Rupert, you’ve articulated it well. I see workshops today as somehow anti-
creative. As you say they should be about people not tutors or institutions. It
seems to me the only people who really benefit from them are those who run
them.
On Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:30:49 +0100, rupert mallin
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>An interesting thread. I have in my possession publications which were the
products of workshops in London and elsewhere in the 60s and 70s. Indeed,
the discussion has - apart from Tim's missive - missed an historical element to
the notion of "workshops."
>
>Tim is correct that there is a kind of workshop which is top-down of a sort of
Post-Movement Poetry which has become the status quo in recent years -
very recent years. I attended 'workshops' in London and Liverpool in the early
1970s which were liberating: the "quality" brush from on high couldn't be used
on the "democratised" activity below. Indeed, when the conflict between
preconceived notions of quality were in conflict with the democratisation of
workshops, the results were very exciting. I attended one of Bob Cobbings'in
Hendon late -circa 1980 - and I found it very exciting because it was outside
my previous experience but embraced me in their/my exploration.
>
>Theatre can be collective, as Alison says, BUT theatre can be a tyrant too -
however collective! The vehicle is not IT! - people are. That's why workshops
were so exciting to me - why they should be today.
>
>In England I think it is unfair to place a workshop in an educational context:
art schools and universities are no place for any experimention at all! I have
actually worked for a community arts group supporting dysfunctional arts
graduates who suffered break downs via education! The problem is that
students are offered no hands-on workshops: they all look at the world
through a defracted lens supplied by their 'I'm Alright Jack' tutors. Some great
successes out of the UEA MA in Creative Writing but books only Peter
Mandelson would encourage! History and Class are more disgusting words than
the Glass Ceiling in our universities. The hatred of wage labour is utmost now.
>
>So, I think Mairead's 'writing programme' - workshop - in an educational
context is many miles from what's happening in England. And the huge problem
remains: how can the arts/poetry ever be democratised? For me, it is putting
in play that contradiction between giving the pupil the chance to teach the
teacher. I think Mairead's got it absolutely right but...
>
>I was shortlisted for a major art residency last week. Didn't get it. Interview
was revealing: they welcomed all that I'd do with getting the local community
on board (?) but what mechanisms did I have in place to prove the quality of
the work? I said the community could decide that. Shock, horror! Real People!
Hell!? That sounds like a real workshop...
>
>Rupert xx
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: mairead byrne
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 2:01 PM
> Subject: Re: Workshops
>
>
> Quite imprecise, Mark. If you read D. G. Myers' The Elephants Teach, you
will see that workshops are closer to 80 years old; also you can read his
arguments about how literary criticism facilitated both workshops and the
participation of women, if I remember correctly. Even in popular imagination,
only 60 years ago, Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton, both took Robert Lowell's
workshop, as I have a hunch Adrienne Rich did. I've no idea what you mean
by a term so general as "great efflorescence," but both statements which
follow are mistaken. But what's the point arguing with you? None in the world.
> Mairead
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 12:55 AM, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>
> There was a great efflorescence of women poets in the 20th century,
Mairead, almost none of whom had anything to do with writing programs,
which are with very few exceptions only a couple of decades old (as is their
dominance), or pubs, for that matter.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
> At 08:56 PM 8/10/2009, you wrote:
>
> Come to think of it, Blake shouldn't have bothered his barney going to
art school either. But then poetry isn't an art or a craft or a skill or a trade
(what the heck is it...?). No, the pub is the only writing workshop we need
boys. Who on earth would want a more structured approach to the whole
thing? Women with children? As if they can write poetry ....let them do
pottery. Which is an art and a craft and a skill and a trade, unlike poetry.
> Mairead
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2009 at 7:31 PM, Carrie Etter
<<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Some of these comments about workshops sound like they're based more
on supposition and hearsay than numerous, varied experiences. Ulli Freer used
to--does he still?--run a workshop at Birkbeck which I heard was anything but
dictatorial and didactic, and I've got to say the workshops I run at Bath Spa
do anything but espouse convention and conformity (which could be didactic
in itself, if you consider the general initiative toward originality to be didactic).
Different instructors have different approaches, of course, and I despise the
general category referred to earlier as "domestic realism" (which I find still
painfully rampant), but I don't think the workshop itself is at fault so much as
individual instructors' attitudes toward their purpose.
>
>
>
> Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2009 23:28:52 +0100
>
> From: Jeffrey Side
<<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]>
>
> Subject: Re: Found a good article called 'POETRY SCENE: CURRENT
DIFFICULTIES'
>
> Tim, needless to say I agree with you. I find that workshops tend to be
r=
> un by=20
> poetic dictators who are more concerned with peddling their own ideas
of=20=
>
> what a poem is than trying to facilitate genuine curiosity in the
people=20=
>
> they "teach". It is this didactical element that I find disturbing, and e=
> xplains=20
> why (as you say) workshops have had such a big influence on poetry
in=20
> Britain.=20
>
>
>
>
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