This week’ show is an encore presentation of our interviews with TJ Best. TJ is the host and organizer of a monthly poetry Open Mic held in Madoc, called First Tuesday Muse, and has been published in a number of journals in both Canada and the United States including: The Waterwheel Review, Ghost City Press, Untethered Magazine, and above/ground Press. TJ (formerly known as Tamara ‘tah-mah-rah’) is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. After spending many years in Toronto, TJ moved to the Quinte Region in 2011 and homeschooled their two children for ten years. TJ is also an experienced Community Worker with a focus on client support. In addition to these many “hats”, TJ also maintains a medicinal garden at a historic site and is passionate about outdoor education.
Month: April 2025
Phyliss Wright
Phyliss Wright’s journey as a poet started in university days, when she edited a literary magazine in Colorado during the tumultuous sixties, where she also taught mountain climbing and piton-craft. She returned to writing poetry after a stint in the Marines as an air traffic controller. Poems are a way she explores the world and her own thoughts about life. Her work is shaped by her adventures in Afghanistan, Spain, Poland, and Siberia. But her formative work began in widowhood, when she served as a hospital director in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa of Pakistan, and then as a teacher in the United Arab Emirates. She wrote with the Kent State University Writers Group for over twenty years and still meets with them remotely. Recently she married Canadian, Eric Wright, who is a Northumberland writer. A new resident of Port Hope, she writes with the Cobourg Poetry Workshop, has two children, four grandchildren and a cat who came with her from the United Arab Emirates.
PJ Thomas
Canadian poet, PJ Thomas writes and publishes poetry in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario. She has launched three full collections in the Water Trilogy; Undertow (2020), Waves (2022), and Drifting (2024). Thomas wrote the lyrics to three songs on the Rick Fines Juno Award-nominated album, Solar Powered Too. Her work has been published in magazines, newspapers, and anthologies. Thomas’s books have met with critical acclaim. She recently received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts to write her next manuscript, Afterwaves. Thomas is a member of both the League of Canadian Poets, and The Writers’ Union of Canada. As an experimental poet, she creates verse about the local geography, the cosmos, natural bodies of water, community, and how they shape emotion. Ms. Thomas makes her home with her cat by the Otonabee River.
J. D. Carpenter
This week we talk with J David Carpenter, a poet and novelist who lives in Prince Edward County. He grew up in Toronto and attended York University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts and Queen’s University, for his B. Ed. He first worked as a journalist for Daily Racing Form and as a freelance writer, then taught high school English for 25 years. David began his writing career as a poet, publishing four books of poetry between 1976 and 1994. He then turned to crime fiction during the 1990s and has published six novels: The Devil in Me (McClelland &Stewart, 2001) This first novel appeared on the Globe and Mail’s bestseller list and was nominated for an Arthur Ellis Award; his subsequent novels have also received critical acclaim, His most recent books of poetry are All Us Cats on Stage (Cressy Lakeside Books, 2021) and A Road through the Corn: Prince Edward County Poems, 1982-2022 (Cressy Lakeside Books, 2022). He has just completed an MS of list poems and is currently working on a new project which may become a novel. He is also locally known for writing and performing jazz poetry with musical accompaniment.
Word on the Hills Radio Program 