Work it out
Alison Chisholm looks at the way a poet can develop fresh ideas in a workshop setting
Alison Chisholm
Poets struggle constantly to find something new to say and a fresh way to say it.
Unless we are lucky enough to be blessed with a Muse who visits regularly, we need to find stimuli that will excite poems out of us. Reading the poetry of others may inspire new work. Keen observation and a touch of eavesdropping can inspire more. But sometimes we need to be in touch with other people who can fuel our creative imagination.
Instead of looking at a single poem in this issue, we are going to consider the work begun in a series of workshops – occasions whose function is to tempt participants to write in different and exciting ways. We visit them through the eyes of Pennant Roberts, a poet of many years’ experience whose preferred writing is performance poetry. He writes monologues and comic verse, often based on observations of nature and human behaviour, and on contrasts between today and yesterday. He is always seeking inspiration, and loves playing with words to conjure new poems from them.