New poetry club emerges on campus

By Joseph Quigley

BELLEVILLE – Loyalist student Andrew Nurse is trying to bring poetry to the halls of the college with his new club.

This week Nurse held the first meeting of  “The Writer’s Circle”, a club on campus dedicated to poetry and other creative writing. He said he started the group in hopes of getting a poetry movement going on campus.

“I want to have some performances and maybe start a quarterly [poetry book] that we distribute around the school. And if it works, maybe take it downtown, start having readings in public. Given a certain angle, we could come up with a little movement, just a local thing,” Nurse said.

Nurse has been writing poetry for 12 years, and has self-distributed over 30 small collections of his own work. He said this club is also a way for him to  connect with other writers.

“I think for the majority of those years its been a very isolated process for me. I think this is a way for me to get back, check out what other people are doing and not just myself.”

Nurse said he hopes to one day become published.

“It’s taken me a long time to think that I’m ready or consider a poem of my own good enough that I’d want to submit it. I think I’m closer to that point than I’ve ever been and that I should start looking into it maybe. It is a goal of mine. I’d like, by the end of my life, to have published a book, and see it in a book store. That would be good enough for me,” he said.

Nurse was unfortunately the only one to attend the first meeting of the new club. Despite the turnout, Nurse said he is not giving up on the group.

“I definitely didn’t expect to see anybody here this week. Literally, I was like, ‘No one’s going show up.’  It’s poetry. It’s not something that is of general great interest to a lot of people. But I like it to be here for those that do want it. We’ll see how next week goes and find the few out there that want to do this,” he said.

With nobody else in attendance, Nurse still read an example of his work out loud.

Other clubs on campus have also had trouble maintaining numbers. Comic book club leader Krystiana Bourdage said that her club only had four members in its first semester last year. She said that it’s tough to balance schoolwork with club participation.

“The biggest problem is time. Being a student, it’s really hard to balance doing a club and getting everything perfect. When you’re trying to get things started, you can’t necessarily get a perfect time for everyone,” she said.

Bourdage said numbers for the comic book club are up this year, and traces the success to not being too complicated.

“I think just allowing yourself to enjoy the company of the people that you meet, and being genuine, and not over thinking it too much, which can start to cause it to be too structured.”