Poet Karen Enns will do a reading of her work at Redeemer on November 19. In addition to a reading, Enns will sign books and interact in a question-and-answer session with students, professors and others from the community.

Enns’ first book of poetry, That Other Beauty, was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award. Her focus is the beauty present to us in almost every moment, however mundane or apparently lost. Her argument is that the act of attention itself is the most fundamental of these beauties. In her next book of poetry, Ordinary Hours, Enns revisits her rural Mennonite childhood and explores the Mennonite exodus from Russia, tracking its faint but unmistakable reverberations in the daily lives of its survivors.

Since 2001, thanks mainly to an annual grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, and in collaboration with the Hamilton Poetry Centre, we have had the honour at Redeemer University College of hosting a number of Canadian poets, both well-established and rising stars, from all across Canada. For students to meet these poets “in the flesh” and find out from their own lips about their working styles, their philosophies, their influences, their hopes, and their struggles has always been exciting and encouraging, and often eye-opening. We’re told, too, that the poets love coming to Redeemer – that they have really appreciated the warmth of their reception here, the attentive audiences, the intelligent questions, and that they have spread the word in the literary community across Canada that Redeemer is a good gig to get. Poetry is alive and well in Canada, and has lots to say!

Learn more about poetry readings at Redeemer