Continuing our celebration of Poetry Month and in honour of the poet’s mother, who recently passed away, we are re-broadcasting the programme we made with Katie Hoogendam last winter. Meredith Katie Hoogendam is a writer, artist, mother, and sometime radio host.Though focused on parenting and homeschooling, she remains professionally and personally concerned with environmental issues and educational theory and practice. Her chapbook,  Mothertongue is a collection of poetry on motherhood, mourning, and identity released last November at a poetry party in Camborne.

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In celebration of Poetry month we rebroadcast our interview with Antony Di Nardo. Antony was born in Montreal and is the author of four collections of poetry, his most recent, SKYLIGHT, was published this fall by Ronsdale Press. Work from previous collections has been translated into both French and Italian, and appears in several anthologies. His first book, Alien, Correspondent, was nominated for the Acorn-Plantos People’s Poetry Prize and the Re-Lit Award. He has been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Long Poem contest and in 2017 he won Exile’s Gwendolyn MacEwen Prize for Best Suite of Poems. He divides his time between Sutton, Quebec and Cobourg, Ontario.

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This week we begin our celebration of Poetry Month with a short discussion of how important poetry is to society and has become in our area, thanks to the tireless efforts of a number of local writers. You will also hear readings by local poets, including Ted Amsden, Bridget Campion, Tai Grove, Katie Hoogendam, Wally Keeler, Jessica Outram, Janet Richards, Gil McElroy and your hosts on Word on the Hills, Gwynn Scheltema and Felicity Sidnell Reid. We hope you enjoy the show!

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This week we are repeating a show we made with Jennifer Bogart in which she talks about the inspiration for her writings, her novels for young people and adults, her passion for reading and her encouragement of everyone she meets to share this experience. She recently became the owner of Let’s Talk Books in Cobourg and has already instituted many special events and book clubs at the store.

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Shane Joseph is an award winning novelist and publisher. REDEMPTION IN PARADISE, his first novel, was published in 2004. Since then he has published 3 collections of short stories, including CROSSING LIMBO (2017), as well as a number of prize-winning novels, among them AFTER THE FLOOD, 2009, THE ULYSSES MAN, 2011, and IN THE SHADOW OF THE CONQUISTADOR, 2015. Shane is also the editor and owner of Blue Denim Press (www.bluedenimpress.com).  The co-owner of two travel agencies he says that his travelling informs his writing. To-date he has visited 65 countries, one for each year of his life, with a few more to spare. Here he talks about his latest novel, MILLTOWN  to be released  at a launch in Cobourg on April 18th.

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This week Robert Mikel talks about his most recent book. Rob was raised in Cobourg, then studied history and architecture at the University of Toronto. He worked for the Toronto Historical Board for many years and works for the Government of Ontario today. When he lived in Cobourg he was one of the founders of the Cobourg and District Historical Society. He has been awarded the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Lifetime achievement in Heritage work.  And in 2016, he received the Mary Millard Award from the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario for contributions to heritage. His first book published several years ago, is Ontario House Styles:The Distinctive Architecture of the Province’s 18th and 19th Century Homes.  His new one is Cobourg: the Spirit of the Place.

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Lana Pickering lives in Northumberland County, with her husband, son and crazy yellow lab, Mater. By day she diligently crunches numbers and provides support for many at the university in Oshawa. In her free time, she loves to write and fulfill her passion as a story teller. Lana reads and writes all she can, whether that is about romance, fantasy, or the things that inspire her. Rewriting Love is Lana’s first attempt at self-publishing, which she launched in June 2018. She wrote this story for her very first Nanowrimo writing project in 2016. Lana’s next romance novel is well underway and she is hoping to have that self-published in the fall of 2019. She also has a young adult and an adult fantasy novel in development.

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David R. McKay is a Registered Respiratory Therapist who describes himself a budding author of Contemporary Fiction, while transitioning into retirement. Sydney’s Promise is his first published work. He is the former editor of Airwaves, a quarterly journal produced by the Respiratory Therapy Society of Ontario, and regularly contributed many scientific, historical and op-ed articles to the journal.

David was born and raised in Port Hope. He left home for post-secondary education and returned to   live in Cobourg when he and his former high school sweetheart, Gloria, reconnected in 2009 and later married. He is a father figure to five wonderful human beings and two loyal German shepherds. In his spare time Dave enjoys  sports and music. He and Gloria are also active members of the Cobourg Legion Pipe Band, both as drummers.

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Drew Monkman is a naturalist and writer whose nature column, “Our Changing Seasons,” appears regularly in the Peterborough Examiner. He is the author of three books. Two of these explore what is happening in the natural world each month of the year. They are Nature’s Year in the Kawarthas (2002) and Nature’s Year: Changing seasons in Central and Eastern Ontario (2012) Drew also co-authored The Big Book of Nature Activities: A year-round guide to outdoor learning (2016) with Jacob Rodenburg, executive director of Camp Kawartha . The book is the winner of four awards, including the Nautilus Book Award, which is a major American award for environmental writing.

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