Making it new at Poetry Recycling day

Thanks to everyone who came to the Reuse, Reduce, Renew: Poetry Recycling workshop at Winchester Discovery Centre on Saturday. The day was a sell-out, and produced some really good work, all the way from Sue H’s extended ‘Recycle Your Name’ activity at the start, to Steve’s wonderful evocation of the paradoxes of grief from the final cutting-up exercise.

I structured the day in three sections: using other poet’s work to spark your own, which was the most traditional part; recycling found language, which was rather more radical; and recycling our own words using techniques from Oulipo and others, which was VERY radical! I was very appreciative that everyone stuck with it through all the parts, because I know that the non-traditional methods aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. But the quality of work was high throughout, and I believe that everyone encountered something that they could add to their reservoir of writing practices – which in the end is the point.

Next up at the Discovery Centre is going to be Polishing Your Poetry on July 9th; see the my Adult Teaching page for details of that and other workshops.

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