FARMINGTON - Local poets and friends of Hayden Carruth will gather at 7:30 p.m. Thursday for a memorial service in Dining Room A of the Student Center at the University of Maine at Farmington, Maine poet Henry Braun said.

A second opportunity this week to hear local poets read their own work is planned for 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 7, at Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers on Broadway.

The public is invited to both events, he added.

A New England poet, Carruth had many friends in the area and would have lived in Temple but the house burned before he moved in, Braun said. He was close to the late Mitchell Goodman of Temple and came to the area often to visit.

For the Thursday service, Robert Kimber, Wesley McNair and Goodman's widow, Sandy Gregor, will share. Gregor knew Carruth for more than 30 years, he said.

Carruth, 87, died Sept. 28. He had more than 30 books published since his first collection of poems, "The Crow and the Heart," was published in 1959, according to a biography on the Academy of American Poets Web site, www.poets.org.

He lived in Vermont for years and some of his best-known poems reflect on the people and places of northern Vermont, rural poverty and hardship, the site notes.

Seven local poets who meet monthly will read Sunday from 4 to 5:30 p.m. at the bookstore, Don Nicolson said.

"We are a group of peers, all teachers of each other, who meet to read poems and talk about the subject matter of the poems," Braun said. "Poetry groups like this have sprung up all over the country. Poetry is flourishing."

Poets reading Sunday will include Braun, Anstiss Morrell, Ruth Evans, Doug Dunlap, Carole Trickett, Kathy Beaubien and Nicolson.