Poetry Reading and Book Launch
Of Place and Memory: A Poetic Journey
John J. Guiney Yallop
Acadia University Club
Thursday, April 14, 2011
4:00 to 6:30
Cash Bar; Snacks Provided
Readers who pick up this book might ask if this is a collection of poetry, a memoir, or a report of educational research. It is all that and more. What John Guiney Yallop has accomplished in this text demonstrates the importance of the passionate and the particular in education. As he argues, “Education needs to be less about telling and more about experiencing, less about making lists and more about making connections . . . .The emotions need to be more present, and more valued, in education—and understood as intelligent” (p. 12). His book shows us just how this might be done.
(Rebecca Luce-Kapler, Kingston, Ontario – from the Foreword)
The poems are bounded by insightful and corroborating guidance for readers interested in exploring what poetic inquiry 'looks like' within the Humanities generally, gender and masculinities studies, Faculties of Education, Faculties of Theology, and the broader literary communities. Guiney Yallop's presentations of his poetry have been enthusiastically received coast-to-coast. His is a startlingly fresh, new, voice. Read this book.
(Cornelia Hoogland, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario)
Of Place and Memory will appeal to scholars and educators in education and creative writing and the social sciences, but it will also appeal to readers who are not part of academic circles. The book can be read as a collection of poems that sing out in a sustained and engaging voice, or it can be read as an insightful discussion of research methodologies in the social sciences, or it can be read as an engaging memoir that touches the imagination and heart, or it can be read as the moving testimony of a gay educator who has lived his whole life in the haunting and holy pursuit of language and literacy as democratic and just. It can be read in numerous ways, but it cannot be ignored. John J. Guiney Yallop has composed a compelling book that, by its creative contravention of cliché and convention, calls us together to critical conversation. This book is a singular gift!
(Carl Leggo, Professor, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia)
Now available through the Acadia University Bookstore, your local bookstore or directly from the publisher, Backalong Books, at http://www.backalongbooks.com/
