Professor Edward Baugh gave readings of four poems from his published collections A Tale From The Rain Forest and It Was The Singing. -Nathaniel Stewart/Freelance Photographer

Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

With the first season of its second staging getting repeat showings on CTV, the cable television arm of the Creative Production and Training Centre (CPTC), there have been adjustments to the poetry show Lyrically Speaking.

One of these is a master class, the first of which was filmed last Tuesday at the CPTC's studios. Host of Lyrically Speaking, Andrew Stone, said Professor Edward Baugh was the first master class guest.

The classes are interactive, with the in-studio audience being able to delve into the guest's work.

"It was fabulous," Stone said. "Eddie Baugh as a writer and also as a communicator is excellent."

FUN

The creative process comes up for discussion and "that naturally takes you into one's own view of life," Stone said. "It wasa lot of fun, but it was also serious."

Four half-hour episodes of Lyrically Speaking have been taped so far and Stone says another addition is "We examine some other area of the arts, but from a lyric point of view. Take, for example, the visual arts. There is the oft-repeated clich that a picture is worth a thousand words. It is a visual rendition of what someone would like to say."

And discussing it is naturally done with words.

"The medium in which we work is the lyric and we want to extend it to discuss other art forms, not simply keep it in the parameters of the word form," Stone said.

Tricia Johnson was the guest for an episode in which a painting was discussed, also in an interactive setting. Another addition, a book review, is not interactive with the entire audience, but there is a one on one discussion with a reader.

Stone said the review is an extension of the standard 'feed-forward' segment, where critique is offered on a piece of work. "It is essential because we not only want to present people and their work, but because we want to stimulate conversation about art, which inevitably becomes a conversation about life," Stone said.

Among the poets who have been featured in the production of this season of Lyrically Speaking so far are Princeton Ebanks, Gail Walters and 15-year-old Zena Nicholson.