Last night I met with my poetry workshop. We try to meet twice a month. If we are all there, there are eight of us. Usually, we’re about 5-6. All women. 7-9 p.m. Tea unless there is a celebration, then wine and/or organic sparkling cider. Snacks—always. At A’s we have something she’s baked—crumb cake, brownies. Sometimes there's a side snack (esp. during Lent) of hummus, crackers, smoked salmon. At J’s it’s dried figs, almonds, brazil nuts, fruit, and/or with a swoosh of dark chocolate. I was the keeper of the dried figs without dark chocolate (how many more weeks do I have left of this?!) We talk for a moment, pass our poems around, then someone puts them in an order and we’re off.
What intrigued me last night was 4 of the 6 poems made reference to a violence, human violence. The other poem that didn’t had a shark attack in it though. My poem had nothing like that. It looked at the art of writing letters in Emily Dickinson’s time vs. today’s online, email, instant message world. I did think my poem was the weakest of the group last night—not that I usually compare them—but the other poems did an incredible job of creating and maintaining tension throughout the poem. My poem was much more wordplay, then and now.
I think poems that create struggle can be some of the best poems. What I appreciated about the poems last night was not only did they tell a story, they were musical too. Interesting, musical poems. I can see the poems from last night all finding homes in journals. Though we don’t talk about submitting too much. Sometimes after a poem, someone will say, “So, where would you send this one?” and we may jump in with a few ideas, but mostly, the workshop is about the writing and craft. I would even say it’s about the art and balance of writing, of discussing how something came about, how we make time for poetry in our lives, what we’re reading or what in the poem-world (not poetry world, or po’ biz world) is of interest to us. We discuss a poem or poet, and what s/he is doing in his/her work that we’d like to be doing or are trying to do.
Mostly, it’s about the poems. We read them, we listen, we respond, we ask questions. Afterwards, we linger for a few minutes then return out into the darkness and find our own paths back home.
