do no harm

All poetry workshops should adopt the Hippocratic motto: "to help, or at least, to do no harm," shortened in Latin as, primum non nocere, ‘first, do no harm’.

thirty years

Today we held a thirtieth anniversary reading of the poets who have met at my house since early 1995. I told someone after the reading, how much I valued the 'soft deadline' of having to press an inchoate poem into in a presentable state before the weekly meeting.

no quibble here

To find something to quibble about is not the object of a poetry workshop.

offer to redirect

In the poetry workshop model the poet whose poem has been critiqued should be allowed a few minutes toward the end of the session to ‘redirect’ the commentary should s/he feel that the group missed some important aspect of the poem.

empty chair

Sitting there in workshop she was like an empty chair—it was clear the moment she spoke how little poetry and criticism she’d read.

lap poem

As the workshop leader proceeded around the table, I thought I could hear the woman beside me tearing up her copies in her lap. And when he called her turn to present a poem, she lifted the scraps of paper from her lap and let them fall on the table in a pile.

something to show for it

Workshop was cancelled, so he may not have had the benefit of consultation but he had the consolation of a poem written.

straight talk

 The message to the workshop should be: No one is fucking around in here.