Tree Master Workshops
Master Workshop with John Barton
The Tree Reading Series will be running a two-day Master Workshop, organized by Rona Shaffran, Tree’s Co-Director, with Canadian poet John Barton (his bio is below), on Saturday, April 14 and Sunday, April 15, 2012. The workshop runs during the days at Lilipad chalet, a cottage retreat, about 45 minutes by car from Ottawa (participants often team up and drive together). The setting is conducive to discussion and creativity. The food served is delicious and healthy.
The cost of the workshop, including meals, is $250.00.
Rona Shaffran worked with John Barton last spring at Banff’s Poetry Writing Studio, where he was fondly known as Master of the Line.
We have room for 12 people in this workshop. If you would like to participate, please let Kate Hunt know very soon. Her email address is kathrynmhunt@gmail.com Tree will also maintain a waiting list.
To secure your participation, please send your cheque, made out to Tree Reading Series, for $250.00 by Feb. 15, to:
Tree Reading Series,
143-2166 Loyala Avenue,
Ottawa ON K1J 8H5
Lilipad chalet has a few private and shared rooms available for rent, for the first night only of the poetry masterclass. Should anyone wish to stay overnight instead of driving back to Ottawa, please contact Lise Rochefort for further details, prices or to make a reservation. You may reach her at 613-728-3237 or through the Lilipad website at www.lilipad.ca .
For those not staying over, participants arrive in the morning on Saturday, spend the day at the workshop, return home, and arrive again on Sunday morning for the day.
Participants can bring their laptops for poem revisions or USBs with their poems, for use with the one computer we will have on-site. A printer will be available for copies of revised poems.
A description of the workshop and its location follows, along with John Barton’s bio.
SCHEDULE
Saturday April 14 th – Sunday April 15 th 2012
Putting Yourself on the Line
with John Barton
The line shapes the poem, but how does the poem (and the poet) shape the line? How does it influence the larger architecture of the poem? How is it determined by it? Is the line a matter of intuition or of artful consideration, or both? Looking at examples of participants’ work, John Barton will discuss strategies for the line, including length, pace, metrics, and the importance of knowing where the line should break.
Advance preparation: choose a poem of your own to workshop (everyone to bring enough copies for all workshop participants, plus for the instructor). The poem must be no more than thirty lines long.
Saturday April 14 th
9:30-10:00 Meet and greet with bagels and coffee.
10:00-11:30 Lecture by John Barton on the line.
11:30-1:00 Lunch.
1:00-4:30 Workshop, where participants each bring one poem for discussion, with a focus on the line, with strategies for revision proposed by John Barton and the other participants.
Snacks and coffee served.
That evening and during the following afternoon: participants revise their poems based on the feedback they received during the workshop.
Sunday April 15 th
9:30-10:00 Bagels and coffee.
10:00-12:00 Group discussion and questions about the line, with John Barton reading three or four poems of his own to illustrate different line strategies.
Snacks and coffee.
12:00-1:00 Lunch.
1:00-3:00 One- on -one meetings for anyone who's interested (each meeting would be around ten minutes in order to fit in everyone—participants should bring in another poem for the consultation). Participants can also work on revisions of the poems workshopped the day before.
3:00-4:30 Workshop, during which participants share their revisions for final comment.
Snacks and coffee.
4:30 Time to say goodbye.
BIO - JOHN BARTON
John Barton has published nine books of poetry and five chapbooks, including Hypothesis (Ananis, 2001), West of Darkness: Emily Carr, a self-portrait (third edition, BushcekBooks, 2006), and Hymn (Brick, 2009). For the Boy with the Eyes of the Virgin, a selected poems, and Balletomane: The Program Notes of Lincoln Kirstein are forthcoming respectively from Nightwood and Jack Pine Press in 2012. Co-editor of Seminal: The Anthology of Canada’s Gay-Male Poets (Arsenal Pulp, 2007), he has won three Archibald Lampman Awards, an Ottawa Book Award, a CBC Literary Award, and a National Magazine Award. Since 1980, his poems have appeared in anthologies and magazines across Canada and in the United States, Australia, India, and the U.K. He was writer in residence at the Saskatoon Public Library and the University of New Brunswick, and has taught at the Sage Hill Writing Experience and the Banff Centre. He has worked as a librarian and editor for five national museums in Ottawa from 1985 to 2003, where he co-edited Arc Poetry Magazine and Vernissage: The Magazine
