When the leaves turn colour it’s a good time to reflect on change, the beauty of the world and the importance of art. It’s a great way to accomplish all three then to revel and rejoice in the spoken words of two award-winning poets.
In preparation for the upcoming Alberta Arts Days celebration, Jenna Butler and Bert Almon have teamed up to recite some choice verses from their portfolios. They are both acclaimed authors from the St. Albert and Edmonton area so their words should hit home for many people.
Butler has been given several awards for her work including the James Patrick Folinsbee Prize. She has also been produced by the CBC. Almon won the 1995 Writers’ Guild of Alberta Award for poetry for Earth Prime and the City of Edmonton Book Prize last year for A Ghost in Waterloo Station. He has been a Hawthornden Fellow in Poetry and a finalist in the Blackwell’s/Times Literary Supplement Poetry Competition.
Peter Bailey, library director, said he’s excited to welcome such talent to the program room as it provides an added level of focus to the written word and the pleasures of enjoying art of all colours.
“It’s September and it’s back to school so we start to get serious again and bring in poetry,” he began, mentioning preparation for Alberta Arts Days prompted this literary delight for the public. “It was the impetus behind it.”
He also had high praise for the two guests, calling Butler a fresh and wonderful voice on the scene with her recently published book and Almon a more experienced master with a new book coming out this fall.
Butler and Almon’s appearance takes place tomorrow at the library at 7 p.m. hosted by local poet Andy Michaelson. Next Thursday local authors Elaine Cust and Myrna Kostash will bring their non-fiction works to the same venue. Cust will read from her biography of Rivière-qui-Barre’s Harold Granger, a man who survived polio and just became stronger because of it. Kostash will read from The Frog Lake Massacre, her perspective on the tragic battle that took place in 1885.
