Read. Talk. Thursday.

Like, I suppose, every other poet who’s ever taught a class, I’ve often been asked what my number one piece of advice would be for someone wanting to improve their writing. And like every other poet who’s been asked this I’ve answered, READ. Read poetry. Never be afraid of ‘allowing influence to contaminate your style’, which is something I’ve actually heard people say.

But there is so much poetry out there — it’s everywhere, all around us, and how on earth do you figure out where to start? Even many poets mostly read their friends. There’s so much of it, and books and magazines are expensive, and who has time, and and and…

My POEM TALK sessions meet for 45 minutes during Thursday lunch-hour, 1-1.45 (& we often keep talking till 2pm but that’s known as ‘running over’). The format is very simple: I send out a poem either the night before or that morning, and then we talk about it. For 45 minutes.

That’s it.

This gives you many of the benefits you’d get from a longer, more involved workshop group, but in a condensed way, talking about one poem more closely than a workshop group could. Each poem gets put under the microscope: how does it operate? What is its shape? How does it create its effects? What word really makes a difference? How does it?

We read a very broad range of work, of all periods and styles. I try to choose poems the group members might not have encountered before — after all, this is about widening the vista — though sometimes we go back to a good old classic favourite for another look.

And we start up this Thursday! Great news! All the information is here.

Just drop me a line.