On Friday, during our Donne chatter, Teresa suddenly asked about my writing groups: what do I like? what do I not like? I told her about my salon evenings--the communal writing to prompts and how that has opened new doors into my material, which I can then take home and refashion in solitude. But I also told her about my other writing group--a monthly, more traditional workshopping session that I have mixed feelings about. The participants are lovely, and several overlap with the salon group, but there's something about workshopping--essentially, judging: essentially, picking apart work--which I find both unsavory and unhelpful. This isn't to say I don't welcome aid with pieces I'm struggling with. But there's something about the standard workshop model that doesn't feel right to me.

I realized, as Teresa was talking, that agency may be part of the issue. In the workshop model, the poet sits back silently as everyone else in the room talks about the piece. It's a kind of victim approach to one's own art. But what might happen if the poet triggered the discussion?

So now Teresa and I are thinking about a new experiment: What if a group of four committed poets, more or less peers in their sense of confidence in the art, gathers on zoom? Each brings a poem in progress, and each begins the conversation about the poem. We're calling this approach "Let's talk about ____." The blank could be a craft problem ("I'm struggling with the form of this sestina.") It could be a research issue ("I'm having trouble figuring out what historical material is actually useful in this poem.") It could be a moral question ("Do I have the right to speak for this speaker?") It could be an angst question ("Why won't anyone publish this poem?") It could be a mysterious joy question ("Why does this poem feel right, even though it's so different from my usual style?") Whatever the trigger, the rest of the group would use this opening to enter into a discussion about the poem.

It seemed to Teresa and me that this might be a way to avoid one of the big problems of the workshop model: the tendency to rewrite other people's work for them, a side-effect that I deeply dislike. But we could still have intense and useful discussions about the pieces; we could still help one another and learn from one another.

In any case, we're going to try it, if we can get our other invitees on board. Something to look forward to, in the dark of winter!