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Eric Folsom selected as Kingston's first Poet Laureate !

Kingston has achieved a “first.” Council has approved the appointment of our city’s first Poet Laureate. Congratulations to Eric Folsom who came to Kingston in 1974 and, since that time, has been at the centre of Kingston’s literary life. And many thanks to the members of the Arts Advisory Committee who worked hard over the last three years first to see the position established, and then filled.

Folsom was an editor for Quarry Magazine and he has also taught at The Upper Canada Writers’ Workshop, St. Lawrence College and in the Limestone District school system. For seven years he organized and hosted a reading series, Cargo Kulture, which brought poets from across Canada to Kingston. He also single-handedly ran the literary quarterly, Next Exit, giving voice to several generations of emerging writers.

Folsom is an energetic and well respected citizen on the Canadian literary scene. He has been Ontario representative for The League of Canadian Poets, reviewed books, and read on Stuart McLean’s The Vinyl Café. He was short-listed for the CBC Literary Awards and has attended the prestigious Banff Centre for the Arts.

He has published three volumes of poetry, Poems for Little Cataraqui, What Kind of Love Did You Have in Mind?, Icon Driven, as well as a chapbook Northeastern Anti-Ghazals. His work has been published widely in Canadian literary journals, is collected in many anthologies, including Crossing Lines (2009) most recently.


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