MARCH MADNESS Poetry Workshop!

The workshop itself is structured into two parts. The first half of the workshop is instructive and discussion-based, while the second half is about creativity and free-writing.

During the instructive part, We will go over our main topic: how to decide when a poem is finished? as well as brush over poetic elements and effective techniques you can use when revising poetry!

We'll be looking at a published poem from an established, contemporary poet and quickly discuss what we might've liked, what we don't like about it, and what we can learn from it.

If anyone has any specific questions about craft, or would like to share some of their own experiences or tips, this would be the perfect opportunity to ask, since you will have at your disposal: Mesh, Pengu, myself, and all of your peers from YWS to learn from! And of course, we can all learn from you!

Everybody has different methods, different opinions, different thoughts! So, there's never any need to feel intimidated. Even if you don't know half of what you're doing, the important part is to write and to express yourself and to learn, but more importantly to have fun! ^_^ We're all friends here!

As for the creativity and free-writing. It will be based upon what we've learned. There will be a prompt that will serve to inspire you and get you thinking in new and inventive ways. We will each take a few minutes to work separately and free-write and come up with our own poetic draft and ideas.

These poems that you write at the workshop can be commented on by any and all of your peers and the best part is that it will take place in real time, so if you are stuck at a certain point and need some advice (maybe you need help coming up with the right word or you need help with flow) we'll all be there to help and support each other. You can even post them up on YWS when you're finished!

But wait! There's more! For the last few minutes of the workshop, I want to try a group activity. I will start off with an opening line for a poem and each of us will respond in kind and write a line in succession. By the end of the workshop, we should have a finished poem written by the entire group where we will each have contributed a line.

The workshop itself is scheduled for about an hour, however based on my own experience, it almost always runs over, so I hope everyone can be a bit flexible!