On finishing a novel you may decide to put it on your bookshelf, lend it to your mother, tell your friends to read it or wonder why you wasted a month trudging through it. It’s not common to meet the authors of the books themselves and let them know exactly what you think of their work.

Ten months ago I started attending Prof. Norman Cornett’s ‘dialogic’ seminars at Galerie Samuel Lallouz. Prof. Cornett gave the seminar members an excerpt from a novel, completely out of context, and instructed us to: read it and write the first word that comes to mind; read it again and write a sentence; read it again and write a paragraph; and read it again writing exhaustively anything and everything we could think of.

For anonymity purposes each seminar member writes under a pseudonym. Prof. Cornett asks them to choose it to reflect their relationship with the theme of the series. Some past themes have been imagination, creativity, miracles and colours.

Prof. Cornett wants his students to reflect deeply on what he’s given them to read. He reinforces this with a post-modern influence that “no one is an authority on how anyone else reads,” and poses the important question: “Since when do we divorce the right answer from an honest answer?” From these foundations he encourages the seminar members to write honestly and with conviction.

After many sessions of reading and re-reading many excerpts in silence, out loud, as a group and filling many note books with visceral reactions, Prof. Cornett invites the author to join the seminar group.

Prof. Cornett reads the seminar members’ comments out loud, keeping the writers anonymous at all times, and gives the author a chance to respond. This provides the starting point for author and seminar members to dialogue.

A seminar with an author is a special occasion. It’s a chance to remove the myths and preconceptions we may have about authors. The seminar members start to delve, through their writings and questions, into the author’s world of creativity, craft and sheer hard work in a remarkably candid and engaging way. There are no bounds on where the conversation can go and Prof. Cornett also has an extraordinary ability to synthesize each person’s opinions, stories, ideas, and noticed themes and paradigms.

In the last 10 months the seminars have been to the heart of the Canadian narrative, focussing on: the township of Africville, Halifax in the 1960s through George Boyd’s play Consecrated Ground; the 1914 Newfoundland sealing disaster through Kent Stetson’s Governor General Award winning play The Harps of God; Mi’kmaq spirituality in Kent Stetson’s first novel The World Above the Sky; and to the Vancouver Winter Olympics through Priscila Uppal’s Winter Sport: Poems.

Prof. Cornett has also invited innovative narrative writers such as Madeleine Thien and Member of the Order of Canada Hélène Dorion.

With each writer, motifs stemming from the absurdity of the human condition keep folding their way back into the seminar group’s discussions, re-iterating the strength of literature in the role of consolation, understanding, and expression.
The full circle of reading, writing, discussing and dialoguing with the author is what Prof. Cornett calls ‘dialogic’ and must be tried for its constant enrichment and unique opportunity to meet Canada’s foremost writers.

This Saturday February 19th Prof. Cornett welcomes guest Nicole Brossard to a ‘dialogic’ seminar to discuss the English translation of her book entitled Mauve Desert. Next Saturday, February 26th, Professor Cornett’s guest is George Boyd, writer of Consecrated Ground.

Prof. Cornett’s dialogic approach to education doesn’t stop with authors, poets and playwrights. His seminars also delve into visual art, sculpture, film and music. For more information visit Prof. Cornett’s website.

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