Clubs

Our clubs take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Coming to one session does not mean you need to come every time! There’s no obligation whatsoever, and it’s alright to drop by without having prepared anything. You can also come just once to see how you like it.

Creative Writing Club

Do you enjoy writing short stories, novels, flash fiction, plays, poems, anything? Do you like reading and discussing them in a friendly environment? Are you longing for a creative environment to spark new ideas? Then join the Creative Writing Club! We meet on Wednesdays once every fortnight, and write according to prompts that we, the organisers, will come up with.

The idea of the Creative Writing Club first emerged in the cold essay/exam season of January 2015. Faculty of Arts, English Department: essays, mémoires, theses, articles… We are all writers in a way. So why not also encourage creative writing? Why not have a space dedicated to our imagination and its wildest creations?

The Creative Writing Club is a place where ideas are raised, where advice and tips are exchanged, always in a friendly and constructive atmosphere. Writers of all horizons, we might have different opinions about writing, and diverse methods to come up with a story, but we all love shaping worlds and characters with words. And thus, meetings are filled with exchange, debates, laughter, and most important: writing!

Join us on Tuesdays at 18:15 at ANT 3088 on October 22th, November 12th and 26th, December 10th 2024.

Food + Poetry

Brought to you by the students of the English department of UNIL, this is a club for listening to and discussing poetry, alongside some tasty snacks! If you like sharing or hearing poetry, or just snacks, the Food + Poetry club is just the thing for you!

The date is still to be announced.

Sessions

This semester, the general theme is Burning Lines: Poetry for wild souls. Below, you’ll find the topic of each session, along with excerpts from poems to inspire you. We encourage you to bring other poems. They can be by aspiring poets as well, and in other languages than English if you want.

26.03.24: Poetry of war, migration and exile
“One morning we didn’t find homes, just heaps of red words” 
Nasser Rabah, “Dead Cats Continue to Meow”
“I’ll pack my things and go to hell”
Ahmad Almallah and Huda Fakhreddine, “Holy Land, Wasted”

16.04.24: Giving voice to the outcasts, embodying madness
“Outsiders all—
in heady celebration
of our deviant social standing.”
Salima Rivera, “The Voices at My Ear”

30.04.24:  Climate Change, Ecology, Apocalypse
“We’ll only survive
in the nitrogen rich compost of our embrace”
Craig Santos Perez, “Love in a Time of Climate Change”

14.05.24: Existing (poetically) in the machine era
“Og höfum hér eftir til siðs / að skjóta sjónvörp”
(“And since now let’s make it a habit / to shoot at televisors“)
Jon Kalman Stefansson, “Því Segi Ég Þér Maður Að”

21.05.24: Poetry within music, music within poetry
“Not God, exactly.
More like
Some thin-hipped glittering Bowie-being”
Tracy K. Smith, “Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?”

28.05.24: The untold amores and tristia
“Maybe i’m just tipsy & free for the first time, willing to worship anything i can taste”
Danez Smith, “The 17-year-old & the Gay Bar”

Last session TBA
“Then share thy pain, allow that sad relief;
Ah, more than share it, give me all thy grief”


Chat’n’Chew

Do you want to practice speaking English, informally, without any pressure at all? Join us every Thursday at lunch (11:45-14:15)*! SCOPE members will be at Anthropole’s cafeteria (west side, the one near 1129) to chat with anyone who wants to! Even if you’re not a student of English, you are absolutely welcome, as long as you want to talk in a friendly way. You’ll find us occupying multiple tables, with a SCOPE sign and a Chat’n’Chew poster in front of us.

*except during reading week and after the end of classes.


Don’t hesitate to send us an email if you have questions (find it in the Contact page) or send us a DM to our instagram or on our Facebook page.