While the winters up here are known for their length and treachery, there is such beauty in the stillness of a freshly fallen snow upon the library grounds. In an age of disunion, I like to stop and appreciate the quiet calm before plows and salt, treading boots and slush, things to do and people to see begin to take over.
Though I feel very lucky to be where I am in time and station, it is good to be reminded of what precedes us. This year marks the 250th for our country, which rests in the forefront of my mind after so much planning for events in 2026. In consideration of so many years, I’ve found myself reaching into the past to learn at every chance I get.
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper came up through humble means, raised by her aunt and uncle as a free black woman since her birth in Baltimore in 1825. She was brought up with a diligent education, eventually working as a teacher, and published her first collection of poems at the age of 20.
She was a notable voice in the abolitionist movement, and her first volume, “Forest Leaves,” made significant waves as she gained momentum in her activism for abolitionism, temperance, education and suffrage. She published 80 poems in her lifetime, as well as other literature which marked her in history as one of the first Black women to publish a novel.
Throughout her adult life, she traveled and hosted lectures and speeches decrying slavery in the United States and “the elevation and education of our people.” She is lauded for her intersectional approach in her work, advocating for the civil rights of African Americans and women’s rights, even speaking in 1866 at the National Woman’s Rights Convention in New York City.
In her poem “Home, Sweet Home” (1895), Watkins Harper reflects on the division and bloodshed that she and our entire country witnessed over the course of the Civil War and the fight for emancipation. In its final stanzas, she writes:
Men whose hearts would flow together,
Though apart their feet might roam,
Found a tie they could not sever,
In the mem’ry of each home.
Never may the steps of carnage
Share our land from shore to shore
But may mother, home and Heaven,
Be our watchwords evermore.
On Tuesday, Feb. 3, our library welcomed the return of the second annual Northern Regional Final for Poetry Out Loud here in Presque Isle. This year’s anthology was themed after “Freedom 250,” entirely featuring American poets like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Students from across Aroostook County joined us to compete for a chance to move on to the state-level competition.
Elyse M. Kiehn is the deputy library director at the Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Library in Presque Isle, and can be reached at 764-2571 or via email at ekiehn@presqueisleme.us.
