I also teach poetry out of the Village Square Booksellers in Bellows Falls, VT. My class runs in six week sessions for $100. The class is Monday mornings from 9:30 to 12:30. I give a short lecture on some aspect of poetry and give examples, then we critique the students poems. Contact me or the bookstore to ask about the next session..
Below are my thoughts on what i expect from people taking my class.
Being in a workshop
by James Fowler
1) Be respectful – separate the speaker of the poem from the poet. They are not necessarily the same.
2) First point out the strong points, what works for you.
3) We have to trust that the poet has allowed for some distance between them selves and the poem.
4) The main point of the class, critique – not a negative, our whole goal is to make the poem the best poem we can. Things to look for:
a) weak words, over blown language
b) over use of adjectives or adverbs – these can usually be overcome by using strong verbs and nouns
c) trite, didactic, preachy, sentimental – easy to trip over into
d) Forced rhymes – don’t have obvious syntax shifts, or unusual words just to have a rhyme.
5) Most important, do not force your voice onto someone else’s poem.
6) As the listener – take notes, let us know what we say is important, do not react (this one is hard). If you are reacting you may be missing the point being made.
7) It’s your poem you can ignore or take any advice given. At any moment, you may invoke “writer’s prerogative” and we’ll move on.
Writing poetry – get the story, narrative, idea, metaphor onto the page, turn off the internal editor. Then let the poem come out in the rewrites, “the visions and revisions.” If you write a poem line by line or sentence by sentence. and go back to make that word, line, sentence perfect, you’ll lose the direction the poem is taking. (I am a firm believer that the poem will dictate the poem, you are but the vessel). My style is to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite repeatedly until the poem reveals itself. Another way is to get the story down, then do the line for line bit on the second or third draft. If in my rewrites I see a form showing through, then I do the line by line bit, but that happens much later in the rewrite process.
Another point is that it may work better for you not to write the first draft too soon. Let it gel around in your brain for a while, but in some cases not writing it down means you’ve lost it. Experience will tell you.
I also have found that the idea that led me into the poem may not be the idea that comes out of the poem. This shows itself generally by my having to cut the first line somewhere in the rewrite process.
Writer’s block – there are two types of writer’s block – short term and long term. Short term can usually be fixed by doing a writing exercise or reading a lot of poetry. Long term is caused by an outside source, IE: stress, less time, etc. To fix L.T. you need to fix the source of the trouble.
Below are my thoughts on what i expect from people taking my class.
Being in a workshop
by James Fowler
1) Be respectful – separate the speaker of the poem from the poet. They are not necessarily the same.
2) First point out the strong points, what works for you.
3) We have to trust that the poet has allowed for some distance between them selves and the poem.
4) The main point of the class, critique – not a negative, our whole goal is to make the poem the best poem we can. Things to look for:
a) weak words, over blown language
b) over use of adjectives or adverbs – these can usually be overcome by using strong verbs and nouns
c) trite, didactic, preachy, sentimental – easy to trip over into
d) Forced rhymes – don’t have obvious syntax shifts, or unusual words just to have a rhyme.
5) Most important, do not force your voice onto someone else’s poem.
6) As the listener – take notes, let us know what we say is important, do not react (this one is hard). If you are reacting you may be missing the point being made.
7) It’s your poem you can ignore or take any advice given. At any moment, you may invoke “writer’s prerogative” and we’ll move on.
Writing poetry – get the story, narrative, idea, metaphor onto the page, turn off the internal editor. Then let the poem come out in the rewrites, “the visions and revisions.” If you write a poem line by line or sentence by sentence. and go back to make that word, line, sentence perfect, you’ll lose the direction the poem is taking. (I am a firm believer that the poem will dictate the poem, you are but the vessel). My style is to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite repeatedly until the poem reveals itself. Another way is to get the story down, then do the line for line bit on the second or third draft. If in my rewrites I see a form showing through, then I do the line by line bit, but that happens much later in the rewrite process.
Another point is that it may work better for you not to write the first draft too soon. Let it gel around in your brain for a while, but in some cases not writing it down means you’ve lost it. Experience will tell you.
I also have found that the idea that led me into the poem may not be the idea that comes out of the poem. This shows itself generally by my having to cut the first line somewhere in the rewrite process.
Writer’s block – there are two types of writer’s block – short term and long term. Short term can usually be fixed by doing a writing exercise or reading a lot of poetry. Long term is caused by an outside source, IE: stress, less time, etc. To fix L.T. you need to fix the source of the trouble.
