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From one year to a lifetime. Most often the term is for two or three years.

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There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.

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Poet Laureate Map of Canada

E.D. Blodgett

Poet Laureate of Edmonton, Alberta
2008 - 2009

E.D. Blodgett, FRSC, is University Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta, and he is currently teaching at Grant MacEwan College and the Campus Saint-Jean where he is professeur auxiliaire in Études canadiennes. His research has varied from mediaeval European romance to Canadian Comparative Literature. His publications include Five-Part Invention: A History of Literary History in Canada (Toronto University Press, 2003) and Elegy (University of Alberta Press, 2005). He has published 17 books of poetry, of which 2 have been awarded the Governor General’s Award. He is preparing two others. A bilingual of his French poems, Le poème invisible, will be published in 2008.

Untitled

Each of them thought that they
had formed a row of trees
that stood beside a road

they merely had to start
by holding their arms out straight
and stare at nothing at all

the world emptied before
their eyes until the sun
and sky had disappeared

they stood this way for years
one day soldiers walked
beneath them and thought that they

were beautiful and old
they hung their prisoners
from branches above the road

after they had left
the trees opened their eyes
death hung from their arms

they saw the sky again
and saw the sun was dark
and thought that they were blind

now they carry death
along the quiet roads
and have no place to go

Published Works

Apostrophes VI
University of Alberta Press

Links of Interest

Edmonton Poet Laureate Web site