Marilyn Lerch in Parrsboro

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.

Marilyn Lerch Author Photo

 

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.

 

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that_we_have_lived_at_all_cover_2x“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)

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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 Screen Shot 2019-11-05 at 9.46.30 AMWriters’ 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)

 

Furthering Kinship in a Broken World ~ a performance by Rae Marie Taylor

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Rae Marie Taylor’s work bridges her creative activities in Montreal and her homeland in the American Southwest. As a writer her book of essays The Land Our Gift and Wild Hope was awarded Finalist from the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards. Here In the North, as a poet she performs in various venues with Montreal musicians Pierre Tanguay and Diane Labrosse and in Quebec City with the jazz duo Michel and Pierre Côté.

"Shores" detail, Le fleuve/le NordIn both places, Rae’s visual art has included painting, sculpture and installation. She first experienced land art at the annual El Ancon Outdoor Sculpture show while living in New Mexico where the concern with relationship with place is dominant in the cultures as well as art and literature. Having immigrated to Montreal, her occasional installation work was taken inside to gallery spaces.

For more information about RAE MARIE TAYLOR http://thelandwildhope.com/