Each month, we do a “mini workshop” before the Lehigh Valley Poetry Virtual Salon and Open Mic. The open mic is on the first Monday of the month at 8:30, the workshop is from 8:00- 8:30. Same zoom link. We always post an event on the Lehigh Valley Poetry Facebook page, and reminders and photos on our Instagram account.
These mini workshops are meant to introduce a poetry tool, technique, prompt, idea. Since it is only 30 minutes, we don’t get in depth but we do provide a few minutes for writing and sharing. It is meant to be a quick process that can be revisited later and maybe shared when finished at a future open mic.
These mini workshops are facilitated by E.Lynn Alexander, and you can reach out if you have any questions. The topics are typically posted here. You should be able to find them by using the “workshops” tab above.
NOVEMBER MINI WORKSHOP: “I WAS”
You might have heard poets talk about various forms of “I am” poems. We are going to talk about “I was…”
For our prompt, we are going to use some suggested ways to fill in the blanks, and view an example.
We are looking to explore the past. I was ___…
Choose from the list:
Weather
Location
Season
Emotion
A movement
A musician
Color
Something you find in a backyard
A gesture
An animal
Example:
I was a downpour, the skies opened
And I was fury
I was an intersection
I was Manhattan
I was a thousand angry drivers
I was a nest
of hornets.
It isn’t the greatest example, just a quick draft. Connecting fury with storms, traffic, hornets. The chaos of the city, the commotion of a swarm. This can be a starting place for a direction, and I can decide where to go from here. Maybe I will decide later to remove the “I was” entirely. Or reshape it. The idea is to start thinking about ways to convey an emotional state or situation from the past, using different comparisons. Some might work, some less so- but it is an exercise. It isn’t important that it produce a masterpiece. Most exercises won’t. But if we stay the course with it, we can develop different ways to think about language and ideas and how to express what we want to convey.
Remember- it is only thirty minutes! Have fun. Be loose about it.
