Poems from the Road Less Taken
John Leunissen taught for three decades in Ontario, then took a posting in Colombia and stayed. This is what happened there.
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Colombia in the early 2000s wasn't on anyone's shortlist. John went anyway, for a teaching post, and found beaches worth the bus ride, cities with four hundred years behind them, and a community that made space for him when the country at large didn't. He was rushed out of a funeral once because of who else was in attendance. He kept going back.
Poetry, 2005
A collection written across years of travel and teaching. Short pieces about places, people, and the pull to keep moving.
About the Author
John Leunissen was born in Holland and came to Canada with his parents in 1952. He studied at York University and spent thirty years teaching in Ontario classrooms before accepting a post in Colombia, a country most people at the time were told to avoid. He stayed two years. He's been going back in one form or another ever since, through the poems he published in 2005 and now through the memoir.
When he isn't writing, he draws and paints in watercolour. He's a regular at the theatre and will talk about film with anyone who lets him. He has always pushed people to read more, travel further, and pick the country nobody else picks.
He lives in Toronto with his partner of twenty-five years, whom he met in Colombia and who is the reason most of these stories exist.
