UPEI Professor Emeritus launches book of poems for a lost time
A new book of poetry titled The Geography of Home: Poems for a Lost Time, by Dr. Edward MacDonald, Professor Emeritus of history at UPEI, will be launched on September 7, 2025, at 2 pm, in the Faculty Lounge (Room 201), SDU Main Building, UPEI.
Through the poems in the book, MacDonald traces rural Prince Edward Island where he grew up from the late 1950s through the early 1970s—a landscape on the cusp of far-reaching change.
In the introduction, he writes that “home is a place in the heart. It is part actual and part invented, part remembered and part reconstructed, part learned and part inherited.”
He goes on to say the depiction of an era offered in the book is a mixed-media portrait, combining prose and poetry, history and memory. Each poem takes as its touchstone a place, person, or practice and is paired with a short reflection that unpacks facets of the culture being explored. Archival photos woven throughout add another layer to this portrait.
MacDonald writes that while history attempts to trace changes over time, “memories are the little, coloured stones that we collect to assemble a mosaic of our lived past.”
The Geography of Home is published by Island Studies Press with the support of a SSHRC Exchange Publication Award from the Office of the Vice-President, Academic and Research at UPEI. Island Studies Press thanks Dr. Marva Sweeney-Nixon, associate vice-president research and dean of graduate studies at UPEI, for supporting faculty publications.
MacDonald is the author of If You’re Strong-hearted: Prince Edward Island in the Twentieth Century and co-author of The Summer Trade: A History of Tourism on Prince Edward Island, and has written, compiled, or co-edited nine other books. In 2023–2024, he was appointed to the Order of Canada and then the Order of Prince Edward Island for his work as an Island historian and teacher.
The event is free, and all are welcome. Thanks to the Bookmark, books will be available for purchase. For more information, contact Bren Simmers at Island Studies Press, 902-566-0386 or ispstaff@upei.ca.
