Bill McLaughlin, an outstanding poet and filmmaker, will be remembered during a poetry reading 2 p.m., Sunday March 30 at Bogart’s Book Store, 1020 North High Street. Admission is free.

The program features fellow poet and friend, Mark Soifer, who will read from McLaughlin’s Book, “Conspiracies of Love and Death” published by Ohio State University Press in 1970. McLauglin died in an automobile accident a few months before the book was released.

Soifer will also read poems from his newest book, “It’s about Time” and show enlarged replicas of his visual poems.

McLaughlin and Soifer were founding members of Contemporary Poets of South Jersey, a group that met at Pat Witt’s Barn Studio of Art in Millville. A.R. Ammons, who became one of the major poets of the 20th Century, was also a member of the group.

Ammons was impressed with Mc Laughlin’s writing and recommended his manuscript to Ohio State University Press. The editors accepted it immediately.

“Ammons, who became a revered professor at Cornell University, was also a perceptive critic and recognized the unique quality of Bill’s poetry,” said Soifer. “Bill wrote about his every day experiences. His poems described migrant workers farming in the fields, the clients he counseled at his job in the Unemployment Office, his admiration for the great rock-soul singer, Janis Joplin.”

Mc Laughlin had a keen interest in pop culture and according to Soifer was the first to produce dramatic music films, the forerunner to today’s music videos.

“He used a 35 millimeter camera and would film us acting out recordings of some of his favorite songs like Simon and Garfunkle’s “Most Peculiar Man.” Nobody was doing that back then. He was ahead of his time in both writing and filming,” said Soifer.

McLaughlin was a graduate of Sacred Heart High School in Vineland where he played varsity basketball, wrote a weekly pop music column for the local newspaper and starred in a production of Victor Herbert’s, the Red Mill.

He was a 1964 graduate of St. Joseph University with a degree in English. During this period he worked as a disc jockey and was a featured columnist in the student newspaper. At the time of his death, he was working on a novel, had written over 100 poems, composed several rock songs and had produced six experimental film shorts.

Soifer has written seven books of poetry, a light verse tale and many short stories. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, in the Op- Ed section of the New York Times, Readers Digest and Public Broadcasting publications. He has been the public relations director of Ocean City for 37 years.