It was announced on December 4th that Canada’s new Poet Laureate is John Steffler. I had heard about poet laureates before, but I didn’t know too much about what the title meant (I pictured a guy wearing tights and carrying an oversized quill) so I did a bit of research
HERE (The Parliamentary Poet Laureate homepage).The position was first appointed in 2002 to help draw the attention of Canadians to poetry, both spoken word and written. Canada’s Poet Laureate is chosen every two years to write poetry for important Parliamentary occasions, sponsor poetry readings, and advise the Parliamentary Librarian on the Library’s collection.
One of the coolest things that I discovered is that during their tenure, all of Canada’s Poet Laureates have posted one poem a week on the Parliamentary Poet Laureate website. You can read them all
HERE.In honour of our new Poet Laureate, I thought I’d try my hand at writing a poem:
Crouching Reader, Hidden BookThere once was a book on the case
That was decidedly out of its place.
A reader went by,
The book caught his eye,
And the book was finally found.
Okay . . . so I’ll never get a job as Canada’s Poet Laureate, but if you’re interested in reading some of John Steffer’s books, we can help you find them
HERE.
