PUTTING YOURSELF ON PAPER

TUES MAR 10

7.30p.m.-9.00p.m. Newcomer Learning Centre, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

Our guest Lise Lévesque will speak of the joys and pitfalls of crafting a memoir. Her intention is to compare her own process to that of writing a novel.

Montreal-born Lise Lévesque worked in the fields of travel, communication, education and mental health. A graduate of the McMaster`s Writing Program, she thrives on travelling, research, reading and writing. Her stories have been published in anthologies such as Main Street, In the Wings, Brought to Light and Engraved. At present she is putting the final touches on her memoir entitled On the Way to the Lilac Garden.

WRITING COLLABORATIONS with GARY BARWIN

Tuesday FEB 11

7.30p.m., Newcomer Learning Centre, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist and the author of twenty-four books of poetry, fiction and books for children. His work includes many collaborations works with writers as well as with other artforms. His latest books include A Cemetery for Holes, a poetry collaboration with Tom Prime (Gordon Hill, Fall 2019) and For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, Fall 2019.) His national bestselling novel Yiddish for Pirates (Random House Canada) won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour as well as the Canadian Jewish Literary Award (Fiction) and the Hamilton Book Award (Fiction). It was also a finalist for both the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. A new novel, Don’t Fence Me In will appear from Random House in 2021. Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at several universities and public libraries and is currently writer-in-residence at the University of Toronto (Scarborough Campus) as well as faculty at the Banff Centre for the Arts. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and at garybarwin.com

THE RULES OF POETRY (there are no rules) with ROSS BELOT

TUES JAN 14

7.30p.m.-9.00p.m.

Newcomer Learning Centre, 4th floor,

Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library 

Often people, especially in workshops, talk about rules about writing poetry as if there is some official code written down somewhere. We will take a stab at developing a list of the rules. Ross will bring examples anticipating the rules people have and where the rules are successfully ignored. We will talk about how the poem itself has its own rules it wants to follow rather than ones the poetry police want to enforce.

Ross Belot has lived in Hamilton most of his life. He still does some of the time. He used to work for the oil industry while writing poetry. Now he collects a pension from them while writing poetry. He was a finalist for the 2016 CBC poetry prize and was also long listed for that prize in 2018. His work was selected for Best in Canadian Poetry 2013. He started writing seriously back in 2000 with the McMaster Creative Writing Program. He received an MFA in Creative Writing in 2017 from St Mary’s College of California. His second collection, Moving to Climate Change Hours, is forthcoming in the spring from Wolsak and Wynn. His first collection, Swimming in the Dark, was published by Black Moss Press in 2008.

SHARING OUR STORIES IN DECEMBER

TUES DEC 10
7.30p.m.-9.00p.m., Newcomer Learning Centre, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

As it is our annual tradition at LitChat, everyone is invited to bring a story to read. It may be one that you have written yourself or one of your favourite stories that you would like to share with us, to warm up a wintry evening among friends. The story you choose to read does not have to be about Christmas.

TAKING ON AN ICON: TURNING AN ARTIST INTO A CHARACTER

TUES NOV 12

7.30p.m.-9.00p.m., Newcomer Learning Centre, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library

SALLY COOPER writes essays, fiction and screenplays. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The Globe and Mail, Electric Literature, The Million, and TNQ: The New Quarterly. Her recently published fourth novel, With My Back to the World (Wolsak & Wynn, 2019) features iconic abstract painter, Agnes Martin, as a character. 

                                                         

LIVING METAPHORICALLY

TUES OCT 8
7.30p.m., Newcomer Learning Centre, 4th floor, Central Branch, Hamilton Public Library.
JEFFERY DONALDSON has recently celebrated his thirtieth year in the English department at McMaster.  A poet and critic, he has consolidated this two-spirited career around a particular attention to metaphor and metaphoric thinking in the humanities and the sciences.  Author of six volumes of poetry, he published his book length study on metaphor (Missing Link:  the Evolution of Metaphor and the Metaphor of Evolution) with McGill-Queen’s in 2015.  A recent selection of notebook entries entitled Viaticum was published this spring with Porcupine’s Quill.