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2026-10-16T00:00:00-04:00
Stratford Writers Festival Poetry Stratford Panel Discusses event with Melanie Kindrachuk

Poetry Stratford Panel Discusses: The Search for Self

September 26 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm

| FREE

 

“…Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart’s knowledge”.
– from “On Self-Knowledge” by Kahlil Gibran

“…Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
– from “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

Join local poets Faera Lane, Mary Maika, Arlo J. Dunnem and Jack Nahrgang, as they share with you their poems about self-discovery. After each reading you are invited to share your thoughts. Chaired by Jack Nahrgang, the panel invites each of you to bring a poem on the same theme to share as time allows. It can either be one you’ve written or a favorite poem by someone else. You may either read your poem, or one of us will be happy to read it on your behalf. You can also simply come and listen! This event will be live-streamed thanks to our sponsor Nearstream.

 

 

 

ABOUT ARLO DUNNEM
Arlo J. Dunnem is Stratford’s Youth Poet Laureate. He is going into the 12th grade at Stratford District Secondary School.  He started writing poetry about two years ago after his grandmother published her own book of poetry, Tangled Thoughts. One of his poems, “Gatsby’s Green Light” won a Gold Key for the Region-at-Large Canada in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.

 

ABOUT FAERA (FAY) LANE

Winner of two Judges’ Choice awards in the 2026 Every Voice poetry contest, Faera Lane is a writer and artist whose work draws inspiration from lived experiences and the wicked world of horror, fantasy, and folktales she raised herself on. By daylight, she sleeps in a coffin with two cats. By moonlight, she toils as a freelance book cover designer and aspiring cryptid.

 

ABOUT JACK NAHRGANG

After 28 years of herding high school students through the thickets and briars of poetry, Jack Nahrgang has embraced the life of a solivagant poetic wanderer! His prose entry “It Should Have Been Skates” garnered second place in the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries 2006 contest, “Telling Our Stories.” Locally, Jack’s poems have appeared in Canada is Our Poem (2025) and Roots Through Stone: Poems of Strength and Resilience (2026). He was an instructor for the New Teacher Induction program and the recipient of the Finlay G. Stewart Award for Teaching Excellence in Waterloo County. But poetry? It rocks!

 

ABOUT MARY MAIKA
Mary Maika participates monthly in open mic events in Stratford, London, and other Southwestern Ontario venues. Poems have been published in: “The Minimalist Eye” (St. Marys Station Gallery 2022), “12 Poems for Winter”, (St. Marys Poetry Circle 2025) and in editions of “Verse Afire”, a Canadian Poetry Magazine (The Ontario Poetry Society and Beret Days Press), “Sowing Seeds of Gold, A Canadian Anthology of Verse 2025”, (T.O.P.S.), and most recently in “Roots Through Stone – Poems of Strength and Resilience 2026” (Destination Stratford and Stratford Public Library).

 

 

RESERVE YOUR FREE SPOT by registering with Melanie Kindrachuk: mkindrachuk@splibrary.ca

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Stratford Writers Festival

At the Stratford Writers Festival, we invite readers and writers to come together to experience stories – and meet the authors – through intimate and interactive events which can only be held in Canada’s Premiere Arts Town of Stratford, Ontario.

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