The Belfast Poetry Festival

06/14/2026

Our 2026 Maine Postcard Poetry Contest is receiving its first entries! Just $5 per entry and each submission envelope must include a Maine postmark! Send us your poems by August 14, 2026. Cash prizes and an invitation to read at this year’s festival! More details on our website: belfastpoetryfestival.com

06/03/2026

The Belfast Poetry Festival is proud to host an open mic this coming Friday, June 5 at Waterfall Arts in Belfast, Maine to open a weekend of events as part of the art center’s latest exhibit “Home & Away: A trans text(iles) exhibition.” This is a project of Transmissions Quilts, which hires trans artists to create gift quilts for individually nominated trans recipients. Rooted in the long tradition of quilting as a marker of life transitions, the project expands that lineage by centering trans lives, relationships, and geographies.

“Home & Away” is part of a New England tour sharing quilts and additional artwork by Northeast-based artists, with a focus on how storytelling manifests through both language and fabric. The exhibition brings together quilts, poetry, oral histories, and interdisciplinary works that explore the intimate relationship between text and textile—story and stitch, memory and material. Participating artists include Travis Clough, Dan Toomre, Maddy Magnuson, Danika Azevedo, Joey Dehais, Abby Meyeroal, Nailah Taman, Jordan Lister, Alyson Fraser Diaz, Lune Ames, Lunilah Project, and Cordy Joan. “Home & Away” is presented in collaboration with Trans Poetics Archive, Out in the Open, and the Belfast Poetry Festival.

Workshop schedule:

• Transmissions/Lunilah Text(ile) Workshop* Hosted by Lunilah
Saturday, June 6 | 10 AM–1 PM
Open to self-identified trans community members only.

• Hand in Hand: Poetry and Contact Improv Workshop Hosted by Sampson Spadafore and Lou Hoecker
Sunday, June 7 | 10 AM–1 PM
Free and open to everyone.

An ADA-accessible portable restroom will be available on site near the gallery entrance. Workshops will take place in the Clifford Gallery on the ground level of Waterfall Arts. Masking is welcome to support community health and safety. Attendees who are feeling sick are encouraged to stay home.

The open mic takes place as part of the opening reception of the exhibit (5-8 p.m.) and will begin at about 6 p.m. Lou Hoecker headlines. Sign-ups available at the reception!

04/22/2026

Tonight and tomorrow! Galway-based poet Luke Morgan visits us for a reading at Left Bank Books (tonight at 7) and a generative writing workshop tomorrow at the Belfast Free Library (6-8 p.m.) Join us!

Workshop is $25. Tickets available here: https://www.belfastpoetryfestival.com/2026-events

10/22/2025

It's a wrap!

The 2025 Belfast Poetry Festival was a powerful whirlwind of creative community, and we couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you to our incredible facilitators and performers, everyone who attended our events, those who supported us through donations and ticket sales, and found any manner of literary delights over the weekend. We are also thrilled that many of our Maine Postmark Poetry Contest finalists were able to share their poems at several of our events. We are especially thankful for our event hosts—the Belfast Free Library, Waterfall Arts, First Church of Belfast, The Commons, Rockweed Center, and Brigham Green—for providing such welcome gathering spaces for our workshops, readings, and other events (including our sold-out Haiku Death Match at the Colonial Theatre). A special shout-out goes to our team of intrepid volunteers, who jumped in anywhere they were needed to help things run smoothly. Thank you all!

We also are deeply grateful to our keynote poet Ellen Bass, who—while unable to attend the festival in person due to injury—helped us pivot to create hybrid offerings of her craft talk and the keynote reading, and brought such joy, tenderness, inspiration, and lively connection to our community.
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We have a gallery of photos here: https://www.belfastpoetryfestival.com/the-festival-in-photographs

And if you attended the Festival and have a few moments to give us your thoughts about your experiences, our Post-Festival Debrief questionnaire lives here: https://www.belfastpoetryfestival.com/post-festival-debrief

2025 Post-Festival Debrief   It’s a wrap! The 2025 Belfast Poetry Festival was a powerful whirlwind of creative community, and we couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you to our incredible facilitators and performers, everyone who attended our events, our volunteers, those who supported us ...

10/17/2025

All tickets for the Haiku Death Match have been spoken for! So if you are hoping to get a seat, come early to stand in line and cross your fingers someone wasn't able to attend at the last minute!

10/16/2025

The Belfast Poetry Festival has arrived! Join us on TONIGHT, Thursday, October 16 starting at 6 pm with reception and reading at Waterfall Arts (256 High Street, Belfast) to kick off the 20th Annual Belfast Poetry Festival. In addition to poets Beatrix Gates, Megan Berman, Paul McFarland, and Eleanor Cade Busby, our opening night celebration features a short performance by Sampson Spadafore and a cross-genre quintet of poets Jeri Theriault, Bob Carr, and Betsy Scholl, cellist Phil Carlsen and flutist Carl Dimow. Free admission!

We also have an update about our keynote poet Ellen Bass. Click on the link fore more!

Join us on TONIGHT, Thursday, October 16 starting at 6 pm with reception and reading at Waterfall Arts (256 High Street, Belfast) to kick off the 20th Annual Belfast Poetry Festival. In addition to poets Beatrix Gates, Megan Berman, Paul McFarland, and Eleanor Cade Busby, our opening night celebrati...

10/02/2025

We are officially two weeks out from the Festival!
Our latest newsletter, with info about the exhibit opening of our Festival Artist Peter Walls, a Chill + Refill Station, and more!

We are just TWO weeks away from the opening night festivities of the 20th Annual Belfast Poetry Festival! We’ll be kicking things off with A TOAST TO POETRY: A CELEBRATION OF MAINE CREATIVITY + COMMUNITY reception and reading at Waterfall Arts (256 High Street, Belfast) featuring Maine poets livin...

09/20/2025

Did you know that several events at this year's Festival events will be accompanied by sign language interpretation? To date, ASL interpreters will be at our opening night event, the Haiku Death Match, the Craft Workshop with Ellen Bass, and the Evening Reading event with Ellen Bass. Look for this symbol in our print & downloadable program (available soon) to see which events currently have sign language interpreters in attendance. Not seeing an event you'd like to have accompanied by ASL interpretation? Message us and we will make that happen. Find our Festival schedule here: https://www.belfastpoetryfestival.com/2025-schedule

09/07/2025

Seeking haikuists - https://mailchi.mp/a699e7e4a0fc/haiku-death-match

08/27/2025

Volunteer Opportunities at the Festival - https://mailchi.mp/76ab95d488c9/maine-postmark-and-more-5859950