Join the Neopoet online poetry workshop and community to improve as a writer, meet fellow poets, and showcase your work. Sign up, submit your poetry, and get started.
Workshops
Let's start with a couple of definitions:
workshop
–noun
–noun
X = workshop
Y = Presentation
Y is a subset of X not equal to X
or
X contains why but is not defined by Y.
Fine, dandy, and who the hell cares?
Obviously, I do.
NeoPoet.com is a workshop. It exists so poets and others can present their work, get advice, give critique, and, if we are very, very fortunate, improve.
Many of us come to poetry through a yearning in our soul to express an idea or emotion or outrage or random twist of thought. Many of us feel out of our league when others begin speaking about sonnets and meter and feet and the vacancies of difference between free form and structured poetry. We feel unsure of ourselves and desire to minimize the ignorance we may feel.
But if we minimize our ignorance we miss the point of a workshop. We cheat ourselves by not allowing others to share their knowledge with us.
And that sucks.
But there is something that sucks every more brightly and in no good way. If we are insecure or over-confident we resist any comment and critique and try to treat NeoPoet.com as a presentation venue, ignoring all of the rich and diverse experience and opinion of those who read out work.
If we are insecure or over-confident we are longing for people to tell us only good things about our work. Our feelings may be spared but our craft suffers as we continue to make the same tired mistakes over and over and over and over and over and then we make them again.
I've said aspects of this either in former blog entries or in comments so why do I feel compelled to do so again?
Because I love this community and I will not participate in it's destruction through indifference or a false sense of kindness.
Consider this. If someone you know continuously takes the last cup of coffee and does not make a fresh pot, do you make excuses for them and chastise others who suggest that, perhaps, this person needs to alter their behaviour? Let's take it a step further. This same person exhibiting the same behaviour tells you, when asked, that they do not know how to make coffee.
Do you nod your head politely and cover for them again or do you, as a friend, take them aside and teach them?
If the only comments you are leaving on a person's work is "Good write" or the equivalent, you are complicit in their inability to improve. You are conspiring to keep their talent and voice hidden and under-developed. You are, basically, encouraging them to drink to excess and then drive, knowing that the results will unlikely be good but being too nice so as to not hurt their feelings.
Folks, that's no way to treat a friend.
Each of us will write our share of bad verse. If our friends will not have the moral fortitude to make us examine our work and improve then our audience will forever be limited to those too polite to tell us we suck. And we we do not have the maturity to stand up to a bit of honest and well-meaning critique, then our desire to inflict our work on others is mere selfishness.
So, once again, NeoPoet.com is a workshop environment.
If you do not want your work critiqued, do not post it.
I, for one, will offer meaningful critique and suggestions at my discretion. You,as the poet, should weigh my suggestions for value, use what is worthwhile or inspires you, and discard without rancour the rest.
Or you could complain about people daring to critique your work or that you never change a thing or that people are mean. You are welcome to complain, and perhaps, just perhaps, you might actually get angry enough to listen. Not to me, of course, but to the voice in the back of your head that says:
"That's not a bad idea."
Hey, what have you got to lose?
workshop
–noun
- a room, group of rooms, or building in which work, esp. mechanical work, is carried on.
- a seminar, discussion group, or the like, that emphasizes exchange of ideas and the demonstration and application of techniques, skills, etc.: a theater workshop; opera workshop.
–noun
- an act of presenting.
- the state of being presented.
- a social introduction, as of a person at court.
- an exhibition or performance, as of a play or film.
- offering, delivering, or bestowal, as of a gift.
- a gift.
- a demonstration, lecture, or welcoming speech.
X = workshop
Y = Presentation
Y is a subset of X not equal to X
or
X contains why but is not defined by Y.
Fine, dandy, and who the hell cares?
Obviously, I do.
NeoPoet.com is a workshop. It exists so poets and others can present their work, get advice, give critique, and, if we are very, very fortunate, improve.
Many of us come to poetry through a yearning in our soul to express an idea or emotion or outrage or random twist of thought. Many of us feel out of our league when others begin speaking about sonnets and meter and feet and the vacancies of difference between free form and structured poetry. We feel unsure of ourselves and desire to minimize the ignorance we may feel.
But if we minimize our ignorance we miss the point of a workshop. We cheat ourselves by not allowing others to share their knowledge with us.
And that sucks.
But there is something that sucks every more brightly and in no good way. If we are insecure or over-confident we resist any comment and critique and try to treat NeoPoet.com as a presentation venue, ignoring all of the rich and diverse experience and opinion of those who read out work.
If we are insecure or over-confident we are longing for people to tell us only good things about our work. Our feelings may be spared but our craft suffers as we continue to make the same tired mistakes over and over and over and over and over and then we make them again.
I've said aspects of this either in former blog entries or in comments so why do I feel compelled to do so again?
Because I love this community and I will not participate in it's destruction through indifference or a false sense of kindness.
Consider this. If someone you know continuously takes the last cup of coffee and does not make a fresh pot, do you make excuses for them and chastise others who suggest that, perhaps, this person needs to alter their behaviour? Let's take it a step further. This same person exhibiting the same behaviour tells you, when asked, that they do not know how to make coffee.
Do you nod your head politely and cover for them again or do you, as a friend, take them aside and teach them?
If the only comments you are leaving on a person's work is "Good write" or the equivalent, you are complicit in their inability to improve. You are conspiring to keep their talent and voice hidden and under-developed. You are, basically, encouraging them to drink to excess and then drive, knowing that the results will unlikely be good but being too nice so as to not hurt their feelings.
Folks, that's no way to treat a friend.
Each of us will write our share of bad verse. If our friends will not have the moral fortitude to make us examine our work and improve then our audience will forever be limited to those too polite to tell us we suck. And we we do not have the maturity to stand up to a bit of honest and well-meaning critique, then our desire to inflict our work on others is mere selfishness.
So, once again, NeoPoet.com is a workshop environment.
If you do not want your work critiqued, do not post it.
I, for one, will offer meaningful critique and suggestions at my discretion. You,as the poet, should weigh my suggestions for value, use what is worthwhile or inspires you, and discard without rancour the rest.
Or you could complain about people daring to critique your work or that you never change a thing or that people are mean. You are welcome to complain, and perhaps, just perhaps, you might actually get angry enough to listen. Not to me, of course, but to the voice in the back of your head that says:
"That's not a bad idea."
Hey, what have you got to lose?