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May 7th, 2014: Featured Poet Lee Johnson, Interview and Poems

5/2/2014

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PictureLee Johnson, amateur astronomer
Lee Johnson will be one of two featured poets at the exciting May 7th London Open Mic Poetry Night at Mykonos Restaurant. He will be co-featuring with Susan McCaslin. Both are touring their new collections. The crowd will be warmed up by rising local singing/songwriting star Carly Thomas. And a large contingent of open-mic poets will step up to fill out the evening.

Lee Johnson, who was Susan McCaslin's PhD dissertation advisor at UBC, and her favourite professor, grew up near the centre of the continent on a chain of lakes in rolling countryside and developed a love of Nature in all its forms. His intended careers at that time were to become an ornithologist and an astronomer, depending on the time of day. There were, and are, so many birds around a region of lakes because of the abundance of food; and the night skies in a rural area are compelling. Is it any wonder, then, that, in early youth, the poetry of Wordsworth called to him with the force of a conversion experience, showing how interactions with Nature could be recreated in poetry? Later, as a professor for four decades at the University of British Columbia (1970-2012), Lee even wrote two books on this particular poetic mentor: Wordsworth and the Sonnet (Copenhagen: Anglistica, 1973) and Wordsworth’s Metaphysical Verse: Geometry, Nature, and Form (Toronto UP, 1982). 


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"Your own voice..." Advice for students of poetry.

4/29/2014

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Picture
Lee Johnson, who has recently retired as a Professor of English at the University of British Columbia after four decades of teaching and study, and also after four decades of quietly writing poetry, is now touring with his first collection, Poetria Nova (St. Thomas Poetry Series, 2014). 

Johnson is featured, along with Susan McCaslin, at London Open Mic Poetry Night on May 7th, 2014. 

In preparation for the event, we interviewed him, with some of our questions reflecting Johnson's unique background: thus the problem of whether and how students can develop their own poetic voices within the strict and heavy course structure and academic environment of a university.  We asked for advice. Below are pertinent excerpts. Stay tuned for the full interview, along with a group of Lee Johnson's newly published poems, to be posted this Friday, May 2nd. 


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