Former poet laureate Hugh MacDonald will be one of the featured readers at the Haviland Club Open Mic on Monday, January 12. Hugh is a poet, editor, children’s author and novelist. Morgan’s Boat Ride is his 14th book as author and editor. MacDonald was perhaps best known to Islanders as the P.E.I. representative for Random Acts of Poetry which brought poetry to the streets and workplaces across Canada.
MacDonald retired after more than 30 years of teaching and, since 1999, has been a full-time writer. He has received several awards including the L.M. Montgomery Children’s Literature Award for Chung Lee Loves Lobsters, and a first prize for poetry from the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia. In 2004, he was presented with the Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Literary Arts on Prince Edward Island.
Due to the cancellation of the December Open Mic, journalist and poet Rod Weatherbie, recently returned to his native PEI, will also be a featured reader on Jan 12.
Rod has spent the past 15 years in Toronto as a journalist, as well as co-artistic director of the Plasticine Poetry Reading Series. He is a past-member of the Island poetry collective The Secret Swarm and had poetry published in the group’s anthologies. He also has had work published in Red Shift, the Antigonish Review, Mitre, and the Toronto Quarterly. His poetry collection, Chain of Islands, was published in 2013.
Host Dianne Hicks Morrow, PEI poet laureate, invites those who like to be read to, and/or wishes to read from their own writing, to attend.
Everyone is welcome. Admission is free or by donation. Readers can sign up at 7 p.m. to read their own poetry or prose, for up to five minutes, to a friendly audience.
Please contact Dianne at peipoetlaureate@gmail.com with any questions.
The Writing Pool 