Melissa McKinstry: Writer-in-Residence 2024
by Meg Weston, photos Melissa McKinstry
As Melissa McKinstry flew into Owls Head on a sundrenched day, out the windows of a small plane the islands of Penobscot Bay and the rugged Maine coast were bright with the colors of Fall. The next day clouds moved in, familiar to a woman who’d grown up in the rainy Pacific Northwest. McKinstry is a poet and writer from San Diego, California, who spent the month of October writing and living in the Millay House Rockland (MHR) as our inaugural juried writer-in-residence.
Melissa’s residency represents MHR’s signal accomplishment in restoring Vincent’s birthplace to an active role in the Rockland arts community. A select team from Maine’s literary scene served as our preliminary selection committee: Carl Little, poet and author of books about Maine Art; Ellen Taylor, Professor of English at University of Maine-Augusta; Jeffrey Thomson, Chair of the Division of Humanities and the Arts at University of Maine-Farmington; Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, Executive Director of Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance; and Dean Lunt, Editor in Chief of Island Port Press.
Residency applications crossed all genres of written work, from fiction to non-fiction, essays and journalism to drama and screenwriting, as well as poetry. While a delight to read through, the submissions proved a difficult job to compare and contrast. The proposals of ten finalists were sent to our final judge, the renowned poet and essayist, Mark Doty. After reading and considering all ten submissions, Doty selected Melissa McKinstry. Of her work, Doty wrote:
In considering each writer’s engagement with language, and the vitality of their project, my selection process led me to Melissa McKinstry’s application. There are many different strengths displayed here, which is wonderful to see. I found myself valuing most an imaginative engagement with difficulty that pushes a writer to create work energized by what Wallace Stevens called “the pressure of reality.” Her poems find lyrical precision and terrible beauty in the long work of caring for a profoundly disabled child—an almost unknowable boy held in an unblinking gaze and an unfailing heart.
The Millay House writer-in-residence is supported by a generous stipend of $1,200 from our partner, the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation. As part of her residency, Melissa offered a two-part workshop on Ekphrastic Poetry writing at the Farnsworth Art Museum on October 16 and 23, 2024, responding to the exhibition Andrew Wyeth 1982. She also read from her work at the Belfast Poetry Festival on October 17th. We had the opportunity to ask Melissa a couple of questions to share her answers with you:
What drew you to apply to this residency?
I was drawn to apply for the Millay House Rockland residency because my grandfather admired “Vincent’s” poetry. He was a great reader who invited me into literature with open mind and arms. I have his 1922 copy of A Few Figs From Thistles, and I hold it dear. On my writing desk at home I have a photo of him as a young man, deep into a book. When I saw the call for this residency, it felt like a sign—and an opportunity to work deeply on my first collection and meet and work in another poetry and arts community.
This residency is a first for the Millay House and for me. I’m very grateful to the Board who worked so hard to preserve and restore Vincent’s birthplace and create this space for writers, and to the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation for its support of the Millay House residency as well as their visual art and music residencies in Rockland.
How did you feel when you were accepted and knew you’d be traveling across the country to spend a month alone in Rockland, Maine?
A mixture of surprise, delight—and, I’ll admit, some trepidation! My husband, Doug, is a graphic designer and stained-glass artist, and we work on projects together every day, so I knew I would miss the wide-ranging conversations we have about craft and concept as we walk, garden, or drink morning coffee in our sunny front window.
One of our projects is a Poet Tree we curate in our front yard. People stop by and pick a poem or an art card. We started the Poet Tree in November 2016 to foster community and empathy after that grueling election cycle full of vitriol. Most days over 20 cards are taken, and we’ve met people from all over the world who stop by to pick a poem. Doug’s keeping the tree stocked while I’m in Maine!
What is your connection to Edna St. Vincent Millay?
My original introduction was via my grandfather, as I mentioned. Since being selected for the residency, I’ve read Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford and much of Millay’s Collected Poems. I’m in awe of her grit, wit, and prolific output. The kind of steady effort and devotion to her art is not unlike the steady effort and devotion of Board members who conceived of and created the Millay House Rockland and the residency opportunity. Both remind me of Lao Tzu: “Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth.” (Not that Vincent was always “the softest thing,” but her steady commitment to writing is impressive.)
Who are some of your favorite poets writing today?
My mentors Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, and Frank X. Gaspar, at Pacific University’s MFA program, are among poets I most admire. They press despair and beauty right up against one another, and there’s always discovery evoked by that pressure. I turn to their poems again and again.
For discussion of craft and close reading, I love Edward Hirsch, Jane Hirshfield, Carl Phillips, and Stephanie Burt.
My son was born with an undiagnosed genetic disorder and recently passed away at age 26. A group of poets who’ve schooled me in letting detail carry emotion while writing about parenting their own children with disability, neurodivergence, and congenital conditions include Danusha Lámeris, Sandra McPherson, Brenda Shaughnessy, Craig Morgan Teicher, Jennifer Franklin, Kimberly Burwick, Olive De La Paz, and Brian Komei Dempster. These poets have shown me how to dwell in uncertainty and keep writing. In her Blaney Lecture at the Academy of American Poets, Jane Hirshfield says, “Art is the realm that gives us a way to acknowledge that uncertainty, unknowing, and mystery are not experiences that entirely can be, or should be solved…the invisible is a reservoir we don’t want completely to empty.”
