John Barton was the feature reader at Tree yesterday. Well-published and well-recognized Barton’s latest Hymn was for sale, with his collected to come out later this year.
He shared various stories, often with a comic twist and/or local spin, thru form poems, pantoum thru spencerian stanza. The constraints of meter and length can cause an inspiration, musicality and tightness if spun right. Some of his poems were as evidenced by the little happy oohs popping up around the room. Here’s an audio sample of him reading from Hymn.
Now based in Victoria and editor for the Malahat Review, he was a long time Ottawa resident and edited Arc magazine for 13 years. He’s also become something of a collector of literary awards [poem links and interview there as well] and has done his share of mentoring over the years as well.
He’s seen a lot of Canada, between book tours and being raised in Calgary and recently being writer-in-residence in Fredericton.
He spoke some of being in the middle of blocks of his own family history. His family arrived in Nova Scotia in the 1830s. By coincidence the segment of the night that honours poetic pillars was on Alden Nowlan, also of Nova Scotia. Both David Blaikie who gave the talk on Nowlan and Barton spent time at Nowlan’s Fredericton house, although Blaikie did so when he and Nowlan were reporters in the 1960s (when Bread, Wine and Salt was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Poetry) and Barton decades later when what was his residence had been converted into a university student pub.
David Blaikie talking about Nowlan and sharing a couple poems.
In another cross-connection, Nowlan is buried beside Bliss Carmen who was a cohort of Barton’s great-grandmother, living within a couple blocks. They would have likely known each other. Which only goes to show the size of poetry — go in any direction in time or space in Canada and you run into a poet.
Barton will the be leading the Tree Masterclass retreat this weekend, April 14-15th. He will be focussing the group’s attention on the line which is not to say cleave off tidy end-stopped lines but tension and structure and possibilities for it. (As of earlier yesterday there was still one opening available for the capped at 1-dozen-students workshop.)
Tree always has a table for books to sell but this week and in 2 weeks time, there’s a second one. If your shelves are bending or feeling in need of something new to hold, there’s your ticket.
Also this week but happening again in 2 weeks time is the book-making workshop with Christine McNair. This time she brought a lot of lovely examples. She covered types of paper and types of binding, how to tell the direction of paper grain and why that’s important.
How to book recommendations of include two core texts: Design with Type by Carl Dair and The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. For a page to work one way, one can employ the golden ratio. She gave examples. And pointed out that the space use on a page is derived from ergonomics, not only the practicality of text not getting lost in the middle gutter but room to hold the page at the side margins and bottom of the page so your thumbs don’t cover what you’re trying to see.
We also each did a sewn binding. No blood was shed even with needles involved and over a dozen people. Woo. Unlike the last time I tried to sew a binding, I didn’t loop my thread around the thread of the person beside me.
She also gave some resources for learning about how to layout pages and how to match type of titles and body to create something harmonious. April 24th is the next session. You won’t have to have gone to the first one to attend the second one.