It’s poetry month in the Townships
April is National poetry month, and the fact that people are trapped inside is not stopping some local poets from sharing their favourite art form.
Prior to the coming of COVID-19 , Hatley resident Angela Leuck was planning to bring back her annual “Bards and Biscuits” poetry night for a third edition, expanding the project beyond the walls of the North Hatley library to other local venues. Not to be put off by a pandemic, the organizer shifted that plan to an online poem-a-day project in which, for each of the days of April a different local woman poet contributes a poem.
“Not surprisingly a lot of people are thinking about the virus, so a lot of poems are influenced by what we’re living through,” Leuck said, describing the project as both a way for people to become familiar with the idea that there are women poets active in the area and a way of connecting with how people are coping in this difficult time. “Poetry has been described as the shortest distance between two people. You can connect fast to a poem and know a little bit about that person that they’ve shared.”
The listing of poems submitted so far can be found at http://bibliolennoxvillelibrary.ca/thirty-days-thirty-poets/.
In addition to the poem-a-day project, Leuck shared that she is working with many of the same poets on a project following up on the success of last year’s Water Lines anthology.
“It was really a surprising success so we’ve decided to do another one on women poets of the Eastern Townships,” she said, explaining that the as-yet unnamed book will bring together 22 local poets, many of whom have written for a long time without ever being published before. “We’ve never seen their work because it’s never been published, so this is exciting.”
Despite the coming of the virus, Leuck said that the project is on track to be launched in the fall.
“I told each poet to submit between 20 and 30 pages of poetry. I wanted a lot because I want to look through it and find the unique voice of each person,” she said. “The interesting thing about these women is that they are successful in other fields, so they bring an interesting background to their work.”
Like Water Lines, the new book will be published as a part of a special project by Studio Georgeville
“I think it’s great,” she said, noting that there is a lack of good publishing options for Eastern Townships writers. “People forget there are writers from here.”
Given the uncertainty of this coming fall, it was hard for Leuck to sayexactly what the eventual launch will look like, be she expressed confidence that it will happen.
“That’s a tricky time,” she said. “It’s all a little uncertain at this point, but he book is definitely coming along and will be launched one way or another.”
In the meantime, the Hatley poet said that she is passing the time in isolation by writing a poem a day for herself.
“It’s just amazing to have the time to do it,” she said, arguing that the practice has been a good way to process the feelings that can sometimes be hard to put into words.