Location (grandparent | parent| this page): RodMer Arts Home Page | RodMer Poetry Room | About RodMer Poetry Room
The RodMer Poetry Room is part of the website of RodMer Arts run by Rod Anderson and Merike Lugus. Other sections of the RodMer website include the Merike Lugus Art Gallery on the Web (paintings and sculptures by Merike), the RodMer Short Story Room (short stories by Rod and Merike), Rod's Music Website, and our electronic Open House at SwallowHill (run by us on behalf of the owners -- one successful dog and six amazing cats). For more info on RodMer Arts see the RodMer Home Page.
Some 125 of our poems -- some long, mostly short (i.e., usually a page or less each). These 125 poems are arranged into six packages (A to F). You can (a) select and read any individual poem immediately on-line and/or (b) download any of the 6 packages (each containing between 2 and 26 poems) -- in rtf (rich text format).
The subject matter of the poems varies from love to science to dogs to surreality to wordplay with many other detours along the way. We try to give you a general idea of the type and length in each package, and you can also scan the first lines -- to decide what areas (if any) might appeal to you. And, of course, you can surf around reading as many as you want on-line.
All the downloadable poetry packages on this site are free (We need the exposure (;-) ), but we retain copyright.
Yeah, well they're not household names. What can we say?
Merike was born in Tallinn, Estonia -- and almost immediately was evacuated and spent the war years as an infant being carried through Germany to escape the Russians. After a brief stay in Sweden following the end of the war her family moved to Canada. She graduated from the University of Toronto in General Arts and then took her MA in sociology. While raising her two daughters she became interested in art and spent the next 30 years as a painter. In the last 4 or 5 years she has turned to sculpture. She has had shows in Vienna, Toronto, Stratford, Cobourg, and Bellingham WA. In between, she has found some time for writing. Her poetry has been published in Room of One's Own and Poetry Toronto. She has had public readings of her work in Toronto and (closer to her present home) in Gore's Landing north of Cobourg. Her article "Artist as Woman" was the lead article many years ago in City Woman. A more recent article on art has been "Brush with Disorder". She is also a passionate gardener (her sculpture garden was included on a recent tour of the Civic Garden Centre from Toronto) and has been written up in Patricia Singer's 1996 book The Good Garden Guide. Merike's book of poetry Ophelia After Centuries of Trying was published by watershedBooks, Toronto, in 1998. Merike is a member of the Canadian League of Poets.
Rod was born in Toronto, graduated from the University of Toronto in Chemistry, and spent the next 28 years passing myself off as a chartered accountant with Clarkson Gordon (now Ernst & Young), latterly as managing partner of their Toronto office. In 1983 I left that profession to spend full time writing poetry, short stories, reviews, opera libretti, and, since 1994, composing music. Some people just can't decide what to do. His sole (yes only one) volume of poetry to date, Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow , was published by Wolsak and Wynn in 1989. Actually, his earliest published poem was in his school magazine at the age of 11. (It was awful!) Five years later he was the editor of that magazine. Subsequently he served as Co-Editor of the Trinity Review at Trinity College in the University of Toronto, where a number of his poems also appeared. He won first prize for poetry in the Cross-Canada Writers' Writing Competition in 1988. His poems have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Cross-Canada Writers' Magazine, DIS-EASE, Fiddlehead, Germination, Grain, Implosion, Matrix, Museletter, Poetry Canada Review, Poetry Toronto, Quarry Magazine, Toronto Life, The Toronto Sun, Waves, and Zymergy and in three anthologies: Garden Varieties, The Dry Wells of India, and More Garden Varieties. His three-act opera libretto Mario and the Magician (composed by Harry Somers) was performed by the Canadian Opera Company at the Elgin Theatre in Toronto in 1992. Rod is a member of the Canadian League of Poets.
Rod and Merike live in a farmhouse outside Cobourg, where they serve as caretakers and dooropeners for the owners: one successful dog (Laijka) and six amazing cats. You can find out more about their lifestyle from their electronic open house at SwallowHill
For more detailed info (if you must), see their CVs [Rod's and Merike's].
Yup. The RodMer Poetry Room contains only poems by Merike and Rod -- shameless self-promotion, we know, but, hey, we're not publishers. However, you can find some pointers to other poetry sites on our Links page.
Well, we know many people hate reading on computer screens and, if that applies to you, you should download instead the rich text format (rtf) file and print it out on your printer. But it is possible to read large files comfortably on your computer screen if you have a large monitor, and set the type face nice and large in your web browser. We've been gradually learning how to wean ourselves off paper. Make your printer last longer, save on paper costs, and save a few trees. Besides, the html document allows you to navigate comfortably from the Table of Contents directly to the poem you are looking for -- or to do a word search if you remember some phrase but can't remember the title of the poem in which it occurred. And you can see us smiling at you. Some day we may all do a lot more reading on web browsers -- perhaps when monitors have metamorphosed into flat 'boards' you can hold comfortably in your hand while you sit on the chesterfield sipping cognac. Who knows?
rtf is 'rich text format'. It is readable in most word processors.