Join Ron Romanowski for the launch of Heart Blooms from the Gardener Poet: Flora Fauna Ecology Politics: New and Selected Poems, 1998-2023 (Augustine Hand Press), presented as part of the 2023 MayWorks Festival of Labour and the Arts.

The launch will be hosted live in the Atrium of McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park and also available as a simultaneous YouTube stream featuring live chat (link TK). The video will be available for viewing thereafter. Before arriving, please review details of how to attend physical events here at the store.

Heart Blooms from the Gardener Poet is Ron Romanowski’s sympathetic and political call to value and protect the natural world. After reading Rachel Carson’s seminal environmental work Silent Spring Ron started an environmental action club in High School in 1971. He was the one and only active member. Now we know that there were many concerned activists at the time, but now there are many multitudes. Billions know we must save our environment. His method are these poems which celebrate nature, and an alternative politics, Our planet is a garden which yet can be saved. Poetry is his action. Nothing can be done without Poetry.

Heart Blooms from the Gardener Poet is avant-garde writer Ron Romanowski’s 9th poetry collection. His first, Sweet Talking, was published in 2004. His 8th book was If 30,000 Strikers Marched Today in commemoration of the centennial of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. His work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and has been read on national CBC Radio. Recently he won the Gimli Icelandic Festival and the Lake Winnipeg Writers’ Group poetry contests. His work continues to find beauty of vulnerability in the natural world and hope in an alternative politics for our planet in a challenging, entertaining, and often humorous manner. Ron tends gardens in both Winnipeg and Grand Marais, Manitoba.