The Evidence Locker - Write Group

Write Group - Poetry Workshop

Write Group - Poetry Workshop

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Aug. 5th, 2010 at 10:10 PM

I joined a writers group in New Jersey.
This doesn't mean that I'll stop going to the writers group in Manhattan--that one is more social, people my own age who share a common interest and listen to each other's work with a little bit of feedback. The one I just found in Jersey is a more diverse set of people and they have 20 events per month! There are workshops and open mic nights and writing sessions and trips and socials and all sorts of cool things.

Tonight was my first night and it was a poetry workshop. I'm not really a poetry writer, but I'm interested in incorporating poetic devices into my prose the way Bradbury does, and this workshop addressed prose and poetry both, so that was nice.

The workshop was lead by award-winning poet and writing teacher Charles Johnson (website). Here's some great nuggets from the workshop:

Why speak of the use / of poetry? Poetry / is what uses us. --Hayden Carruth

You can applaud the writing as a separate creation from the writer.
Imagism: direct tratment of the thing (Ezra Pound)
Poesia Racconto: a poem story
Distance--newspapers have it, poetry doesn't
Emphemeral words create real things in the world. Words have power.
WOW line=Words of Wonder: You don't have to try and understand every line in the poem. Wait for the WOW line that sticks with you. It doesn't even have to stick with you word-for-word. It can create an image or emotion that you don't forget.
We talked about story truth vs. happened truth from Tim O'Brien's The Things We Carried, which is something that has always stuck with me when I read about that in college. But now every time I hear Tim O'Brien's name, I get frustrated because I almost met him once but I got sick and couldn't go. Argh.
We did three writing exercises, all writing about this room. The first was prose, then poetry, then a haiku.

I really liked the workshop. Chuck lead it expertly. And I really like the group too. Everyone--the 8 or so who were there--seems nice and laid back.

Location:New Jersey
Mood: chipper
Music:playlist.com

April 2012