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Last Sunday I had two readings – one in the US in the morning, the other in the UK in the evening – oh the beauty of Zoom and time zones!
The Poetry Box is based in Portland, Oregon publishing books and literary journals, and hosting launches and poetry readings. Headed by Shawn Aveningo Sanders and her partner Robert, they also publish The Poeming Pigeon twice a year, an internal literary journal of poetry with and without themes. One of my poems was selected for the current issue, From Pandemic to Protest, launched online with over 30 poets reading their work on these topics and everything in between, including politics, the climate crisis and wildfires. My poem was a found one about the Australian bush fires sourced from an article that appeared in The Guardian last year, my first found poem to be published.
Cath Drake is an Australian poet based in London and hosts The Verandah focusing on poetry, mindfulness and creative projects, the current being Who are We Now? UK and Australian poets exploring courageous connections with land and people in the 2020s. Having just finished one of Cath’s six-monthly poetry feedback groups, the writing prompts encouraged us to explore these connections, so my piece was inspired by the succulents in our garden, which took me back to my nan’s. There were eleven readers all up, with Sarah Holland-Batt as the featured one, who has just published Fishing for Lightening: The Spark of Poetry and has another collection forthcoming.
Both readings were recorded, so I hope to share them when available. It was wonderful to connect with so many poets all over the world and hear their work. The voice of poetry is a powerful one.
So the other writing course I’m now halfway through is a monthly Advanced Poetry Feedback Workshop facilitated by Cath Drake via Zoom.
Originally from Australia, Cath is based in London and has been widely published. Sleeping with Rivers won the 2013 Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Prize and The Shaking City from Seren Books was commended by the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 2020. Both are brilliant reads.
Cath runs two of these workshops over 6 months and it’s an intimate group of six poets; three from Australia and three from the UK. We submit a poem for feedback and Cath shares a contemporary one for discussion, as well as a prompt for next time. And the format is effective – someone volunteers to read the poem, we hear it from the poet who then mutes themselves while we discuss what works and what doesn’t, returning to the poet for their thoughts at the end.
Let’s make a good poem better!
This is Cath’s motto and her comments are perceptive and intuitive, encouraging us to review form, line breaks, syntax and meaning. The three poems I’ve submitted so far have been improved going through this process, two of which will be included in my next collection about my breast cancer experience. Cath is also organising readings later this year as part of the Where are we now? series, exploring connections to people and place, when we’ll get to read what we’ve written alongside some big names. This I’m looking forward to.
A good prose poem is something quite unique and who better to teach its essentials than two of its finest poets – Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington.
Hosted by brilliant Australian UK-based poet Cath Drake as part of her poetry masterclass series, Cassandra and Paul shared the main features of a prose poem, what sets it apart from flash fiction and poetic prose, as well as some examples. The class also had chance to draft their own prose poems, which I struggled with as I can’t always write on demand, however it did give me ideas.
I met Cassandra and Paul at a Poetry On The Move Festival in Canberra a few years ago. Their work in this area is extensive and they’ve recently edited The Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry published by Melbourne University Press, which I was fortunate enough to be shortlisted for, but my work sadly didn’t make the final cut.
Their energy and enthusiasm for prose poetry is contagious and has spurred me to explore the form further, because I’m intrigued with its dichotomy of being fragmentary and a stand-alone narrative, like a snapshot of some larger work. So my aim is to practice with Cassandra’s advice in mind – a good prose poem should leave you barking like a dog at the moon.
J V Birch 