Alison Garwood Jones

When I started this blog, I didn’t know what would happen, what I would say or who would listen. I still don’t.

Last spring, I noticed a spike in my traffic from Québec and it took a while before I realized my posts were lighting up computer screens in dorm rooms at Bishop’s University in the Eastern Townships. Lennoxville, to be exact.

“My students have been talking about your blog in class and asked me to invite you to speak at SWEET, our annual student writing weekend,” Professor Linda Morra told me in an email later that fall. Imagine that, I thought.

Linda’s my kind of gal. She teaches in the Department of English, but combines her love of words with an avid interest in visual arts and cultural studies. Her first book dug into the letters of Emily Carr. Like Vincent van Gogh, Carr shaped her phrases as expertly as she dragged a loaded brush across canvas.

I want to thank Linda, but especially her students, for their enthusiastic support. I look forward to meeting them all next month and to hearing and learning from the talks by the other writers and poets participating, especially Anne Michaels. She’ll be delivering the keynote address.

There’s also poetry slam scheduled. I’ve never been to one of those …