Poetry Island getaways began when the poet Heather McHugh decided to take a break.
Since the 1970s, she had taught poetry (as Milliman Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington in Seattle, as well as guest lecturer at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Stanford, Berkeley and other graduate poetry programs around the country).
Among her ten published books were finalists for Pulitzer and National Book Awards, a Griffin International Poetry Prize winner, three collections of poetry in translation, and one of literary essays. Her lively classes on the great poets (poets like Shakespeare, Yeats, Dickinson and Stevens) are remembered by thousands of students. Her own poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper's and many other magazines, and have been featured on the Lehrer News Hour and by Garrison Keillor on National Public Radio.
But it was Vancouver Island, with its seaside and snow-caps, its Mediterranean climate and international culture, that would soon prove the best harbor for McHugh's passion for the arts.
A European city edged with snowcapped mountains and Pacific ocean shores, Victoria is an artists' town. If you feel an affinity for the forms and forces of nature, or an impulse toward the arts (visual, musical, culinary et al.) you'll feel at home here.
It is itself a study in paradox, Vancouver Island is a place where, on any given day, you can find orcas and otters at play along one border of a seaside promenade-- and painters, chefs and fine gardeners at work along the other.
You can do a whale watch at noon, an Emily Carr exhibition in the evening, and a jazz club at night (Victoria has been the home of all sorts of artists from its very beginning).
Enjoy snowcaps in July, or palm trees in January.
Bask by a banana plant or a monkey-puzzle tree! Take in the peacocks of Beacon Hill Park, or the Olympic range seen from Dallas Road, or the mimes and magicians at the Inner Harbor, or the horse-drawn carriages, colorful rickshaws and lighted cruise ships along seaside avenues...
There's no better place to come back to poetry, no better poetry to study, and no more enthusiastic guide to it all.
