the workshops I'm aware of, locally, [tasmania] tend to be attended by
poets already adept at their craft but keen to air issues and get some
insight into another poet's approach
Ralph
> Tim, needless to say I agree with you. I find that workshops tend to be
> run by
> poetic dictators who are more concerned with peddling their own ideas of
> what a poem is than trying to facilitate genuine curiosity in the people
> they "teach". It is this didactical element that I find disturbing, and
> explains
> why (as you say) workshops have had such a big influence on poetry in
> Britain.
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:41:47 +0100, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>Hi Jeffrey,
>>
>>We do seem to be on parallel tracks re a lot of these things. I used
>>to hammer on about the workshop influence too. I used to call it the
>>Workshop School and I wrote in Terrible Work back in the 90's that the
>>Workshop School had had the biggest and most lasting influence on
>>poetry in Britain, far outstripping the Martian thing that arose at
>>the same time, in the 80's. It was the values of the workshop school,
>>basically a form of bastardised bourgeois personalism grafted onto
>>post-Movement poetics, that lead directly to the explosion of Domestic
>>Realism in the 90's. In Glastonbury in 1995 I held an anti-workshop
>>workshop called Terrible Workshop - 4 people turned up, my mates and
>>Sean Bonney, so we forgot about the silly thing and just had a good
>>time chatting.
>>
>>Tim A.
>>
>>On 9 Aug 2009, at 14:18, Jeffrey Side wrote:
>>
>>> Workshops are a strange phenomenon in poetry composition. One wonders
>>> how Blake ever managed without them! They function mainly as a
>>> networking
>>> tool for poets who like to appear busy, or who are insecure about
>>> thier
>>> practice. Of course, they should exist, but only in the same way as
>>> pottery
>>> classes do. Both can be pleasurable for a few hours. Sorry to sound so
>>> cynical.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, 9 Aug 2009 12:58:01 +0100, David Bircumshaw
>>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Thanks for this, Jeffrey, the observations on workshops made me
>>>> smile.
>>>>
>>>> 2009/7/31 Jeffrey Side <[log in to unmask]>
>>>>
>>>>> Found a good article called 'POETRY SCENE: CURRENT DIFFICULTIES'
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.textetc.com/modernist/current-difficulties.html
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> David Bircumshaw
>>>> "A window./Big enough to hold screams/
>>>> You say are poems" - DMeltzer
>>>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet
>>>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk
>>>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
>>>> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
>>>>
>
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