Thirteen Ways of Reframing Workshop
Can workshops actually improve our work? They can. But there are challenges.
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“After workshopping my poem yesterday, I’m thinking of dropping the workshop.” This was the message I got from a workshop participant earlier this week. I couldn’t blame her, and I told her so. The workshop had been low energy that night. Participants had fumbled with her poem’s topic, as they had with others. No wonder she felt disappointed.
I’ve led workshops for over twenty years now. This isn’t an unfamiliar situation. Although I do a lot of work up front to set the tone, model helpful commenting, encourage open conversation, and discourage the aesthetically driven critiques that were modeled in some workshops I attended as a young writer, workshop often isn’t all participants expect it to be.
I don’t think workshop is universally beneficial for all poets or all poems. Our work can benefit from thoughtful workshops, but it takes self awareness and care on our part. It’s good to know what you can and can’t expect.
Thirteen ways of reframing workshop
Workshop is just a tool. It may or may not further our process. It doesn’t belong at the absolute center of our writing process the way we may have been led to think. Use it like you would any other tool: Does it work for you? How does it work, and when?
“Poetry workshop” is broad. It’s a bit like convening a “music workshop,” with just “music” as the common denominator. Imagine: One person is writing opera, another hip-hop, and another an epic techno-post-rock-folk-opera. It’s easy to get lost in the variety, the infinite number of ways we can make poems. A successful workshop embraces and encourages variety.
The best workshops are spaces of generosity. Seek workshops focused on dialogue, curiosity, delight in the work. Does the workshop offer kind and clear response to your work? Do participants show up with an open mind? Are your questions welcome?
Not everyone in the room will connect with every poem. It’s healthy to acknowledge this and temper our expectations, maybe offer some grace to participants who don’t connect with our work. Some confusion and/or disconnect is just part of the equation.
Workshopping is not about hearing what others think. It’s about seeing how your poem moves in others’ minds, getting a sense for the experience it creates. Attend to the flow of the lines. Note where readers delight in the language, what confuses them, etc. What readers think about the poem is neither here nor there. What they experience is telling.
Choose submissions wisely. Submit poems to workshop that are ready for workshop. Workshopping a poem prematurely can shut down your creative process, unless the workshop is specifically set up around generating new work. If its brand new and you’re still deep in the development/genesis of the poem, it’s probably best to wait.
So much depends on … the rules/ the poem sets for itself. There are no standards by which to judge a poem’s effectiveness. No poem is definitively “good,” or “working” or “not working.” A workshop can’t tell you if the poem is “good” or if it “works.” But it can help you refine the poems’ patterns and variations.
Ignore bloated comments. Some participants (or poorly trained facilitators) might think that broad statements and “bold” comments like “this poem has no voice," are helpful. How could abstract judgments like that be helpful? Ignore them.
Filter, filter, filter. Responses are often contradictory or just plain overwhelming. Filtering can be a challenge. To strengthen your filtering ability, deepen your understanding of your personal poetics, your particular choices, then practice sorting the useful from the useless (if well intended) reflections and comments.
You are sensitive. Naturally! Vulnerability isn’t just a side effect of writing poems, it is the point—the territory itself—of poem writing. Workshopping will trigger your defenses. Even thoughtful comments might be felt as judgements of your experience, your perceptions, your emotions. (This is why I emphasize reflections over suggestions in my workshops.) Give yourself the space to feel sensitive, to process the experience of workshop. If comments aren’t made with openness, curiosity, and generosity, consider moving on from that workshop.
Cultivate your vision, your sense of direction in your poems. Only you hold your vision. Workshop participants cannot provide that vision for you. Don’t lose sight of your vision.
Remember the goal. The goal of workshop is not to produce a perfect poem to show off to the group. A poem is almost endlessly in process. Workshop is for furthering that process.
Don’t try to address every comment in revision. Don’t play to lowest common denominator, “fixing” the rough edges of our poems. Taking every comment would result in bland, perfectly understandable poems. You might become risk averse, hindering your creative process. See point 9: Filtering is essential.
What do you look for in a workshop? How do you frame workshop so that it works for you?
Radha, you have collected and thoughtfully brought your experience to bear on the workshop experience. There are many ways in which my framing of workshops has grown, for the better, but you have illuminated aspects that are both of the moment and central to my concerns. I'm not in a position to comment more right now, as I'm out of town and short on time, but want to thank you for this. Hurrah! I'm going to share this widely.
I recently participated in a press's poetry manuscript workshop. I came out of it with a completely different "core message" and title. Half the poems I'd need to cut. I felt invigorated. If I had sent out the ms. as it was, I would have received nothing but rejection and not known why. Now I know more about sequencing strategies, titling strategies, and where I need to inject more imagery. Last summer I applied for and was accepted into an online poetry workshop. I was attracted to it because I respected the work of one of the three instructors. Turns out I was least enamored with her teaching/facilitation style but became fascinated with the second and third instructors whose work I had not previously known. Years ago at another manuscript conference, one of my fellow poets said I did not write poetry, because I write narrative poetry. That remark still stings.