Hugh MacDonald, poet laureate of PEI, plus four other poets, will read from their works and present writing workshops at three public libraries in PEI: July 25, 26, and 27.
Hugh’s fellow poets are Susan McMaster, Marilyn Gear Piling, Marty Gervais, and John B. Lee. All five poets are published by Black Moss Press. The workshops– which will be the same at all three venues and which are hosted by the PEIwg.– will be presented by Gervais and Lee.
Biographies for: Hugh MacDonald, Susan McMaster, Marilyn Gear Pilling, Marty Gervais, and John B. Lee
Gervais will begin with a brief talk about how to get published. Lee will follow with a presentation on self-editing and finding the voice in the poem. The workshops will conclude with ‘hands on’ practice. Those who sign up for a workshop should bring about a dozen copies of a written piece for this purpose. Workshops are $25, or $15 for PEIwg. members. Memberships to the PEIwg. will be available at all three venues.
Schedule of events:
July 25th
Confederation Centre Public Library, Charlottetown
Workshop 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Poetry Reading 6:30 p.m.
Open mic to follow
July 26th
Summerside Rotary Library, Summerside
Workshop 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Poetry Reading 11:00 a.m.
Open mic to follow
July 27th
Montague Rotary Library, Montague
Workshop 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
Poetry Reading 3:30 p.m.
Open mic to follow
Marty Gervais
Marty Gervais is an award winning journalist, poet, playwright, historian, photographer and editor. In 2011, he was nominated as the City of Windsor’s first Poet Laureate, and runs a Poet Laureate’s Blog.
In 1998, he won the prestigious Toronto’s Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian letters and to emerging writers. In 1996, he was awarded the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Award for his book, Tearing Into A Summer Day. That book also was awarded the City of Windsor Mayor’s Award for literature. In 2003, Gervais was given City of Windsor Mayor’s Award for literature for To Be Now: Selected Poems.
As a writer, he has written more than a dozen books of poetry, two plays and a novel. His most successful work, The Rumrunners, a book about the Prohibition period was a Canadian bestseller in 1980 and was re-released in an expanded format in 2010 and was on the top ten Globe and Mail bestseller list for non-fiction titles. Another book, Seeds In The Wilderness (a collection of essays with Quarry Press/General Publishing) stemmed from interviews he conducted with such notable religious leaders as Mother Theresa, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Hans Kung and Terry Waite. With this latter book, Gervais photographed many of these world leaders.
Gervais received his M.A. in Creative Writing under the supervision of Morley Callaghan. He is founder of Black Moss Press, one of Canada’s oldest literary publishing firms, and is managing editor of The Windsor Review.
Hugh MacDonald
Poet, editor, childrens’ author and novelist Hugh MacDonald of Brudenell is poet laureate for Prince Edward Island from Jan 1, 2010, until Dec 31, 2012.
I is for Island: A Prince Edward Island Alphabet is his 13th book as author and editor. MacDonald is perhaps best known to Islanders as the P.E.I. representative for Random Acts of Poetry which has 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.
Susan McMaster
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Susan McMaster (born 1950) is a Canadian poet, literary editor, and spoken word/performance poet who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. She is currently President of the League of Canadian Poets.
Her recent poetry books are Paper Affair: Poems Selected and New (Black Moss 2010), Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press 2010), and Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me (Black Moss 2010), which was a finalist for the 2010 Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Prize, the 2010 Ottawa Book Awards, and the 2010Archibald Lampman Poetry Prize. She is the author of several wordmusic collections, performance poetry recordings, and scripts; has edited poetry anthologies and series; and was the founding editor of the national feminist and art magazine Branching Out (1973-). McMaster was an original member of the intermedia group First Draft, (1981-), with members including Andrew McClure, Colin Morton, Alrick Huebener, Roberta Huebener, Claude Dupuis, Peter Thomas, and David Parsons. Together, they recorded, published, and performed some 40 times across Canada in the 1980s.
Since 1996, she has been the wordsmith in Geode Music & Poetry (formerly SugarBeat), making four spoken word and music recordings with Jennifer Giles on keyboards, Alrick Huebener on bass, Gavin McLintock on sax, and friends, including Dave Broscoe, Jamie Gullikson, Mike Essoudry, Petr Cancura, Mark Molnar, John Higney, Linsey Wellman, Penn Kemp, Colin Morton, and Max Middle. She has performed and recorded with SugarBeat and Geode at 50-plus venues, including the Banff Centre, the National Library, the Kingston Fringe Jazz Festival, Rasputin’s, the Blue Skies Music Festival, the Ottawa Folk Festival, the Elora Music Festival, Artscape,WordBeat, Morningside, Go, the National Arts Center Fourth Stage, and the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and has read and performed at festivals and venues in France and Italy.
McMaster’s mid-life memoir The Gargoyle’s Ear: Writing in Ottawa (Black Moss 2007) recounts stories from the projects, contacts, and interests that comprise her committed life as a poet. Her millennial book, Waging Peace, collects the poetry, art, and texts from Convergence: Poems for Peace, which presented art-wrapped poems from across Canada to all MPs and Senators in 2001. Her poetry collection Until the Light Bends from Black Moss Press was shortlisted for the 2005 Archibald Lampman Award for poetry, and the 2005 Ottawa Book Award for best book of the year. Accompanying the book is her spoken word CD Until the Light Bends, with Geode Music & Poetry, from Pendas Productions.
Marilyn Gear Pilling
Marilyn Gear Pilling began writing in midlife. Her poetry, short stories and essays have been published in most of Canada’s literary magazines, broadcast on CBC radio, and have won many national awards.
Her stories were featured in Oberon’s Coming Attractions series in 1995, and a collection of short stories, My Nose Is A Gherkin Pickle Gone Wrong was published by Cormorant Books in 1996. A second collection of short stories was published in April 2002, The Roseate Spoonbill of Happiness, and was shortlisted for the $10,000 Writer’s Trust Award. Her first book of poetry, The Field Next To Love , came out in the fall of 2002 from Black Moss Press, and since then Black Moss has published three more of her collections of poetry: The Life of the Four Stomachs ( 2006), Cleavage: a life in breasts (2007) and The Bones of the World Begin to Show (2009).
She was for many years the Head of the Arts Departments at Hamilton’s Central Library, and currently is a full-time writer and a teacher of writing. She is the President of the Hamilton Poetry Centre and a member of the Writer’s Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets. Pilling has a Bachelors degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto and a Masters of Library and Information Science, also from the University of Toronto.
She lives in Hamilton and grew up in Waterloo, Ontario, but her roots are in Huron County. She has read her fiction and poetry at venues across Canada, including Harbourfront in Toronto, the Eden Mills Writers Festival, the Stephen Leacock Festival, the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Windsor Bookfest. She has read her work abroad, including at the fabled “Shakespeare & Company” in Paris, France.
John B. Lee
laureate of Brantford, Ontario (2005-) & Poet Laureate for Norfolk County (2011-2014)
In 2005 John B. Lee was inducted as Poet Laureate of Brantford in perpetuity. The same year he received the distinction of being named Honourary Life Member of The Canadian Poetry Association. In 2007 he was made a member of the Chancellor’s Circle of the President’s Club of McMaster University and named first recipient of the Souwesto Award for his contribution to literature in his home region of southwestern Ontario and he was named winner of the inaugural Black Moss Press Souwesto Award for his contribution to the ethos of writing in Southwestern Ontario.
A recipient of over sixty prestigious international awards for his writing he is winner of the $10,000 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, the only two time recipient of the People’s Poetry Award, and 2006 winner of the inaugural Souwesto Orison Writing Award (University of Windsor). In 2007 he was named winner of the Winston Collins Award for Best Canadian Poem.
He has well-over fifty books published to date and is the editor of seven anthologies including two best-selling works: That Sign of Perfection: poems and stories on the game of hockey; and Smaller Than God: words of spiritual longing. His work has appeared internationally in over 500 publications, and has been translated into French, Spanish, Korean and Chinese.
He has read his work in nations all over the world including South Africa, France, Korea, Cuba, Canada and the United States. He has received letters of praise from Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, Australian Poet, Les Murray, and Senator Romeo Dallaire. Called “the greatest living poet in English,” by poet George Whipple, he lives in Brantford, Ontario where he works as a full time author.
