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Hello there!

In June 2020, much of the world still lives with social distancing or isolation as the new realities.

What is the situation in your neighbourhood? Here in Ontario, Canada, most regions have been allowed to open up to “Stage 2.” This provides more freedoms but more need for individual decisions, like:

• To mask or not to mask?
• Who should be in my “bubble”?
• Should I hug my son, who works in an essential service and interacts with the public every work day?

For a while I resisted writing about COVID-19. I already felt inundated with the pandemic, everyone was writing about it, talking about it, posting about it… What was one more voice?

Well, what are artists for, if not to hold up a mirror to the world and reflect it back to itself? A piece of art can help express, clarify and illuminate what’s going on.

So after all, I decided to write about aspects of the pandemic from my point of view. Events continue to unfold, but these five poems reflect what struck me – and possibly you too – during the month of April. The photographs that accompany the words show the view from inside my house looking out, which is where most of us found ourselves that month.

I offer these five pieces of my “Poetry Art” to you, because I hope that you’ll find within them a familiar feeling, or maybe words you have wanted to express but didn’t quite know how.

May you and yours stay healthy in the upcoming months!

Lee Ann

Five Pandemic Poems:

• None of Us Sang
• Isolation, Day 45: Re-framing the View
• What the Virus Wants
• Isolation, Day 53: In Which I Encounter Magical Wisdom
• Vaccine

I’ve said many times that book stores are not the only place to sell books. Modern book marketing includes a careful analysis of the target market and some creative thinking about where those readers hang out. So: gift stores, tourist attractions, farmers’ markets, club meetings and events relating to the subject of a book – festivals and gatherings of all kinds – now often include author readings, or a table of enticing new books on offer that relate to the place or event.

What’s more, publishers are not the only people who distribute and sell books. Authors, even well-established, famous authors, have to actively initiate promotional activities, supplementing a publisher’s sometimes meagre promotional budget.

But when readers take on the role of promoting and placing a book in the reaches of potential readers, well, that’s a gift most authors and publishers only dream of!

Copies of Muskoka’s Main Street recently made their way to the staff room of the Almaguin Highlands Secondary School, courtesy of my friend Pam’s daughter-in-law Rae-Ann. Rae is a teacher at the school, which sits between Sundridge and South River, just east of the Muskoka Road in Parry Sound District. As they are neighbours to Muskoka, Rae feels that some fo the staff will certainly take an interest in the book. She even asked me for some promotional material to set up as part of the display, and I happily sent her a map which shows the location of the Muskoka Road.

Previously, thanks to the efforts of the publisher, copies of Main Street had made it as far as Burk’s Falls. Like the road itself, the book has now pushed a little farther north. I’m very excited about that!

Thank you, Pam! Thank you, Rae!