BATH — The Patten Free Library will host an evening of poetry as the fifth “stop” on the journey of the Maine Poetry Express, an initiative of Maine’s Poet Laureate Wesley McNair at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28.

The Maine Poetry Express, a symbolic rather than an actual train, will travel to a series of nine additional “stops” throughout the state over the next few months, bringing together Maine poets and townspeople for shared readings that combine poetry with testimonies about its relevance to the lives and concerns of all people.

An effort of the Maine Humanities Council and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, the Poetry Express stop in Bath will feature brief readings by area poets Gary Lawless and Sarah Woolf-Wade. They will be followed by citizen readers Ted Allen, Susan Beegel, Nancy Brown Stump, Louise Bryant, David Ingmundson and Helene McGlauflin who will each read a favorite Maine poem selected from two anthologies edited by McNair, explaining what the poems mean to them personally. Leslie Mortimer of the library staff will organize the program.

Wesley McNair who will introduce the event said that "the primary goal of the Maine Poetry Express is to show that poetry belongs not only to literary specialists but to all of us." He added,  “This promises to be an evening of poetry as you’ve never heard it before.”

The library is located at 33 Summer St. For more information, visit www.patten.lib.me.us or call 207-443-5141.