I’m no academic poet.

Talk  to me about about syllables, haikus – to be honest,  I can only hear the blood rushing to my head.

I started doing stream of consciousnesss posts in 2016. I’ve received positive feedback on here, and now I want to step up my game.

Just for fun, the social aspect and it’s a different way to express myself.

So, I did what I do best.

Wing it!

I went to the  poetry workshop, everyone seemed to know what they were doing except me!

 I went with my heart, my  emotions and willingness to try out new approaches, in tackling poetry for live performance.

It was a cool workshop – delivered  by a well established,British  poet – Matt Abott –

check out his bio HERE 

A  collaboration with  DREAM TIME COLLECTIVE. 

We went through a series of activities with the idea to have some form of a draft by the end of the  2 hour  workshop

The theme was political poetry.

Each participant chose a theme that they felt passionately about. I chose ‘Animal rights/cruelty. ‘

I got so much out of a two hour workshop that I’m going to share what I did.

Once we had chosen our theme/subject

we had to ask ourselves three questions

• Who does it  affect?

• How does it affect me?

• Why is it important to me or to the world?

A Couple of notes I made:

• It affects animals, people, ocean, planet

• I’m a lover of animals, I don’t believe that we need to eat meat, or wear clothes or makeup made up of animal derivatives. Because of my knowledge of what animals go through to become a consumer product. I feel it  is unethical.

• I have my own view of animals. I admire  how they are able to evolve and adapt, in a way, that doesn’t  have a negative impact on the planet .This shows me that humans could learn something from nature, instead of destroying our home.

2. What Matt stressed is:   that if we want our poetry to make an impact writing it to perform , we need a motive, a call of action, an agenda.

• Who am I  delivering this message to?

• What do I want to achieve?

Examples: Do I want to shock people, encourage people to look at solutions to the problem etc..

3)

Imagine a room( keeping in mind what your subject is) and put 5 points/Images using ‘show and tell’ language to come with up with  strong words.

Example:

• tearing of flesh

• frothing at the mouth

• cramped

• squealing

• gunshots

• insidious laughter

4)  Objective.

Place the victim/s in that room.

What are they doing ?

How do they feel?

Example:

I had two victims. I imagined a gorilla coming round from another bout of being sedated by electrocution. He was wearing garish make up – heavily made up blue eyes and bold, blood colour red lipstick.

My other victim was human – a female who happened to be dressed up in chicken outfit or as a bird. She had a morbid fascination finding herself in this  surreal room with this clearly broken ,macabre gorilla.

Next we had place ourselves in that room -observing what was going on

Example:

Horror, what do I do? , retaliate or fight or freeze. I was frozen on the spot. Upon reflection, this  is how most of society reacts to topics that make them uncomfortable. They become apathetic.

Next, we had to place the victim outside of that situation/ROOM . Different surroundings. Aware of what they have witnessed/ or know and how they react in a different setting.

Example:

I chose the female ,costume wearing bird human and put her in a cosmetic store. The emotions that came to me were  conflicting – this victim of societies idea of attaining beauty is thinking ‘ ‘I have a choice’

The next stage was to  put these  ideas into the poetic form.

Make a poem.

 Always keeping in mind what we want the audience or how we want the audience to react.

We were directed to to start to put together a poem of no more than 50 words, or certain amount syllables. The aim was to keep it short.

Keep it punchy.

On topic.

I wrote about  100 words – possibly more.

It’s okay.

Then we had to cut those words in half – 😦

I ended up with 46 words.

This is the  end product .

Carnival time!

Gaze  in the mirror.

Blue sparkled hues 

Red paint 

Blood fondue.

Do I look pretty enough for you?

Tearing of flesh.

Bleached in acid 

Gorilla Art

Reflection never part

Do I look pretty enough for you?

The true freak in this show is 

, indeed YOU.

Daisy Willows/ Natasha Bodley

Times up. Workshop over. Get back to real life  😀

Now, I have another to approach to  poetry when  I write.

Worth it.

Go me!

Have a great weekend!