The Envoy 099

THE ENVOY The official newsletter of the

Canada Cuba Literary Alliance I.S.S.N. – 1911‐0693

June, 2020 Issue 099 www.CanadaCubaLiteraryAlliance.org

John B. Lee

Miriam E. Vera Delgado

On the Occasion of the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance Poets Laureate Appointments MSc Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias Associate Professor, Holguín University CCLA Cuban President May 2020 was a month of joyful celebration and announcements for the Canada Cuba Literary Alliance (CCLA). One of them is that poets John B. Lee, from Canada, and Miriam Vera, from Cuba, have been appointed CCLA Poets Laureate (PL). The original idea came from our founding President, Richard Grove, who is always searching – and finding – ways to encourage, praise and honour writers´ and artists´ dedication to literature and art. In a period of festivity for the fifteen years of the CCLA foundation that started in 2018 with the exclusive “The Ambassador”, Volume 15, a book of reviews entitled “In a Fragile Moment: A Landscape of Canadian Poetry” published by Hidden Brook Press in early 2020 dedicated to Canadian poetry, “The Envoy” 99, also in 2020, and the upcoming fifth edition of the Bridges Series book in 2021, Grove justly thought it was necessary and gratifying to have our own CCLA PL. Thus Lee and Vera are the first PL in CCLA history. The dictionary registers PL as “a poet honored for achievement in his or her art.” So aptly stated! Lee and Miriam have left a legacy of fine poetry within