'I'm extremely grateful': Parliament's poet laureate visiting P.E.I.

Canada's Parliamentary poet laureate George Elliott Clarkewill present his work, talk poetry and meet with the public in Charlottetown on Thursday.

Though he's been to the province before and even written a poem about P.E.I.'s National Park this is Clarke's first visit as national poet laureate.

"I'm extremely grateful for this invitation to come to Charlottetown," says Clarke.

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As well as holding the honoured position of poet laureate, Clarke is a professor of African-Canadian literature at the University of Toronto and has published several books.

'I'm thrilled ... to get to P.E.I.'

He's been to many places since the position was awarded to him two years ago, but never found the time to touch down in P.E.I.

"I realized relatively late in my mandate that I've been to most of Canada in my two years but I hadn't really made an effort to try and get to every province and every territory."

"I'm thrilled that I'm finally going to have the chance, as national poet laureate, to get to P.E.I."

Clarke is the seventh parliamentary poet laureate and he's on P.E.I. to sharehis work specifically his poem Canticles I which dealswith slavery and imperialism read some poetryand meet the general public.

Confederation Centre Art Gallery, 7 p.m.

"I'm interested in meeting or seeing again P.E.I. based poets and of course members of the general public who are interested in poetry, love poetry and will want to hear the current national poet laureate read some poems," Clarke said.

The meet, greet and readis being hosted by the PEI Writers' Guild andbegins Thursday 7 p.m. at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown.

Admission is free and all are welcome.

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