Workshop observations

• The group I'm involved with is small (about 5 regulars). we're all hardened adults, so everyone participates and people can be more honest. There's no strong desire for people to prove themselves better than others. Everyone's there to improve relative to outsiders, not each other. Everyone's had failures so there are no untarnished reputations to preserve.
• Partly for copyright reasons, many of the model poems are mine - a sure disincentive to reproduce the model too faithfully. I try to point out pros/cons in the models I present. There may be something to be said for presenting a flawed model.
• Some adults seem to have trouble adopting any style (or even subject matter) other than what they use themselves. I suspect that
  • These people also tend to read little poetry that's new to them.
  • Their comments on the work of other members are not valued (or built upon) by the others.
  • They can't role play very well.
• Themes - Sometimes a theme is announced in advance. People are encouraged to write poems in accordance. Sometimes I spring a theme on people. Last night's meeting brought the issue of Rhyme, so that's the next topic. Previous themes are Monologues, Metaphor, Painting and Poetry, Seeing and Reading, Criticism. Further info's on my Workshops
• How I encourage comments -
  • I make mistakes and say things I don't really believe, egging people to challenge me.
  • Some people can only comment on (say) subject matter and rhyme-scheme. I try to show that there are more kinds of things that can be commented upon. I try to give them the vocabulary to be able to say something.
  • I often start the evening with an anonymous (often provocative) piece - maybe by a Nobel prize-winner, maybe be some Internet first-time writer. Even established works elicit a wide range of comments, helping to set the tone for the session. The resulting egg-on-face when the author's name is revealed helps deflate egos.

    This "guess the author/date" warm-up can be done in a light-hearted fashion if people feel inhibited. It might also help to show that even the experts disagree on poems. (e.g. Wordsworth's "Lines Composed ..." has attracted extremes of comments. I think it's hopeless).

    I tell people what I really think about the poem afterwards. I'm wrong at least as often as they are.

  • One evening I had some folded pieces of paper with me, each with a suggestion on how poems can be commented upon (things like "say 2 good things and one bad thing about the poem"). Before we critiqued a poem, a piece of paper was chosen at random to determine the kind of criticism we'd initially provide.

    Once, each person was given at random a piece of paper showing what aspect of the poem they should concentrate on

    • Imagery - Similes, metaphors?
    • Voice - Who is talking? What is the tone (ironic, didactic, etc)? Who is being addressed?
    • Sound/Visual Effects - Rhyme? Rhythm? Linebreaks? Space?
    • Connections - How do the parts connect? Is there a linear "plot"? Are there connections to other poems?
    The idea was that we could pool our discoveries afterwards.
• How I encourage participation in exercises
  • I capitalise on comments like "Anyone can do that!"
  • If the model's far from a poet's own style, the exercise becomes more of a game. If a model is close to a poet's own style, I suspect the poet will fear that the output will be used as evidence of her abilities as a poet. Judging the distance of the style from the workshopper's style is important. I've tried
    • Picking a model that's close to a person's style (differing in just one respect, say), hoping that once they're on the move they'll keep going.
    • picking an extreme model, distant from a person's style (related in just one respect, perhaps), hoping that some of the model's features might be adopted by the writer (and hoping the writer will never be as extreme as the example).
    My attempt to use models from Modern Art failed - I offered too wide a range of models and everyone took the 'easy' Impressionist model rather than (say) Pollock. They didn't change. I've had more success with typography tricks - I showed Concrete poetry, gave an exercise where they had to use line-breaks rather than punctuation, and showed them an article on line-breaks. Their poetry's been influenced by this.
• I read lots of bad poetry as well as good poetry (scientists call this "recalibrating"). I encourage the others to do so as well.
• I belong to an online poetry workshop. There the rules are different.