treads the transition between dirt, ice, and asphalt. When at last those boots reach the linoleum in the Smith Union—the largest piece in the country, in fact—the gaze might lift and it might just intersect with another traveler who has also found refuge in the Union’s warmth. Robin Brooks shows me a digital image of her painted paper collage “Winter Wood,” and at once I’m reminded of what I’ve seen a thousand times but perhaps lately have been too wind-bitten to register. A horde of streamlined trunks extends vertically, shifting between grey black and brown to reiterate their bareness. Hints of green edge their way into the foreground, but it’s just the teasing burst of color of coniferous trees. The image is still winter in its most familiar form: a patchwork of shards of sky, stalks of wood, sheets of ice.