Join us for an evening of poetry, conversation, and celebration with acclaimed poet Richard Blanco and Governor Janet Mills. Blanco will visit Mechanics’ Hall to celebrate his new collection, Homeland of My Body.

Richard has generously offered a signing as well, allowing you to take home a personalized copy of Homeland of My Body. We will celebrate Maine & poetry together. 

Governor Mills will join Blanco in thoughtful conversation about poetry and Maine life, and she’ll even sign a poem of her own!

Light refreshments will be available. 

Join us for this special night at Mechanics’ Hall!

Visit here for tickets.

General Admission: $12

General Admission + Signed Copy of Homeland of My Body: $33.95

Student: We will be provided a limited number of FREE tickets to students currently enrolled in Maine. Please email us admin@mainemechanics.org!

Mechanics’ Hall members will receive a promo code for 10% off admission.

About Richard Blanco As a historic presidential inaugural poet, public speaker, teacher, and memoirist, he continues to travel the world, inviting audiences to reconnect to the heart of the human experience and all of its beautiful diversity. Blanco taps into our unspoken dreams, hopes and frustrations through the power of his words and presence. He captures the human spirit and condition, in all of its complexities, opening up our minds and encouraging us to see beyond our differences to share in the universal experience of our humanity. Just as Carl Sagan brought cosmology into our living rooms, Blanco is appealing to audiences everywhere and inspiring a new way to think and feel about the poetry of our day, making it an accessible, inclusive and transformative part of our everyday lives

About Homeland of my Body: In this collection of over 100 poems, Richard Blanco has carefully selected poems from his previous books that represent his evolution as a writer grappling with his identity, working to find and define “home,” and bookended them with new poems that address those issues from a fresh, more mature perspective, allowing him to approach surrendering the pain and urgency of his past explorations. Pausing at this pivotal moment in mid-career, Blanco reexamines his life-long quest to find his proverbial home and all that it encompasses: love, family, identity and ultimately art itself. In the closing section of the volume, he has come to understand and internalize the idea that “home” is not one place, not one thing, and lives both inside him and inside his art.

About Governor Janet Mills: Janet T. Mills was sworn in as the 75th Governor of Maine on January 2, 2019. Governor Mills is the first woman governor of Maine. In her historic victories, she earned more votes than any governor in Maine history. In addition to being Governor, she is also a writer and her letters and journal entries were featured in Shannon Mullen’s In Other Words, Leadership: How a Young Mother’s Weekly Letters to Her Governor Helped Both Women Brave the First Pandemic Year.