POETS OF WONDER AND BEAUTY

We have a wealth of literary events this fall. The Pen & Inkling Festival. The gala poetry readings on Oct. 15 & 16 as part of the International Symposium on Poetics hosted by the UPEI Faculty of Education. Upcoming launches of books by Deirdre Kessler and Orysia Dawydiak. And, of course, the Winter’s Tales readings. And here is the first one, next Tuesday evening at Confederation Centre Public Library…..

Two of Canada’s outstanding poets, John Donlan and Sue Sinclair, will read at Confederation Centre Library, on Tuesday, October 6, at 7:30 p.m. Their reading is sponsored by the UPEI Department of English, with the generous support of The Canada Council for the Arts and Confederation Centre Library.
John Donlan was raised in Ontario’s Muskoka lakes district. His father worked with teams of horses hauling logs in the bush; neighbours raised skunks, crows, and porcupines as domestic pets (a neighbour’s crow, named for his father, stole clothes pins from the wash to tease his mother). Surrounded by some of Canada’s most beautiful wilderness (celebrated in the paintings of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven), Donlan developed a deep sense of belonging in the natural world. Far from Muskoka, he now works as a reference librarian at the Vancouver Public Library in downtown Vancouver, and is a poetry editor with Brick Books. His most recent collection is Spirit Engine.
Sue Sinclair was raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and received an M.A. in Creative Writing and English from the University of New Brunswick. She now lives in Toronto. Her poetry books include Secrets of Weather and Hope, Mortal Arguments, The Drunken Lovely Bird, and, most recently, Breaker.
Her poetry possesses intense lyrical vision, steeped in wonder at the existence of the world, and grief at our inability to lose ourselves in it completely. Her perception is acutely focused and rigorously self-aware. She is not afraid of words like “beauty” or “being,” and the intensity of her vision and gift for metaphor give those words a fresh, vital reality.