First Class Mail: A Correspondence in Poetry with Gibson Fay-LeBlanc and Stuart Kestenbaum
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Poets Gibson Fay-LeBlanc and Stuart Kestenbaum have been corresponding since December 2024, sending letters in the form of poems to one another through the US mail. Their letter writing was inspired by an epistolary poetry project developed by Maine Poet Laureate Julia Bouswma that paired Mainers with partners from different parts of the state to exchange poetry letters. The poems could take any form and address any subject matter. While the initial project was scheduled to last for four months, Kestenbaum and Fay-LeBlanc are continuing to correspond, addressing topics ranging from family life to the changing seasons to the turbulent state of the world. They’ve been surprised and moved by their investigations, and look forward to seeing how things look every few weeks from Portland and Deer Isle, respectively.
Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, including most recently 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. In 2024, he and visual artist Susan Webster published A Quiet Book, collaborations in writing and visual art (Brynmorgen Press). 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 director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine for over twenty-five years. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he 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.”
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is the author of two collections of poems, including Death of a Ventriloquist, which won the Vassar Miller Prize, and Deke Dangle Dive (CavanKerry Press, 2021). His poems have appeared recently in magazines including Narrative Magazine, Poetry Northwest, and Orion, and a poem was awarded the 2025 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize by December Magazine and Maggie Smith. He has served as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance since 2019 and has previously helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE, and Hewnoaks.
