Marilyn Lerch is an American-born Canadian poet, teacher, and activist.  You can meet Marilyn, hear her poetry, and get your books signed at Main & Station’s Nonesuch Café on Friday, 29 November, 2019 beginning at 7pm.

Born in 1936 in East Chicago, Indiana, she is the author of five volumes of poetry, served as Sackville Poet Laureate from 2014 through 2018, and was president of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick from 2006 to 2010.

“Marilyn Lerch defines insight, perception. She moves through the world, feet sensing ground, eyes witnessing all, and then finding what is endless reward, i.e. the proverb: “life not to be questioned, but borne”; “mortality the hardest truth to live with”…. In every line, a haiku lurks; in every poem, there’s radical instruction: “refuse any form of slavery … /perform acts that feel right and lovely in themselves, /create profound, poignant, terrifyingly beautiful art….” With the “moon my essential companion” and “coming to serenity in the flow” of tides and light and love, Lerch is as sensitive as Dylan Thomas, but as clear-eyed as Elizabeth Bishop. A trustworthy inner voice cupped gently by paper.”

–George Elliott Clarke
7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-17)

Marilyn has degrees from Indiana University and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and taught high school English in Washington, D.C., from 1967 to 1995. She has long been active in cultural movements devoted to social justice and environmental protection. She helps to facilitate PFLAG (Sackville–Amherst Chapter) and is a member of the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Coalition.

Since moving to Sackville, NB in 1996 Marilyn has also formed the Sackville Writers’ Group and the Roving Poets; taught creative writing at Westmorland, Springhill and Dorchester prisons; played an instrumental role in organizing Sackville’s annual Poetry Month events; offered several workshops in Tantramar schools; hosted Poetry Reading events throughout the Town; written and read many original works at Sackville events; and is teaching Memoir with the Tantramar Senior College.  She lives with her partner Janet.

To learn more about Marilyn Lerch and read or hear some of her poems, see here https://warktimes.com/2019/02/11/marilyn-lerch-launches-fifth-book-of-poems-aiming-to-tell-the-tale-of-our-time/  and here https://warktimes.com/poetry-recordings/two-poems-by-marilyn-lerch/ and here http://www.stu-acpa.com/marilyn-lerch.html

PUBLICATIONS

Poetry
Lambs & Llamas, Ewes & Me (2001)
Moon Loves Its Light (2004)
Witness and Resist (2008)
The Physics of Allowable Sway (2013)                                                                                That We Have Lived at All (2018)

Other 
Making a Difference, Toute la difference: A Celebration of the 3M Teaching Fellowship (Editor, 2005)
Breaking the Word Barrier: Stories of Adults Learning to Read (Co-editor, 2009)

Musical Settings of her Poetry
We Move Homeward (Alasdair MacLean, 1998)
The Whole is Enough to Drive You Crazy (W.L. Altman, 2002)
We Move Homeward (Lloyd Burritt, 2011)
Moon Loves Its Light (Lloyd Burritt, 2011)
Triptych (Lloyd Burritt: Canadian premiere, 2013; American premiere, 2014)
Trees on the Edge (Nicholas Piper, 2014)