Changing the Face of Workshops
Maybe you've taken one of those traditional workshops where everyone gets to tell you all the things that are wrong with whatever you write and share in class. My experience, at least in American culture, has been that this would be found in any academic setting. The whole academic culture is ripe for this kind of competition, distrust, and deconstruction. And I think it is the ugly side of Poetry's face.
In my experience, Poetry becomes much more good looking when you apply a layer or two of poetry therapy concepts as a foundation. You can build better, stronger writing on top of that without deconstructing the hearts and souls of the writers behind the words that get so expertly critiqued in the traditional workshop settings.
First look at the basics, like seating arrangement. In traditional settings, you often find the teacher at the head of the class with the students in rows. At writers' conferences, you find the "famous" and "expert" poets at a podium or lined up at a "panel" table with all the "nobody, anonymous" poets and artists sitting in rows out in the audience. Even in deconstruction workshops where you all sit at tables, you'll usually find the "expert" at the head of the table.
Why not simply change the seating arrangement? Arrange seats in a circle. Sit around a table to write and don't, as a facilitator, sit at the head of the table! Sit on the side or at one of the corners of the table. For "panel" discussions, arrange the seats in a circle and encourage actually input from all attendants. For readings, scatter the seating in different directions, half circle, some off to the side-- encourage the "reader" to be interactive with the audience. INSIST that the readers learn to present *without* the dreaded poet voice where every line ends in an up inflection as if every line were a question!!!! Help them to read with some actual feeling, to convey the actual emotions they felt as they wrote the piece in the first place. The dreaded poet voice was started and is perpetuated to create false distance that doesn't serve anyone-- and face it: it's boring to listen to that horrid monotone question cadence!
At the beginning of workshops, offer some ground rules so everyone can shed
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