Donna Allard Beat Generation Laureate Canada (2019-2020)
on home
by Donna Allard
Publisher:
Canadian Beat Scene Publishing
Cover credit:
Donna Allard & Debbie Tosun Kilday
Purchase at AMAZON
Goodreads Reviews TBA
Donna Allard doesn’t seek accolades, hunt down prizes “or try to” curry favour with the poetry elite.
But that’s not to say recognition isn’t merited. Unassuming, though hardly shy, writes poetry to get out
what’s in, to bring to light what she sees. Themes of nature, love, childhood and social justice, we all relate
to, but it’s in her subtle exploration past trauma, and of our Canadian East Coast heritage and landscape - that her vision shines. Her poems are like beach glass, natural gems washed along the shore waiting to be discovered. You may find yourself rereading a line, a line that had first raced past, then suddenly you'll see a special glint that you hadn’t originally noticed. Donna Allard was named International Beat Poet Laureate for Canada by the National Beat Poetry Foundation for 2019-20. She lives in New Brunswick, Canada.
LEE THOMPSON freelance writer, editor and poet Moncton NB Canada
walk on water
by Donna Allard
Publisher: Local Gems Press
Cover credit:
Donna Allard & Debbie Tosun Kilday
Purchase at AMAZON
"I first met Donna Allard way back in the day when Facebook was a paradise for creatives, especially poets. We recognized ourselves as kindred spirits immediately and soon discovered that we have a mutual ancestral line. It did not surprise me, once I began reading her work, to discover that she is a consummate poet. She walks that difficult line between thematic breadth, impeccable prosody, a convergence of music and image, and excavating the suffering and joy at the core of every human life. In other words, Donna is a master. And not only is she a master of her art and her craft, she is also unremitting supportive of other poets, and makes her positive mark on many many creative lives. She’s not just a national treasure for Canada. She’s an international treasure for all of us."~ Dr. Chansonette Buck Berkley University
Three Times Around the World
This book is inspired by years of living in a small rum-runner village, situated on the ocean's coastline where foggy summer night ghosts tarry by the boardwalk. They whisper about days of old and long lost sailors who set out to sea. “Three times around the world”, they say, with a deep-rooted smell of tobacco as the salty air fades into the night heralding,
“Around the world one more time!”
copies available here lulu.com/spotlight/riverbonespress_2020
COLD FIRE
INTERVIEW by DEBBIE OKUN HILL
Ghost in the Window
Excerpt:
...She was a very strong woman with a dry wit, clever as a fox, loving and kind and a great cook.
It was difficult to see her in her favourite chair– she used to tower over it at 5’ 10” but now she sat like a child awaiting an abusive Father.
That is what cancer is….
"An awesome gift to give yourself or a special someone who IS struggling with personal ghosts, & the reality of how cancer can affect family and friends. For all of you facing your ghosts head-on - God bless you and I pray you to overcome them as I have." ~ Donna Allard
Purchase at AMAZON
From Shore to Shoormal is a journey between Acadia’s Shediac Bay and Shetland’s Ninian Sands—a celebration of the poets’ shared
North Atlantic.
Whilst Donna Allard writes on the coastal fringe in New Brunswick, Canada, Nat Hall walks and writes by her shoormal, somewhere on the 60th parallel in her windswept Shetland Islands, Scotland’s most northerly archipelago. “Shore”, as described by J. L. Leprohon in her “Sea Shore Musings” poem, is the Creator’s power—in her own Canadian home, “Mysterious, moaning main,/ in dreams, I’ll see thy snow-white foam”. It’s described by Chile’s bard Pablo Neruda in “No me hagan caso / Forget about Me”, as a place where the sea washes, throws up crab claws and skulls of many kinds …
“Shoormal”, as defined by Robert Alan Jamieson in his Shoormal, A Sequence of Movements (Polygon, 1986): “In Shetland, da shoormal is the shallows on a beach; the space between the tides where the moon weighs the density of the ocean …” that area where sand shifts.
Two voices celebrate their Atlantic connection.
Co-authored with Shetland Island poet Nat Hall
From Shore to Shoormal / D’un rivage à l’autre
Poems in English, French, & Shetland dialect /
Poèmes en mirroirs—anglais–français–dialecte shetlandais
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