I survived the workshop 2k15

The poems the class wrote were so beautiful and left me really inspired. It made me really eager to read what advice they had to give me, since there were so many new directions I could take the poem now. At times I was worried I sounded too critical (my control freak ways) but after I was work-shopped I found that constructive advice can be even more useful than admiration sometimes.
I felt really grateful and pleasantly surprised for all the nice things people said about my poem. My major is mainly in literary criticism (blah), and even though I always attended lots of spoken word nights, creative writing clubs etc, I had never shared my poetry publicly or with friends like that. It was really fun to be involved in reading in such a way.
One of my metaphors, concerning the ‘lily pad’ and the ‘ice berg’ was something that desperately irked me about my poem, hearing that some people liked it opened my eyes to taking chances and trusting in a wide audience.

The problems I had with the poem were the same things people picked up on. Not being able get up and defend your poem made me really aware to the fact that you NEED to put everything you’re thinking of down on the page, the poem needs to speak for itself. This was an important lesson for someone like me who is obsessed with word economy and vague writing.

A lot of suggestions were throw around that I had never considered before, such as changing form for meaning. It’s so easy to become wrapped up in form and structural rules that we sacrifice our intentions. I’m now excited to get to work on my revisions, thanks for all your help!