Jacob Fricke (they/them) is a product of the license and collaborative spirit of the Belfast arts community. They have performed poetry on radio and at rock concerts, at schools and at summer fairs, up on the stage and out in the streets. They are currently the poetry half of the ambient and jazz group Algorithm, whose first album, Underneath Oblivion, was released in June 2017. Fricke has twice been featured at the Belfast Poetry Festival, where in 2008 they performed opposite dancer Shana Bloomstein and in 2010 they collaborated with ephemera artist Daniel Anselmi.
As the Poet Laureate for the City of Belfast, Maine for 2011 and 2012, they were one of the chief organizers of the Belfast Poetry Festival, were the city-appointed public spokesperson for poetry and for the local literary community, and introduced various arts initiatives including the reintroduction of Slam-style poetry events to the area and the production of literary artworks for public spaces. They currently remain an organizer for the Belfast Poetry Festival.
Fricke’s This Book of Poems You Found (The Illuminated Sea Press, 2010), which unexpectedly won them the Village Soup “Best Local Author” award for authors in Waldo County in 2011, is a concept volume that plays off ideas of time, insignificance, and haphazard discovery, touching on the place of the individual in the course of human history and what reader and author, equally anonymous, have in common.
As the Poet Laureate for the City of Belfast, Maine for 2011 and 2012, they were one of the chief organizers of the Belfast Poetry Festival, were the city-appointed public spokesperson for poetry and for the local literary community, and introduced various arts initiatives including the reintroduction of Slam-style poetry events to the area and the production of literary artworks for public spaces. They currently remain an organizer for the Belfast Poetry Festival.
Fricke’s This Book of Poems You Found (The Illuminated Sea Press, 2010), which unexpectedly won them the Village Soup “Best Local Author” award for authors in Waldo County in 2011, is a concept volume that plays off ideas of time, insignificance, and haphazard discovery, touching on the place of the individual in the course of human history and what reader and author, equally anonymous, have in common.