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.
