poetry reading

Dear Diary, a simple post today, about one of my favorite poets, Alden Nowlan. It was over twenty years ago that I found  the work f the poet Alden Nowlan. I liked his directness, the simple, but not simplistic poems that left me thinking about our emotional life, our relationships. They were poems about people, and I think that is why I liked them so much.

Once I went to a poetry workshop at The Northrup Frye Literary Festival in Moncton, with Robert Blye. It was the first and one of the few workshops  on writing I have gone to. It turned out that Blye had recently written the foreword for  a book of poems by Alden Nowlan, and I won the book, to add to my collection of many of his other books. It is  published in 2000 by  The Thousands Press in Minnesota.

Nowlan was a journalist in New Brunswick, having left school at an early age. Though he had little formal education , he eventually became the writer in residence at the University of New Brunswick, an extraordinary thing. He died in 1983 at the age  of fifty.

Poetry goes unnoticed by so many, but I have always found that  a book of poems can be revisited, and that in in just a few lines, an idea or a story is put forth. It is like  a condensed story. I keep my books of poems because then they are around when you need them. It’s comfort food for the mind.