I was very chuffed the other day when I was querying Google AI about a word which I knew was on the Niagara Falls Poetry Project website but isn’t found in many other places. I’d asked the origins of the word, and it came back with some etymological stuff, and I asked it if it had checked my site. It came back and apologized as it hadn’t checked it, but then unprompted wrote “The website is a massive, niche archive curated by a former librarian to catalog poetry specifically about the Niagara region.”
Thanks, AI – I think that’s a lovely description of it. Maybe it should be the tagline.
Niagara Mornings Photographs of Niagara Falls taken by Andrew Porteus over the course of a year, with a selection of Niagara poems
I’ve just been asked by someone visiting the website where a good place is to start when looking at the Niagara poetry. I think maybe a good place would be on the anthologies page, where poems that have been published in various anthologies over the years are listed and linked. Also on the right hand side of each page is a listing of tags – clicking on any of those will give a listing of poems in those various categories.
For new poems added to the website, click on the “Subscribe” link on the right-hand side of the page. You can also follow the Niagara Falls Poetry Project on FaceBook and on BlueSky
The 25th Anniversary Poetry Contest submission period has now finished. Thanks to all of the people who submitted their poems.
Poems came from across North America, with others from the United Kingdom, Sweden, India, Indonesia, and a few that I don’t know where they’re from.
The poems are now going into the judges’ hands for scoring. Once they come back to me I will tally the scores and then be able to announce the winners. The winners’ poems will be added to the website at that point. I don’t envy the judges during the scoring process. There were so many good poems that were entered it will be hard to make a decision.
As the judging is being done I will be selecting and compiling the poems into book format (depending on the size and cost of the book not all entires may necessarily be added to the book). That will be completed after the winners are announced, and the manuscript will be sent to Phylum Press to complete the printing process, with the publication date to be announced later. We will be taking advance orders.
After the book is published the non-winning entries will be added to the website.
Once again, thanks to all of the poets from around the world who entered the contest.
It’s been about 19 years since I arrived in Andrew’s life.
Over that time I’ve watched while he quietly and without a lot of fanfare, acted on his passion for all things Niagara. A few of the many examples to which I saw him dedicate countless hours and energy:
…. His professional life which included being the Local History guru at the Niagara Falls Public Library where he vastly expanded the online collection of text and images important in the life of Niagara Falls, rescuing a number of collections from local photographers and the Niagara Falls Review.
…. Documenting in photos a year in the life of Niagara Falls, with photos taken every morning from the same spot on the Rainbow Bridge. Even on those days he wasn’t working first thing in the morning…weekends, Mondays, Tuesdays, holidays…he’d drive from Fort Erie to Niagara Falls around 8:30 in the morning, pay the bridge’s pedestrian toll, stand on the bridge to take a photo even if it was so foggy you couldn’t see the Falls, then go through customs to get back into Canada. He combined those photos with appropriate poems about the Falls, and 10 years ago published them in a book entitled Niagara Mornings.
….And his most passionate and long-lasting project, searching out, collecting, and recording all the poetry about Niagara Falls or by Niagara area poets on both sides of the border which we are celebrating today. Andrew’s talked about the many aspects of his journey with the Poetry Project, but my view is from behind-the-scenes…the long hours he spent poring over books, chasing copyrights, contacting poets, answering questions from interested readers and so much more.
Thanks you Andrew. for your passion and your dedication to contributing to the common good.
Congratulations on this celebration of 25 years of your enthusiasm and commitment.
Now to finish…
There was a young man from Niagara
Discovered just one rhyme – Viagra
How often, dear sir,
Has this one word occurred
And forced you to post crazy word slaw
Source: Louise Waldie, 2026
Louise Waldie is the retired head of the IT project management office of a major national insurance company, and wife of Andrew Porteus. She has been active for many years on the executive of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Social Club, and as a volunteer personal shopper for people in Northern Canada who do not have access to retail outlets. In their multigenerational complex blended family , Louise and Andrew have 5 children and 11 grandchildren with assorted spouses, and a great-grandchild.
This poem was not received favourably by all readers. In the Cincinnati Mirror a review was published by “G,” presumably the editor William Davis Gallagher. The tone of this review is set in the first sentence: “Upon what principle this production is called a poem, we have not been able to determine” and grudgingly continues “It is true, that it contains occasional good similes, and is not destitute of poetic imagery; and moreover, has one quality of the sublime—being sometimes eminently obscure.”
I’ve added this review in the pictures below, and also added it to this poem’s page on the website (link above).
I invite you to take some time, read the poem and then the review, and decide if G was perhaps a little harsh or right on.
