Artist Roster

Michael Blaine is a poet and English teacher. He received a 2006 Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature and won the Dogfish Head poetry contest for his chapbook Murmur (Bay Oak Press). His second chapbook, Brackish Water, was published by Bay Oak Press. His writing mostly focuses on the human experience and the Eastern Shore using various traditional and modern structures. His poetry style ranges from open form to more structured tanka and haiku.

Blaine has taught poetry workshops and led discussion sessions for various groups and organizations. He regularly reads his work at various venues.

Blaine’s poetry and short stories have appeared in journals such as Baltimore Review, G.W. Review, Mid-Atlantic Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Rivendell, HazMat Review, Chesapeake Bay Magazine, and Georgetown Review. He has had tanka, haiku, and senryu published in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Ribbons, and Lilliput Review.

Blaine founded and edited the Delmarva Review, a publication that features writing from the Eastern Shore. He was a co-editor for the Delaware Poetry Review and adviser for the Broadkill Review. He is a member of the Haiku Society of America, the Tanka Society of America, the Rehoboth Beach Writers' group.

Blaine was born in Oxford, Mississippi in 1968, but grew up on the Eastern Shore of Delaware. He returned to Oxford to study English at the University of Mississippi and graduated in 1992. He later received a master’s degree in English at Salisbury University. He taught High School English in Delaware for over twenty years before teaching full time at Delaware Technical and Community College. He teaches mostly composition courses as well as Creative Writing and African American Literature. Blaine lives in Seaford with his wife and three children.