Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, Pilgrimage (Coyote Love Press), House of Thanksgiving (Deerbrook Editions), Prayers and Run-on Sentences (Deerbrook Editions) Only Now (Deerbrook Editions), How to Start Over (Deerbrook Editions), and Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions). He has also written The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press), a book of brief essays on craft and community.
He has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in small press publications and magazines including Tikkun, the Sun, the Beloit Poetry Journal, and the New York Times Magazine. He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021 and hosted Poems from Here on Maine Public Radio/Maine Public Classical and was the host/creator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future.
He was the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine for over twenty-five years, and was elected an honorary fellow of the American Craft Council in 2006. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he has designed and implemented a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts.
Former US poet laureate Ted Kooser has written “Stuart Kestenbaum writes the kind of poems I love to read, heartfelt responses to the privilege of having been given a life. No hidden agendas here, no theories to espouse, nothing but life, pure life, set down with craft and love.”
stuartkestenbaum.com 