Kick off 2026 with new poetry from two crowd favorites: Trina Daigle and John-Michael Albert! See you at Laney & Lu for the Hoot!
Trina Daigle grew up most of her life in New Hampshire. From Connecticut, she and her family moved to Henniker. Her fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Rogers, handed out the September book order, suggesting a particular paperback, The Arrow Book of Poetry. Trina still has this yellow-paged, dog-eared treasure in her personal library. Many poets she read in her school-age years rocked her world full of imagery and rhythm. Trina graduated from Simmons (when it was still a college for women) and went on to a career of teaching preschool and kindergarten children. Her love for teaching lasted almost 40 years, all the while raising a family and writing. The first introduction to her beloved mentor took place at Water Street Books in Exeter, NH, when Jean Pedrick’s book, Catgut, was featured. Connection between Pat Parnell and Trina was instant. Pat staked claim to her mentee, and Trina held Pat close through their love for family, words, and writing. Pat introduced Trina to writers, musicians, and artists in and around NH and ME. Trina’s gratitude for Pat extended into local poetry circles, workshops, and open mics.
Trina paints with words, creating a flow of sensory, sound, and imagery. Her poems have been published in several journals and anthologies. Her artwork was featured on the cover of Good Fat Zine Vol. 3 Summer 2018. Trina continues to read, perform, and support poets at local open mikes. Her first collection is about to come into light soon…Here with Apricity. Trina lives with her husband, Bob, and their two cats.
John-Michael Albert, called Mike by those who know him, was extremely sensitive to all the poetry prompts and cues that came his way throughout his life. His mother and father were the products of a culture that considered memorizing and reciting poetry essential to a strong education and passed it on to him. In addition to choral readings of poetry in his classrooms, he participated in annual poetry readings throughout his years in elementary school. In high school, he was lucky enough to be alive during the American folk song revival, eagerly learning and singing both traditional and modern folk songs. This is when his earlier experimentation with writing poetry really caught on fire. During his post-college years, he created strong social-consciousness lyrics for new music to be sung by the international members of GALA Choruses, the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses.
Since moving to New Hampshire in 1999, he has participated fully in the large and strong poetry community in the Seacoast region. He has served on the boards of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and JazzMouth: The Portsmouth Poetry and Jazz Festival. He has hosted many monthly poetry readings in Rochester, Dover, Newmarket, and several in Portsmouth, including The Hoot and Beat Night. He has also taught poetry workshops on behalf of SRA, Seacoast Writers Association, WITR: Writers in the Round, PSNH: the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, and ISHRA: the Isles of Shoals Historical and Research Association. He has published 25 poetry-related books, including The Poets’ Guide to New Hampshire: 2008 and 2010 (a collection of 400 poems by 300 poets about all aspects of the state); two 200-page anthologies collected to celebrate his service as the 8th Portsmouth Poet Laureate (The Bird Catcher and Cardamon Cravings); The Light and Air of Our Work (a collection of essays on writing contemporary poetry, created in celebration of his service as an invited leader of the WITR poetry workshop on Star Island); and Portsmouth and Star Island Poems (collected poems presented at an ISHRA reading and poetry writing workshop on Star Island), and Shostakovich and the Beethovens (an 80-page collection of 15 short program notes on Shostakovich’s 15 string quartets, each accompanied by a poem in double-quartet form). His most recent books include Music, Animals, and the 2025 collection, A Gallery of Strong Women. He will be reading from the latter this evening.
