Workshop Revision Process

          Throughout the workshop revision process for our poems, I was very intrigued by everyone’s beautiful poems, and the process that they might have gone through into creating their poem, or the story behind the meaning of it.  I also enjoyed being able to puzzle together the interpretation of the poem right in front of the poet – giving myself and others a chance to officially see if they came close to the actual meaning of the poem.  It was also interesting on the writer’s side of the revision process to see if others could actually interpret the message throughout the poem, or that they did a good job portraying their message across the poem somewhat clearly.  On the other hand, as much as I absolutely love reading other people’s writings, I was a little nervous to workshop my own poem. 

          I have done this same sort of workshop process before at my High School, and later on as apart of our poetry portfolio we would hand in everything that we had written on to gather our inspirations for our poems, whether that be writing on parts and pieces of napkins, the sides of plastic cups, or scraps of paper – we would hand in everything.  I think the entire process of workshop is a fantastic way not only for the author to get a chance to officially show their work and generate feed-back on his or her writing to help them to better improve themselves, but it also helps the author to feel a lot more comfortable with sharing his or her work with other people – in a sense, it almost forces them to get their work out for the public to see.  

          As we were reviewing the first couple of poems people automatically knew just how to “jump in” and what to say for someone else’s poems.  If anything, everyone gave really good, honest advice on how someone could improve his or her poem.  Although at times people did not feel or wish to talk about how one could fix their poem simply because they could have been tired, or no one wanted to talk, which did tend to take away from the revision process.  Other than those minor aspects, the entire revision process for our poems has been quite enjoyable – it makes me even more excited to write even more poems with some of the suggestions mentioned from class towards my future writings.