Poetry and prose of PARC members found in new book.
The book Let's Face It will launch Friday Nov. 25 at the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre. The book is PARC's second volume of poetry, prose and painting. Ten years in the making it features the work of (clockwise from left) Michelle Waldron, John Rogers. Ann Lapenna and Mike Knox. Hume Cronyn (back right) co-edited the book. (Nov. 18, 2011)
Staff photo/ERIN HATFIELD
Between the covers of Let's Face It, a book of poetry and prose, there is a huge amount of resilience, compassion, humour and insight into life that you can't find in most writing explained Hume Cronyn.
"Most of these writers have lived a life experience that most writers haven't lived," Cronyn said. "It is all really direct with no facades or pretensions."
The writers he speaks of are those that take part in weekly creative writing workshops and poetry nights at the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC), a drop in centre in Parkdale.
Cronyn works there part time running the hockey and soccer programs as well as the writing workshop and poetry nights. He has been working on and off at PARC for more than 25 years. He started the writing workshops in 1985 with author Pat Capponi.
"When we started the writing workshops it was for the sheer joy or writing," he said. "Everyone takes writing to be such a solitary exercise, but I actually think it can be a very communal exercise in that you can feed off each others energy. There is so much creativity here."
The writings found in Let's Face It grew out of exercises where the participants would write descriptions of things they saw or experienced. In other exercises the group would open a dictionary and start with a single word and write from there.
"Or I would bring in fridge magnets and they would take five words from the fridge magnets and include those words in their pieces," Cronyn said. "Everyone loves those because of the challenge and the pieces that come out are usually really good."
After the exercises the group would go around the table and everyone would read their piece.
"What is amazing is that we have a proviso that you don't have to read your piece if it is too close to the bone, but everyone reads," he said. "A lot of these guys have known each other for a long time... so there is this incredible amount of trust."
Because of the community they have created in the writing group and poetry nights, Cronyn said the authors can talk about really deep feelings or just be silly and every emotion in between.
"Everyone has this amazing story," he said. "That is the value of the writing workshops, everyone has these stories they have to get out."
After a few years Cronyn said they realized the group had some good writing and decided to start to pull them together into a book and the result was Let's Face It, which is being released on Friday, Nov. 25.
The book features the writing and art of members from PARC, staff, former interns and community members who attend the writing workshops and poetry nights.
PARC will host a celebration of the release of Let's Face It at the Parkdale Community Recreation Centre at 1499 Queen St. West from 6 to 9 p.m. tonight (Friday Nov. 25) where the community is invited to meet some of the writers and take in an evening of music, art and poetry readings from the newly released book.