Richard Lemm to launch ‘Jeopardy: New Poems’ on Friday

UPEI English professor Richard Lemm is set to launch his latest book of poetry.

“Jeopardy: New Poems” is Lemm’s fifth published poetry collection, which he’ll launch Friday, June 29, 7 p.m. in the Carriage House of Beaconsfield Historic House, 2 Kent St. in Charlottetown. Acorn Press, the publisher, will host the launch and reception.

The book opens with “Profane and Sacred,” poems conjuring myths and journeys — Adam and Eve’s Edenic choice, a Jewish surgeon’s pilgrimage to Assisi, the poet’s grandfather leaving the family farm for America’s first imperialist war.

“Skeletal Blues” explores a couple’s struggle with mental illness and the quest for healing.

“History Lessons” takes readers to the British penal colony in Tasmania, reveals pre- and post-Revolution experiences in Cairo teaching Egyptian students and encounters an ancient civilization wrestling with cross-currents of modernity and tradition.

“The Future Hurtling Toward Us” evokes with humour and urgency our ecological reality and environmental crises.

Lemm’s previous collection, “Prelude to the Bacchanal,” won the Canadian Authors’ Association Award. He has won poetry prizes in the CBC Literary Competition and a P.E.I. Book Award for “Shape of Things to Come.”

His biography of P.E.I.’s people’s poet of Canada, “Milton Acorn: In Love and Anger,” received the P.E.I. Heritage and Museum Foundation Award.

He edited two anthologies of Island writing: “Riptides: New Island Fiction,” which won a P.E.I. Book Award and was a finalist for an Atlantic Book Award; and the best-selling “Snow Softly Falling: Holiday Stories from P.E.I.”

At UPEI, Lemm teaches creative writing, Canadian literature and environmental literature.