Wednesday night I went to Bookish in Crickhowell, Wales, and took part in a poetry workshop with poet Paul Henry. It was a great success, a lovely workshop in a cosy atmosphere. A little daunting reading my work out to a bunch of complete strangers! But really improved my confidence in a workshop setting and met some lovely people.
We began with a free-writing exercise, based on the theme of 'where I come from...', before looking at a few poems based around the idea of place, and then attempting to write our own poetry. Everyone in the class came up with some really cool ideas, I was surprised and a little intimidated by the standard, even though half of us had never written anything before! Anyway, I didn't really do as well - it was a great workshop - but I felt that I lacked life & travel experience and distance from my birthplace which may have helped.
The 'poetry' I came up with isn't very good. The workshop made me become more aware of my writing process, through making me try a completely new method. I found writing after - or imitating the first line as a trigger - the poems we looked at (one by R.S Thomas, another by Kit Wright, another that I can't remember right now) challenging and completely new. These are the results so far, but there is nothing I am even slightly happy with yet. However I shall keep trying!
Anyway, this post will show you what I came up with during the workshop and afterwards. I hope it encourages others to come along to the next workshop or to take the plunge and go to a similar writing event. I'd never done anything like this before, and I have never shown my work to anybody in person before, let alone read it out loud, but I loved the experience and can't wait for the next one!
FREEWRITING: WHERE I COME FROM...
er, what shall I write? B_, or B_grad as I call it, kind of grotty but posh in places, or more precisely a little village called O_, a long high street of georgian-fronted houses built along a geological faultline between the clays and chalk & flint, surrounded by fields with its own castle, and of course the sound of the motorway/by-pass always going, cows behind the housing estate mooing in the heat, the swampy ponds in the fields with the fallen oak I used to climb as a kid, oh dear what next can't think of anything, the churchyard with the graves of the two French soldiers, rooks, jackdaws that descend on our garden and eat the animal food, mistletoe growing on oak trees, the river full of crayfish and trout and watermint, the canal where I once saw an otter with her cub,
WORKSHOP ATTEMPTS AT POETRY - came out more like more freewriting
To live in the Home Counties is to
be strung between the motorway and hedgerows
full of fruit as shiny as Next Door's new Audi
that cannot be left outside for fear of pigeon droppings. It is to
To live between two countries is to be always having to choose
Christmas in Wales or in England?
To live in my home town is to... (very scribbled 3rd draft)
be somewhere between the jaguar-driving cricket clubbers, ex-military, busy-bodied, feeding the charity shop with last week's trends: a gucci handbag, real italian leather, a laura ashley dress, a striped armani shirt - and the one's down B_ Road, where the drugs and murderers are. It is to revel in gossip, the GP dating the shopkeeper's estranged wife who had an affair with so-and-so, the scandal of the hint of the possibility of encroaching supermarkets versus the convenience of waitrose ready meals and the battle of the georgian-fronted high street and the affordable housing estates at christmas: tasteful blue lights, holly wreaths, versus houses bedecked with americana
POST WORKSHOP DRAFTING
Tiptoe over conifer needle-strewn tarmac for fear of dog shit, its orangey iron-smell sharp, making your nostrils flare. As you walk brambles claw their way over the tops of the fence, snagging your hair and clothes. Burs coat the hem of your sleeve. A snail's shell cracks underfoot. A blackbird cackles in fear, swooping in front of you like a dolphin before a ship.
The path is dark. Dank. Damp. Houses rise unfriendly behind the fences on either side. Blank windows. Net curtains. Peeking out from behind the conifer trees. The path is rising, inclined to the breast that continues, it seems, ito the grey ink of the sky. Stones, gravel, punching through the soles of your shoes.
Until you emerge, blinking, blinded and shocked by the view. A field of blue-green wheat stretching to a hedgerow horizon. Oast roofs in red and mossy tiles poke like upturned strawberries from amongst the greenery. Unseen cricket drums a lazy rhythm. The air tastes of poppies and mallows, watermint from the river, hobby farm sheep, oak trees.
You feel that you can breathe it in, this openness, the wheat
the egg-brown earth, its chalk, its flint, is unyielding beneath your feet.
DRAFT 3
dog shit, orangey iron-smell sharp, makes nostrils flare.
brambles clawing over top of fence, snag hair.
burs broider hem of sleeve. snail's shell cracks underfoot
blackbird cackles in fear, swoop
in front like dolphin before ship. Path. Damp. Narrow.
Houses unfriendly, fences: empty windows.
Net curtains. Peek.
path, inclined to grey sky ink.
emerge, blinking, shocked by view
field of blue
wheat stretches to hedgerow horizon. Oast roofs, red mossy
tiles, upturned strawberries amonst greenery.
Unseen cricket drums lazy
rhythm. air taste poppies, mallows, hobby farm sheep, oak trees
breathe it in, openness, wheat
egg-brown earth, chalk, flint, unyielding beneath my feet.
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