Cornelia Hoogland – Founder, Artistic Director

Hoogland founded Poetry London in 2004 as a workshop-based reading series in order to address a need for hearing, reading, writing, and sharing poetry in the community. Poetry London has expanded to include writing competitions, poetry slams, off-shoot writing groups, and connections with other city arts organizations. Woods Wolf Girl, Hoogland’s fifth book of poetry, based on the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood, is forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn in 2011. Her poetry has been shortlisted five times for the CBC literary awards; the list includes nominations for selections from Cuba Journal (Black Moss Press, 2003) as well as her second and third books of poetry, You Are Home (Black Moss Press, 2001) and Marrying the Animals (Brick Books, 1995). She teaches in the graduate program at the Faculty of Education at the University of Western Ontario.

Karen Schindler – Co-director


Karen Schindler has been with Poetry London since its second year. As co-director, her roles include poet liaison, bookkeeper, grant writer, and website coordinator. She has a Masters in Chemical Engineering, plus a degree in mathematics and science education. A previously latent passion for poetry and literature has recently led her to pursue an English degree at the University of Western Ontario. Her poetry and review have been published in the Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead, and the Windsor ReView, and she was shortlisted for the 2008 CBC literary awards.

Carolyn Doyle – Host Librarian


Carolyn Doyle has proudly worked for almost 30 years in public libraries. She is the Supervisor of the Landon Branch Library, London Public Library, in the heart of Wortley Village. She graduated from Huron College with a degree in Honours History and from Western with a Masters degree in Library and Information Science. Carolyn particularly enjoys opportunities to engage diverse communities in the exploration of the world of reading and the arts.

Michelle Doege – Workshop Facilitator


Michelle Doege is this year’s Poetry London workshop facilitator. She is also a writer, lover of poetry, and college professor of English, Women’s Studies, and Canadian Diversity at Fanshawe College. Since her earliest recollections, the power of poetry to reflect back the wisdom and deeper meaning of life within such limited language and space has captured her attention and continues to add depth, power and passion to her own daily existence. She is currently writing a series of poems that reflect on the concept of “home,” and her work has appeared in several small publications in the U.S. (her former “home”).

Christine Walde - Special Events

Christine Walde has been published in a variety of Canadian literary publications for both her fiction and non-fiction, including Descant, The New Quarterly, Quill and Quire, and The Globe and Mail. Her first critically-acclaimed novel for young adults, The Candy Darlings, was published by Houghton Mifflin in the US in 2006 and by Penguin Canada in 2007. She has poetry forthcoming in The Antigonish Review, and was most recently published in Plath Profiles, an international interdisciplinary on-line journal dedicated to Sylvia Plath. In 2008, she was shortlisted for the Descant/Winston Collins Award for Best Canadian Poem for a piece from her work-in-progress Two Campers in Cloud Country, an exploratory poetry project about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ 1959 trip through Canada. She is currently writing her second novel for young adults, Tag, about an underground group of graffiti artists. Walde is the 2009/2010 Writer in Residence at the Windermere Manor. She is proud to have been part of the Poetry London Committee since 2006.