What’s Eating You? A Generative Poetry Workshop & Discussion

Two hour Generative Poetry Workshop and Discussion with Katie Riegel, on Tuesday July 18^th, 2023, 6-8pm Central time

ZOOM WORKSHOP

What’s Eating You?
Poems need energy to work, and one of the best ways to get that energy is to make sure there’s something at stake for the writer. So what’s bothering you? What’s making you feel angry, afraid, disgusted, vulnerable, lonely, guilty, disappointed, anxious, threatened, helpless, or abandoned? What can’t you get out of your head, what do you run through your mind when you can’t sleep? You don’t need to tell the specific stories that initiated these feelings (the dumb things I said and did in my past would make pretty boring poems), but there are ways to use the energy of those emotions to connect with the reader, to reveal why your imagery matters.

Katie’s teaching philosophy/style: I believe that our real job as human beings is to try to understand ourselves and the world. For writers, we do that job with words. And the elements of craft are tools that we can use as we reach towards understanding, as are the thoughtful responses of other writers. Do we take workshops in order to improve individual pieces and our writing in general so we might publish? Sure. But more importantly, we take them to ride the momentum of community towards writing more, revealing our vulnerabilities more, and trying more new approaches. To that end, I focus on discussion of what’s working well in a piece of writing and why, letting the writer know how their writerly choices affected us as readers. We also discuss interpretation and make suggestions, and the writer has an opportunity to ask their own questions. Allowing others to read and respond to your writing is an act of courage and faith; I try my best, therefore, to treat you and your work with respect.