{"id":107266,"date":"2022-07-22T15:27:09","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T19:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/?p=107266"},"modified":"2022-07-22T16:46:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T20:46:50","slug":"lerch-is-a-retired-teacher-who-has-been-living-and-writing-in-sackville-for-26-years-and-served-as-the-towns-poet-laureate-from-2014-to-2018-miller-settled-in-the-town-in-2015-when-he-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/lerch-is-a-retired-teacher-who-has-been-living-and-writing-in-sackville-for-26-years-and-served-as-the-towns-poet-laureate-from-2014-to-2018-miller-settled-in-the-town-in-2015-when-he-star\/","title":{"rendered":"Miller and Lerch\u2019s collaborative poem \u2018Disharmonies\u2019 launches letterpress edition tonight at Struts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poets Marylin Lerch and Geordie Miller started a conversation about their work near the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it turned into a collaboration that is being celebrated tonight, at the launch of Disharmonies<\/em><\/a>, a poem written by both Miller and Lerch and printed here in Sackville by Hardscrabble Press.<\/a><\/p>\n

The gathering starts at 7 p.m. at Struts Gallery, and will be outside, weather permitting.<\/p>\n

CHMA caught up with Lerch and Miller in a shady backyard, with the howling Sackville winds in the background:<\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/CHMA-July-22-Miller-Lerch-conversation.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Here\u2019s Miller and Lerch reading a selection from Disharmonies<\/em>:<\/p>\nhttps:\/\/canada-info.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/CHMA-July-22-Miller-Lerch-reading.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Lerch is a retired teacher who has been living and writing in Sackville for 26 years, and served as the town\u2019s Poet Laureate from 2014 to 2018. Miller settled in the town in 2015, when he started teaching poetry at Mount Allison. He\u2019s also chair of the board for Sappyfest.<\/p>\n

Miller says the collaboration started with Lerch, a mentor, reaching out to find out what Miller was working on.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe asked, are you writing? And what are you writing? And I found I was writing these kind of weird, angry poems, which I guess wasn\u2019t so strange in the fall of 2020,\u201d recalls Miller. \u201cSo we started sharing the poems back and forth\u2026 and it started to gather some momentum and eventually became a book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Disharmonies<\/em> is letterpress printed and sewn together by Keagan Hawthorne, founder and owner of Hardscrabble Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know how things happen in Sackville,\u201d says Lerch. \u201cPeople show up.\u201d Hawthorne is a poet himself, and set up his micro-press shortly after arriving. \u201cHe started almost immediately being part of the literary community,\u201d says Lerch. \u201cAnd he\u2019s very enthusiastic about producing beautiful work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the challenges was how to reproduce the conversation,\u201d says Miller. \u201cKeegan did a wonderful job of laying it out, and there\u2019s a slight difference in the colour of the print, so you can distinguish our voices from one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

From start to finish, Disharmonies<\/em> is a conversation. Miller describes it as on happening \u201cacross generations, but between two like-minded individuals\u2026 About revolution, and about the situation that we find ourselves in.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while the conversation was born within the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic itself is not the thrust of the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cCOVID was an x-ray machine that showed the system,\u201d says Lerch. \u201cIt really was enlightening\u2026 How it was handled and what it did and who it affected and who was making money. All of this indicated the system that holds COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller says he hopes people feel called by the poem. \u201cThese are poems oriented towards, I would say, a revolutionary horizon,\u201d says Miller. \u201cI think that in listening to each other and talking to each other, we learn things from each other. And we hope others can join the conversation as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poets Marylin Lerch and Geordie Miller started a conversation about their work near the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it turned into a collaboration that is being celebrated tonight, at the launch of Disharmonies, a poem written by both Miller and Lerch and printed here in Sackville by Hardscrabble Press. The gathering starts at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":107268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,219],"tags":[17088,17087,17085,17086,5928,3619,5248],"radio":[227],"origine":[274,275,277],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107266"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107332,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107266\/revisions\/107332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107266"},{"taxonomy":"radio","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/radio?post=107266"},{"taxonomy":"origine","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canada-info.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/origine?post=107266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}