In praise of the poetry workshop
I mean, the good kind
The pandemic has made my performance and speaking engagements almost nonexistent. This is partly by choice at this point, but I still don’t want to get Covid (or regular sick for that matter) and I’ve been focusing a lot of my professional time trying to save doomed prairies. But in April, 2020, I started leading poetry workshops on Zoom every other week with only a few breaks. As long as people keep showing up, so will I.1
I had taught poetry writing in many different capacities since 2006 so it’s a comfortable space for me and I think I’ve gotten better at it. Therefore, I shall share some of my duct-taped-and-cardboard pedagogy here for you, dear reader.
The structure of each workshop looks like:
Greetings and chit chat
Exquisite corpse
Workshop prompt #1
Read model poem
Respond as a group
A pre-write (usually a list of things originating from the poem)
Everyone writes a poem for 10 minutes
Optional share back
Workshop prompt #2 (repeat steps a-e above)
Goodbyes
So those are the bones; here’s the guts. A lot of what I do in workshop is a choice not to do things I probably used to do.
I start each workshop with some banter and (genuine) conversation. I don’t really introduce myself or try to convince people I am qualified. What’s great about Zoom is it’s really easy to ghost a class you don’t enjoy (“oh sorry, the cat was eating my router and I got kicked off!”). So each workshop stands or falls by its own merits based on my preparation and the norms people establish and coauthor over time.
We then do a super low-stakes warmup writing exercise to get our brains lubricated for creative thought. We write an exquisite corpse poem together - I call out the name of each person in the workshop and they have to write a word in the chat box (you can see an example of it if you squint at the image above). The two rules are: don’t think too hard and try to somehow link your word to the previous word. Then when everyone has typed their word we read the poem we wrote. It’s usually surreal and funny. I don’t judge people’s word choice or say that the thing we made might not be called a poem by some people. I don’t care about those people.
Then we read a “model” poem - the poem we will be basting in before we cook our own poems. I try not to rely on white male authors - they usually only get one slot in the workshop, if any. This has not been a challenge to do. Also when selecting model poems it’s important for me that I like something it does and, harder to define, it has to feel like it will generate good art in a group setting. I haven’t taught a TS Eliot poem, for instance, because I have yet to find an “in” for writing.2 But there is no set rule on style, era, movement or credentials. Do I end up teaching a lot of Ross Gay and Natalie Diaz poems? Yes, I do.
We then respond to the poem (sometimes reading it a second time). I usually ask everyone “what’s happening in this poem?” which can be answered all kinds of ways. This is one of my favorite parts of the workshop because we are taking a piece of art and experiencing it as a group. The people who show up get to author our interpretations together; the meaning we derive from the poem is reliant in part on who is in our Zoomroom. We often build on each other’s observations and challenge interpretations (respectfully) that we don’t see coming from the poem.
Some poems I have taught a ton of times in many different settings, and each time the people in each of those workshops come up with different ways of experiencing the same poem. None of those readings are “wrong.”
This simply cannot happen when reading a poem by yourself nor, for that matter, while sitting in the audience of a reading/performance. I have often been at a poetry slam and the audience is freaking out with excitement over a line or a poem and I am just sitting there like, “I need time to think about this before I make jubilant, affirmative noises!”
Then I usually isolate a theme or device or idea central to the model poem and ask people to make a list of those kinds of things
If the poem is “Poem Written by a Bear” by Tao Lin, for example, I will ask everyone to list ten animals.
After some time for list-making is done we take ten minutes to pick something from our list and write a poem from it.
E.g. pick an animal from your list and write a poem in the voice of that animal.
I ask people to pick the one from the list that makes them feel something.
For both the brainstorming and the poem writing I never try to explain how someone goes about writing a poem. What would that even look like? Instead, because we read the model, and most people just dive in without asking, “What do you mean write a poem?” if anyone feels trepidation they usually keep it to themselves and just dive in as well. The stakes couldn’t be lower!
Then after ten minutes we share what we wrote.
I usually read first to both get the “waiting for who wants to go first” out of the way and to give folks still finishing up their poems time to wrap it up.
People in the workshop usually find really affirming things to say about what people share - picking out favorite lines or thanking them if they shared something hard.
I try to think of one or two things about the poem I liked to tell the writer. Unless someone writes something morally reprehensible, I usually have stopped looking for what’s “wrong” with their poems. I know some writers are like, “Be brutally honest with me! Tell me I suck to my face!” but the fact that people create a POEM in just TEN MINUTES is astounding, regardless of whether or not it’s worth anthologizing. Poetry is so subjective, telling people what’s “wrong” with their poem can too easily be contradicted by another reader. And telling someone you liked something they did is a good way of saying, “do more of that!”
If I do have a suggestion for them, especially if they’ve been coming regularly I would say something like, “If you want to keep developing this poem, you might consider doing _____ with it and see how that looks to you.” I try to base these suggestions in what I think they are trying to do and not what I want them to do, but I also make sure that they know I’m just some dummy and they can ignore me at any moment. I try not to give anything but praise if someone is new. Who am I to critique a stranger?
I have heard some truly amazing things come out of these ten minutes of writing. Folks have gotten poems they started in our workshop published (but also one time I asked a regular to send me a poem they wrote and they said they couldn’t find it! We were the only people to hear this amazing, heartbreaking piece and we might be the only ones to ever hear it! Ephemeral!).
Then we do it all a second time and the two hours just fly by!
Sometimes the two poems I teach are part of a larger theme for the whole workshop. We have done a workshop looking at just Emily Dickinson or Hanif Abdurraqib. Or a nature workshop. Or a workshop looking at imagery. Or place. Or pants. I don’t know!
There have been some weird moments for sure. Once a participant just didn’t like the model poem and told everyone so. Which is fine! A couple other times there have been people who took up a little too much oxygen trying to be funny (and I like being funny!). Our dear friend Shappy Seasholtz, who passed away last year, which I am still pissed about, he used to come to every workshop and for a while he was doing a few too many bits. I talked to him afterwards and was like, “Hey, could you possibly make sure other people have a chance to share their ideas more? Especially folks who aren’t as loud-mouthed as me and you,” to which he replied, “Please don’t fire me man, I need this job!” Shappy wrote some really wonderful poems in our space and he is profoundly missed.
I think for me the larger benefit has been putting poetry on my calendar and, because I am relied upon to hold this space, I prioritize it over doing something less nourishing. I have read and wrote and discussed more poetry during the pandemic than possibly any other time in my life, and it’s because of the workshop. I have thought about having a similar group of folks meet on Zoom every week just to read silently together - harnessing the power of scheduled brain work to its full potential!
You’re of course invited to come. It’s free if you want it to be, cancel any time! We will be doing all kinds of weird things in the future - working on editing, looking at children’s literature, and I really want to spend a workshop trying to translate a poem together as a group from a language none of us speak.
Is there a better expression for good things that arise from bad things besides “the cloud’s silver lining”?
Maybe that’s why I don’t particularly love Eliot’s work, they feel like a tidy and closed system. Like when your computer breaks and you open it up expecting, I don’t know, to find a nest of raccoons in it or something. You just stare at it pondering how many YouTube tutorials you’re willing to watch in order to try and fix it yourself when you just wanted to play Flappy Bird or whatever. I’ll think on this idea more. He’s clearly very good at what he does!