I started feeling attracted to poetry in high school and it never went away. I started writing poetry while at the Montmartre Canadien in Quebec City. Each religious had to write for the Sunday bulletin, and my first piece was a prayer for vocations in poetic form. It was like a push to continue. So I did. Whenever I wrote a poem in French or in English, I’d make a version in the other language.

When I was stationed in Brighton, I was working at Babson College as the Catholic chaplain. It was only a part-time job. I had a lot of free time, so I decided to try prose and perhaps begin an autobiography. But then I thought of doing a novel. I sat at my word processor and typed a title—Cold Morning—and continued typing until the novel was complete. I immediately started a second one, Frozen Days, until I’d finished twelve of them. There were three series of four following the seasons and ending with Summer Squalls or the Carousel Caper. Another, October Surprise, is on the way, but that one will have to wait.

Fr. Eugene LaPlante, A.A.

A WRITER REFLECTS -  PDF file