In 1912 the State of Maine forcibly evicted an interracial community of roughly forty-seven people from Malaga Island, a small island off the coast of Phippsburg that had been their home for generations. The erasure of the Malaga Island community included the removal of all dwellings and the island's schoolhouse, the involuntary commitment of nine residents to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, and the exhumation and mass reburial of seventeen graves. This atrocity was followed by a century of socially-enforced silence and as a result, many Mainers today still do not fully know the story of Malaga.

This talk will pair a discussion of Malaga Island and its residents with a reading of poems from Julia Bouwsma's award-winning collection Midden, considering the history of this shameful event, the relevancy of this history to our current moment, and also the process and implications of writing poems based on historic research.

Presented live in person and on Zoom.  Registration is required for Zoom only.

Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine where she works as a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. Bouwsma is Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate, serving a term from 2021 to 2026, and is the author three collections, Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both recipients of the Maine Literary Awards for Poetry Book, and the forthcoming Death Fluorescence (Sundress Publication, 2025). Other honors include the Poet’s Out Loud Prize, the Cider Press Review Book Award, and residency fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, Annex Arts, and Storyknife. Her poems and book reviews can be found in publications such as Green Mountains Review, Plume, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, and What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People. Bouwsma is a former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, has taught in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington, and currently serves as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME.

This program is presented in partnership with the Bath YMCA and is part of the Bath Area Family YMCA DEI Committee Programming Series 2024: Acknowledging our Past to Create a More Inclusive Future.

Bath Area Family YMCA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, in partnership with the Patten Free Library, is bringing a series of speakers, programs and events to our community as part of our dedication to creating communities that are inclusive and socially just so that all people can thrive. With this series, we will facilitate opportunities to explore a small piece of our region’s history with race relations, primarily through the lens of Malaga Island. By familiarizing ourselves with this history, we hope to explore how we can avoid the terrible mistakes of our past and create more inclusive communities today and in the future. We welcome all in the community to participate in these programs and to help to be a part of that vision of a just, equitable community.