The monthly mini is the free, no strings workshop that takes place on zoom before the Lehigh Valley Poetry Virtual Salon, open mic. We do the open mic on the first Monday of the month, at 8:30 PM EST. Before that, we gather informally on the zoom from 8:00- 8:30 for a quick prompt or exercise. If you look under the “Workshops” heading on the menu above, you can see the topics for the different months. It will give you an idea of the sorts of things that we discuss.
Now remember, this is a half hour and we try to share for a few minutes. It doesn’t leave a lot of time to dive deep. Because of this, the mini monthly workshops are intended to provoke thoughts later on that might fuel a draft or just give a poet something to chew on. You might only get to the mulling over phase, but as poets know- many poems are developed in our minds long before the pen hits the page or the fingers hit the keys. Learning HOW to muck about in our heads is part of thinking like a poet. Now you might be in that camp of poets who believe that you are just born a poet, crafting lines with magnets on the fridge. You were born with the right mindset, and it cannot be taught or developed.
Your workshop facilitator over here at Lehigh Valley Poetry didn’t go to that camp. She believes that people can develop a poetry mindspace, and be provoked to expand thinking. We can do this by reading poetry, by taking classes, by practice, and by various methods. What a workshop does is provide the interaction for people who grow by bouncing ideas off of others, whose voices grow stronger through openness to new ideas. Even THAT is a workshop topic. But that is a discussion for another day.
For the March workshop, we turn again to the emotional headspace. Let’s think about the poem that makes us feel something in the gut. In this case, we will explore catharsis.
Aristotle described catharsis as a release of emotional energy. In this mini workshop, we will talk about the ways that a poem can build up emotions and release them. How do we do this?
Think about a strong emotion that can build up in the body and mind. Let’s take the example of fear. Imagine that you are afraid of something, and the dread that can come with it. We are going up the mountain on a ski lift, and when we get to the top, we have to jump off. The trip up is the dreading, the jump is the release as we are relieved of the fear whether we want to be or not. For better or worse, whether we ski or we fall- the dread part is over.
Take the emotion, and try to write a few lines that build up, and then release.
Examples: Wanting to tell somebody the truth about the way we feel, but being afraid and carrying the dread around. Then one day, it is time. Maybe your beloved is joining the circus, and they are leaving town at dawn. (Doesn’t matter, this is a quick workshop.) But the time is now. The truth is spoken.
Another example: Being worried about “coming out” to one’s family, but doing so and the truth is out there in the room.
