Island poet David Hickey gives reading March 24

P.E.I. poet David Hickey, whose collection In the Lights of a Midnight Plow was a finalist for the Lampert Award for best first Canadian poetry book, will read from his work on Tuesday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m. in the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.

The reading is co-sponsored by the UPEI English Department and Art Gallery, with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Hickey, now a Ph.D. student in English literature at the University of Western Ontario, spent part of his childhood in Labrador and the north shore of Quebec, but identifies most strongly with his Island home. Showing his literary gifts early, as an Honours English and Creative Writing student at UPEI, he won the Milton Acorn Poetry Competition in the Island Literary Awards, and represented P.E.I. as a young artist at the Canada Winter Games in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland.

Many of his poems vividly evoke the P.E.I. landscape and heritage, and poignantly share his experience of growing up on an Island poised between its traditions and inexorable change. In 'Evening at the Charlottetown Airport,' he shows us his aging grandfather, perplexed by the lights and tarmac 'seeded' where his farm used to. A poem about Elephant Rock chronicles the mythology and erosion of that landmark. His poetry also ventures into other legends, such as that of Ted Williams, the great baseball hitter who spent summers fishing on the Miramichi River, and whose body was cryogenically frozen for future DNA access.

Also reading that evening will be Jeffery Donaldson, poet, critic, and professor of English literature at McMaster University. Donaldson's books include Once Out of Nature, Waterglass, and his recent Palilalia (the repetition or echoing of one's own spoken words). Toronto-born, Donaldson lives on the Niagara Escarpment near Grimsby, Ontario.