FARMINGTON — Marginalia are the little notes we write to ourselves in the book we are reading. Beginning at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 4, Kristen Case, poet, author, teacher and collector, will speak on “Transcendental Marginalia,” an overview her changing thought on Thoreau and other American poets as it is revealed in the mysterious notes found in the margins of her collection: books as both objects of personal use and meeting places for minds, ways of talking intimately to people across space and time.

The talk will be in the North Dining Hall, Olsen Student Center, 111 South St., at UMF. It will be free and open to the public.

Thoreau was an American poet, essayist, historian and philosopher, as well as an abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister and surveyor. His best-known book, “Walden,” is a reflection on the value of living simply in a natural environment.

Dr. Case teaches American literature, philosophy, and writing at UMF. She has published widely on American poetry. Her first poetry collection, “Little Arias” (2015), won the Maine Literary Award for Poetry, and a second volume is forthcoming. She is the director of the New Commons Project, a public humanities initiative sponsored by the Mellon Foundation.

This is the first in a series of lectures this year on the collections of members of The Shiretown Bookers, the Community Friends of Mantor Library. Their website can be found at www.shiretownbookers.org.

Kristen Case will speak at UMF as part of a Shiretown Bookers presentation. (Photo by Jaime Ranger)