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Meetings

The location for the in-person Maine Poets Society meeting will still be Christ Episcopal Church, 2 Dresden Avenue in Gardiner. Registration will still begin at 9:30 a.m. The morning session will start at 10:00 with a business meeting to be followed by our first attempt at a hybrid “Reading in the Round.” If you would like to read, please bring with you up to 3 poems you’d like to share. We’ll go around as many times as the schedule will allow. We expect to have closed captions available on screen and hope that will help with hearing issues for both those on Zoom and those in the room. We will let you know more about that as the meeting date gets closer.

Dennis is the author of the poetry collection Combed by Crows (Deerbrook Editions) and teaches writing at Central Maine Community College and at the University of Maine, Augusta. The former director of Maine Poetry Central, currently he curates the poetry column,” In Verse: Maine Places and People,” for The Sun Journal.

There will be Zoom access available for members not able to attend in person or preferring to join us on line. The link will be sent to all current members before the meeting.

Many of our newer members may not know that MPS has charged a registration fee for members and guests at in-person meetings to help with the costs of renting a facility and for the refreshments provided (most recently $12 per person). The board has voted to forgo that for the foreseeable future as we work out the details of hybrid meetings. There will, however, be a donation jar on the refreshment table for those wishing to help offset the cost of this meeting.

Recommendations for Hybrid Meetings

  • When people speak, it would be helpful if they’d say their name before doing so.
  • We should provide a chance for all attendees to identify themselves.
  • If people on Zoom would mute when not speaking, “speaker view” would work for those who prefer to use that. If you do not mute, any sound in the room where you are may cause your picture to appear on screen instead of the speaker.
  • The host could mute everyone during extended times when the meeting is not actually in session.
  • Someone really should be looking for and responding to the “hand up” signal on Zoom that indicates someone online wants to speak.
  • The question was asked as to whether we could show the poems being read on screen. 

 
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