In this month’s episode you’ll hear Alice Burdick talking to Logan Kennedy and Berdene Owen from Spot of Poetry, a poetry appreciation group based in Lunenburg. You’ll hear how they got started after taking a workshop series together, and persevered through the pandemic to create a thriving poetry community that now includes a sharing library and a micropress, Little Books Collective.
Guest Bios
Logan Kennedy grew up in Loganville, Nova Scotia, and studied philosophy at university. With her partner Leo Unglaub, she became a translator of plays, subtitles, academic books and articles, and exhibition texts and catalogues for European museums and galleries. Usually, they translate from German to English. Though she has had a keen interest in poetry all her life, the past four years have been especially supercharged with poetry and the community that gathers around it.
Berdene Owen started the community poetry group Spot of Poetry in Lunenburg in 2019 and it has been consistently hosting meetings to chat about and read poetry in the community. Berdene immigrated with her family to Canada from South Africa at age 17. Pursuing her love of the arts, she earned a Bachelor of Design degree from York University and Sheridan College in Toronto. Along with her husband and two boys, she criss-crossed Canada before settling happily in Lunenburg. Her interest in how words look on the page shifted into a love for the words themselves, after taking Billy Collins' Master Class on a whim. Spot of Poetry has been a delightful combination of writing, design, and community.
Coming Soon
Stay tuned! We’ll be taking a short break to plan our second season. If you are interested in being part of our poet-interviewer roster or talking to someone about your new poetry collection (or an interesting part of your creative practice), email alison@aesmithwriter.com.
Episode 13 Spot of Poetry