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Alexander Levering Kern is a poet, chaplain, editor, and Quaker educator originally from Washington, DC and based in Somerville and (whenever possible) Chebeague Island, Maine. He is the author of a book of poems, What an Island Knows (Shanti Arts, 2024), and a forthcoming poetry collection from Cervena Barva Press. Alex is the editor of the anthology Becoming Fire and founding editor of Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts (www.pensive.com).

Alexander Levering Kern

His work appears widely in publications such as Consequence Online, Spiritus, About Place Journal, Georgetown Review, Spare Change News, The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Soul-Lit, and in anthologies from Tiferet, Meridian, Main Street Rag, Pudding House, and Ibbetson Street.

Recipient of various writing awards, Alex was selected as a resident at the T.S. Eliot House in 2024. Alex has served and learned alongside communities around issues of justice, peace, and healing in a variety of global contexts: in post-earthquake Haiti, post-apartheid Southern Africa, northern Nigeria, rural Honduras, and with unhoused and displaced people in the United States. His work has been covered by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Harvard Gazette, The Somerville Times, and the Sidwell Friends Alumni Magazine. I recently touched base with him about his new collection of poetry, What an Island Knows, and he agreed to an interview.

Doug Holder: Your book is like a poetic journal of your summers spent on Chebeague Island off the coast of Maine. What is it that inspires you about this place?

Alexander Levering Kern: Excellent question, Doug. Before I answer, I want to thank you for all you do to promote poetry and the arts in Somerville, Boston, and beyond. Every community needs a tireless advocate and organizer, and you’re our guy! As a fellow editor and educator, I especially appreciate your efforts with Endicott College students and other emerging poets and writers. Please keep up the great work!

So back to Chebeague (the name is pronounced “Sha-big,” from an Abenaki word). The practice of “place” has always been central to who I am as a person and a poet. Growing up in Washington, DC, my childhood “sacred place” was my Quaker grandparents’ orchard in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. For my children, it’s this gloriously beautiful island in the Casco Bay off the coast of Portland. Their grandparents (my in-laws and Somervillians Michael and Beth Grunko) bought a summer cottage on the island in the early 1990s and our large extended family has been retreating there ever since. It’s become much more than a summer home. It’s a place of being, becoming, and belonging.

There is so much that inspires me about the island. My debut book of poems, What an Island Knows, is in many ways a love song to this place – and to local communities everywhere. Like any place, the island faces major challenges (environmental, economic, etc.), yet is an endless source of resilience, renewal, and inspiration. I’m inspired by its natural beauty, its history and culture, and the amazing people who’ve called this place home: year-round residents, summer folks, and the Wabanaki tribes, the original inhabitants whose important legacy endures.

DH: Betsy Sholl, the former poet laureate of Maine, described your poetry as a form of “cherishing.” What is your definition of cherishing, and do you feel that your work accomplishes that?

ALK: I love that Betsy Sholl, whose poetry I cherish, used the word “cherishing” in her foreword to the book. It’s not a word I often use, but seems to capture what I’m after. To cherish means to love, to treasure, and to place great value, but also means to protect and care. For me, it’s an expression of what the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan calls “topophilia”- literally “love of place,” with a profound sense of connection and spiritual identification. As Betsy notes, cherishing is akin to delight and begins with prayerful attention, a grateful and contemplative gazing into the heart of things, a pausing to “be with,” “be in,” and “be overcome” by awe and wonder. Cherishing also means reverencing the land and the ancestors, and pledging to steward it as if it were family, because it is. As to whether my writing accomplishes this “cherishing,” I doubt it. Just as words cannot finally capture the love I feel for my family, poetry can only hint at the mysterious love at the heart of a place like Chebeague. That said, it’s always worth trying!

DH: In your poem Passage Over you write that people who visit the island are “ritual people.” The ritual of returning to the island year after year, is it a sort of religious calling?

ALK: Absolutely! As a Quaker, I come from a tradition that ostensibly deemphasizes religious ritual, but I know it when I see it! Chebeague is a place of pilgrimage, of “eternal return,” whether we choose to use that language or not. As Donna Miller Damon notes, Chebeague is one of an endangered species: unbridged islands in Maine with year-round communities. The only way to access the island is by ferry or boat, so the ritual of return is a communal ritual, like “the solstice dance of a medieval village” I say: planning, packing, driving, unpacking, loading our luggage onto a bus, riding that bus to a ferry dock, loading and unloading again, ferrying over – all the while greeting neighbors and helping each other to tote our provisions. There are also Fourth of July parade rituals and the “Chebeague Island wave,” waving to neighbors and strangers in passing, whether a full-palmed greeting or a few fingers lifted, nonchalantly, while cycling past. These are but a few of the many rituals and traditions that bind us to each other, to the ancestors, and ensure that the community survives and flourishes.

DH: In the poem Found Art you talk about finding beauty again in yourself, your family, and nature. Nature can be like a skilled therapist in some respects. Do you agree?

ALK: It certainly is. As a human species, of course, we are “nature” ourselves, creatures inextricably linked to – and dependent upon – greater ecological systems for life. It’s no surprise then that much of our (post) modern malaise is attributable, I think, to “nature deficit disorders” – our alienation from, and neglect and destruction of, non-human nature. Poets have always looked to nature for healing, wholeness, wisdom, and grounding – from the Psalmists to the ancient Buddhist poets to the Romantics and Transcendentalists to contemporary activist eco-poets. For me, being outdoors and in wild places is as essential as food or water. In the case of Chebeague Island, walking on the shore, listening to the trees, watching the stars and planets- is not an “escape” from the shadow or from the violence and injustice of the wider world. On an island, we are never apart from, but are always “a part of,” in a different way than on the mainland perhaps. In rest and retreat, we are renewed for our work in the world, and to come close to the beauty of an island is to experience a kindred beauty in others and in oneself, and beauty, as Dostoevsky writes, somehow will save the world.

DH: Any future projects you would like to talk about?

ALK: Thanks for asking. I’ve been writing and editing poems for over twenty years, and have published widely in journals, but only recently decided to set aside fear and perfectionism and submit book manuscripts for publication. Christine Cote Brooks of Shanti Arts has been wonderful to work with on this current book. Later this year, the equally amazing Gloria Mindock and Cervena Barva Press will publish a collection of peacemaking and parenting poems I wrote during the height of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to a residency at the T.S. Eliot House in Gloucester, I’ve been polishing several other book manuscripts, decades in the making: a poetic love letter to Somerville; a collection of poems about experiences working with unhoused and displaced persons; a book of poems about commuting in Boston; and collections of poems about family roots, Quakerism, and the strange and wonderful work of university chaplaincy. Wish me luck, my friend! Just as importantly, I continue to work with students co-editing Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality & the Arts, featuring exceptional poetry, prose, art, and translations from around the world. Please encourage folks to check us out at pensivejournal.com and consider submitting. Many thanks, Doug, and best wishes with your own creative endeavors!

Passage Over

Like a nautical compass we long for true north
wherever that place may be. It’s high tide
that draws us here: summer natives and islanders,
driftwood jettisoned from the mainland,
from every hidden corner of worry and need.
There’s a collective exhaling we feel on the bus
that trundles us down to the ferry dock:
strangers, neighbors, familiar dogs
each sniffing for ocean air.

We are ritual people, loading and unloading
our common freight, hand over hand
like the solstice dance of a medieval village,
the weak always helping the strong.

Soon our luggage will rest in the ferry
and we’ll nod and smile, unburdened for now.
The island waits, and when we reach the shore
we’ll go our separate ways.

— Alexander Levering Kern