A letter from Dawn Potter, Director of the Conference on Poetry and Learning
Dear friends:
Last October we lost our friend and mentor Baron Wormser to brain cancer. As the first anniversary of that loss approaches, I have been thinking again about the hole his absence has left. So many of us were changed by his writings, his teaching, his comradeship. He built a space for many people who might not otherwise have known we belonged to the poetry world. He helped us to find one another, and to find ourselves.
Perhaps Baron’s greatest public service was his devotion to teachers and to young people. When he founded the Conference on Poetry and Teaching at the Frost Place more than two decades ago, he threw out a lifeline to teachers who had been struggling to balance their own creative longings with their responsibility to their students as well as with the burdens of institutional requirements and increasing political pressure. The conference quickly attracted participants from around the United States and beyond. Though it began by focusing on K–12 educators, it was soon welcoming community college and university professors, MFA candidates, teaching artists, people working in social service and government positions, even poets with no institutional affiliation who were simply drawn to the collegial, democratic nature of the conference.
After Baron retired as director of the conference in 2012, I was honored to shoulder the work he’d begun. Now, after nearly a quarter-century at the Frost Place, it is thriving today as the Conference on Poetry and Learning, held each July at Monson Arts in central Maine.
In honor of Baron, I am announcing the establishment of the Baron Wormser Scholarship for Teachers, a full scholarship to the conference that will be awarded annually to a K–12 inservice teacher who could not otherwise afford to attend.
If you would like to honor Baron with a donation to this scholarship fund, I would be immensely grateful. Simply follow this link and scroll through the donation options until you find “Conference on Poetry and Learning (Baron Wormser Donation).”
Your support of the conference helps us continue the work that Baron began. He believed that poetry opened a window into the best of humanity. Our teachers and our young people are the future we must cherish.
With gratitude—
Dawn Potter
Poet Laureate of Maine
Director, Conference on Poetry and Learning at Monson Arts
Director, High School Studio Writing Program at Monson Arts
Time and space to create.
Monson Arts is a new artists’ residency and arts center in Monson, Maine. Programs include residencies for artists and writers, intensive shorter workshops, and educational partnerships with area secondary schools.