Erine Leigh is a seacoast writer who served as 10 th poet laureate of Portsmouth NH from 2015 to 2017. Her community project, which included children of many ages and backgrounds, was called Poems For Peace. It was centered around the values connected with the community’s response to disturbance of the African Burying Ground, raising awareness of our past.
In 2015, Leigh worked with Jerome Meadows, designer of the ABG, on a production celebrating its history, called Blank Page Poetry, at 3S, and live at the Burying Grounds.
Leigh was awarded the Sarah Farmer Peace Award in 2018, by Green Acre Bahai Center.
She has attended The Salty Quill Women Writers Retreat on McGee Island in Maine for spring sessions, 2022 and 2023.
Her work has been published widely in local anthologies, once in Hole In The Head Review, and two volumes in collaboration with local photographer, Sarah Flause.
Erine facilitates workshops each year for the Wheaton Writing Academy, and has presented a program for NHPS on the topic of Jane Kenyon and Edna St Vincent Millay, in contrast.
In addition, she serves as the Beat Poet Laureate for NH, 2021-2023, assigned by the National Beat Poetry Foundation.
Erine remains available to support young poets with their poetry.
With Erine’s permission her first two chapbooks published by Bee Monk Press are available to read for free below!
Everything seemed Forever:
In one poem, the piling-on of societal trauma, reflecting through an overwhelmed soul connecting to plants, to music, and to the elements.
Adrift On Island:
Distanced from ‘reality’s time’, islands as safe places for nourishment of the inner self, and the development of ideas into words, a worthwhile pursuit. Floating on the tides, and merging with the skies.