Workshop Reflection!

This was my first time workshopping and critiquing other people’s work in an open environment. I actually enjoyed the whole process very thoroughly, especially the part when the writer had to be mute the whole time he/she was being criticized. I believe this workshop process made everyone of us open minded towards criticism and taught us to accept and appreciate criticism the way we tend to accept compliments. Before this workshop, I never really enjoyed reading poetry or even writing it. I thought writing poetry was one the hardest form of writing. But this class, and especially doing workshops made me love reading other people’s poems and even writing my own. Most of the poems I wrote during this process was solely based on my personal experience, which made it easier for me to write about my emotions, thoughts and opinions. The criticism and compliments that I got for my poem from my fellow classmates and professors really helped me to revise and write a better form of it. I really can’t think of any draw backs, from the workshop process. I think this method really works for rising poets and writers to be open to criticism, compliments, judgments, confrontation, and much more. Poetry is very creative, and sometimes the readers may not quite understand what the poet is trying to convey through those detailed imagery, or even not using any imagery at all. Thus poetry is very subjective, as the audience can only analyze and criticize what is written in front of them, and trying to think outside of the box which sometimes works very nicely and other times its literally redundant and painful. Even with these certain flaws, I think talking about poems and discussing it in front of the writer, lets the writer know what is their writing is actually portraying towards other people. Thus it can be very helpful for them to change and revise their work, or leave it as they have written it already.