Almost a decade ago, poet Susan McMaster and her husband Ian found a beautiful summer home in Minasville on the Fundy shore, where they now spend much of each summer, returning to Ottawa each winters. Susan was the president of the League of Canadian Poets (2011-12), and is the author or editor of some 30 poetry books, anthologies, and periodicals, including recordings with First Draft, SugarBeat, and Geode Music & Poetry. Recent collections completed in Nova Scotia include Haunt>, Lizard Love: Artists scan poems by Susan McMaster, Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (ed.), Paper Affair: Poems Selected & New, and The Gargoyle’s Left Ear: Writing in Ottawa. Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me, which both began and was finished in Minasville, was shortlisted for the the national Acorn-Plantos award and Lampman Poetry Prize, as well as the Ottawa Book Award.
Susan has presented her poetry across Canada and abroad, and broadcast on such shows as WordBeat, Go!, Richardson’s Roundup, As It Happens, and Morningside. Other projects include founding the national feminist and arts magazine Branching Out; writing “Dangerous Graces: Women’s Poetry on Stage” for the Great Canadian Theatre Company, “Dark Galaxies” for the National Arts Centre Atelier, and “Poetry in the Park,” for the summer festival in Ottawa. She organized “Convergence: Poems for Peace”, a millennial project to bring poetry and art from across Canada to all Parliamentarians in 2001. Convergence included a selection by Nova Scotian Carole Glasser Langille.
McMaster enjoys collaboration, and her poetry has inspired works by many artists and composers. She is grateful for a warm welcome into the Nova Scotia literary world through readings arranged by Marc Petersen at the Acoustic Maritime Music Festival (with bassist Alrick Huebener), Heather Pyrcz at Acadia University, Jeannette Lynes at St Francis-Xavier, David Rimmington at the Seahorse Tavern, Susan Sweet and Gwen Frankton at Galley 215, Doris Hagmann at the Avon Emporium, Kelly Bingham at Bing’s Eatery, the jams at the Minasville Community Centre and elsewhere, and Scott Rines and Kennetcook School. In 2006, Susan read her poem, written 25 years earlier, “Today, I turned everything around” and drank a glass of champagne with neighbours and friends and the crew who had just lifted her house up with two cranes, moved it 80 feet, and turned it around so 12 of 17 windows now open to views of the sea.
