Great Blue Heron Workshop
05/07/08 15:03 Filed in: Workshops
In the first year (2005) I took a poetry workshop with poet/novelist Anne Simpson, who is one of the workshop's organizers (along with Gina Sampson for the first 3 years and Brenda Riley this year). In 2006 I did a screenplay workshop with Sheldon Currie. Last year it was my privilege to be part of a fiction workshop with Alistair MacLeod. And this year I was back in poetry, but this time with Anne Compton.
Why do I keep on coming back to this workshop? For one thing, it is one of the more affordable workshops around. It runs 5 days. This year I paid $660, which included the workshop tuition, accommodations and meals (4 breakfasts, 4 lunches and one dinner). The array of accomplished writers the GBH attracts as instructors, aside from those mentioned above, has included Sue Goyette, Lisa Moore, Madeleine Thien, Daniel MacIvor and Michael Crummey.
But most of all, it is the commitment to encourage writers of all levels to meet, mingle, share their work and test themselves in a nurturing and stimulating environment. No matter what genre of writing I came to work on, I always left either having taken the pieces I brought with me to the next level or, at the very least, with a better sense of who I am as a writer and where I want to go.
A good example of the former was my experience with Anne Simpson. I left her workshop with two useable poems: "Let Us Improvise Motifs", which later was published in Aquapolis, and "Gathering", which grew out of a writing exercise Anne gave the group and later was published in Mobius Poetry Magazine.
Being primarily a writer of fiction, I am often struggling to find my identity as a poet. This is what led me to take poetry with Anne Compton this year. Writing poetry well requires the ability to use language sparingly for maximum effect. I am always hoping that kind of poetic precision will somehow spill over into my prose. Unfortunately, quite often the opposite is true and much of my poetry becomes a bit too prosaic. Even so, I am grateful to Anne Compton, not only for pointing out the poetic strengths in the work I brought to her, but also for her painstaking effort in showing me how to rectify my weaknesses. Her passion and commitment were infectious to all of us who were fortunate enough to work with her.
One of the great things about the GBH is how it encourages all the participants to read their work in front of their fellow writers. To that end, public readings are organized throughout the week. It is a great way to get to know each other and inspiring to listen to the diverse voices that come to the GBH.
Will I go next year? I honestly don't know. Most likely it will depend on whether I have any writing I want to workshop at the time. But I will be checking their web site come early 2009 to see which amazing writers will be leading the workshops.
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