Working from a different angle

A busy weekend got off to a very good start at New Bohemians on Friday evening here at Deepspace in Cheltenham. The poet David Clarke was leading a workshop on "Poetic Form". I must say I wasn't much looking forward to an evening dissecting sonnets, villanelles etc. so his approach - that of using novel forms to stimulate creativity - was most welcome. After a brief discussion of the Oulipo (about whom I knew nothing - do look them up if you're in the same boat!) and an introduction through some very different types of poems, we launched into a few very interesting exercises. For example, David presented us with five poems in quite obscure languages - with which none of us were familiar - to be "translated" to the best of our understanding and imagination. Valiant attempts at examining rhythm, line lengths, word repetition etc. etc. yielded some impressively creative responses!

David Clarke