Katherine E. O'Brien was a Deering High School (Portland) math teacher who bequeathed money to the University of Maine System, a part of which was designated for USM's Libraries to purchase volumes of poetry and establish the annual O'Brien Poet who gives the O'Brien Poetry Lecture.
O'Brien's papers, documenting her own poetry writing, are housed in USM Libraries' Special Collections in the Glickman Family Library in Portland. The USM Libraries and the USM Department of English sponsor the annual O'Brien Poetry Lecture.
The Names of Things by 
Otherwise Unseeable by 
The O'Brien Poetry Collection is on the 6th Floor in USM's Glickman Family Library in Portland.
