Craig Walker from the English Department of Queen’s University introduced the Poetry Project September 20/2011 down at City Hall last night, along with a formal introduction of Eric Folsom, our poet laureate. Reading with Eric were David Helwig who has been Poet Laureate of Prince Edward Island (Here with partner Jane Goodie)

[...]

She’s been on welfare. Tara says that right up front in an interview on youtube. (Link on right). Titles of the work in her new book give you some idea of what she’s been through: Past Hope, Sadness, I Didn’t Count On This, Hunger, Love Is Like Death, This Yearning, There’s A Funeral [...]

Someone held a cigarette lighter up to this particular renku in my spring garden on the corner. As a form of criticism, it leaves a lot to be desired. Was it this verse on the front, sent me by Sandra Stephenson as an academic offshoot of rengu or this one I love on [...]

This is the only picture I got of Joanne Arnott, a Metis poet from the West Coast of Canada whose poems on the very essence of women, birthing, mothering and women’s lives are affective and effective while musical at the same time. What she writes makes you hear tunes in your head. Nature [...]

I was afraid I wouldn’t look objective on recommending Eric, so I kept this draft around while compiling a list of all the possible well-deserving Other candidates but here’s what I wrote:
POET LAUREATE FOR KINGSTON ONTARIO- My VOTE GOES TO ERIC FOLSOM (Who- let’s be clear- knows nothing about this [...]

Terribly pleased to be in this prestigous journal with a poem about a guy complaining about how much he hates having the circus come to town.

Disclaimer: This is an attempt at an objective overview of whom to choose for Kingston Poet Laureate. Though a sometime poet, I am not a candidate, being primarily a writer of Creative Non-fiction.
NOTE- EXPECTING CORRECTIONS/UPDATES This site will be CONSTANTLY UPDATED as information flows in. Some of these poets may be [...]

Patience Wheatley (From: A Hinge Of Spring)
A Hinge Of Spring
A blazing bird melted a twig’s
white cover-then there’s another
what can a cardinal want with winter
warming the snow and rock-grey grass?
cold binoculars fog over
I rub and the birds jump huge in the centre
of the round theatre below my birdfeeder
the red male observes the armoured pigeons
khaki sparrows, spike-furred [...]

CAROLYN SMART – (From, ‘The Way To Come Home.’)
November: Frontenac County
Trees are dark fountains of grief
moaning, summer, summer
in damp and breathless voices
at the place where they pull free
from soil, piles of leaves weep
in their repetitious way,
a haven for nothing
Even the porcupine swings
its quills away in scorn
and continues its solitary parade
towards the frost and shelter
a doe [...]

(Gradually listing 1 poem per poet on the candidate lists)
Helen Humphreys (From ‘The Perils of Geography’)
Landscape on a Birthday
All day the ground is
restless with mud, glitching up
into hunchback bubbles
plotting the ruin of rocks
birds are sprinkled
against grey sky, speciks
of black pepper flung
up to find the sun
All day the wind is
a blunt hammer swinging
down the row of [...]