If there's one thing I 've learned from workshop, it's that your audience wants to see you do well. In the week before workshop, I had this nagging, irrational thought in the back of my mind that "They are going to tear me apart." However, after seeing it done two times now, my general impression is of my peers giving each other pleasant, helpful criticism out of a desire to see each other succeed. I also like that workshop begins on a positive note with everyone talking about what they liked most about everyone else's poems; it's a great way to ease into the process.
Although I think of myself as creative, poetry is a horse on which I've never come to have that great of a handle. It's not something I ever took seriously, and I have always kind of dashed it off to the side. However, there's no better way to get better at something than for others to tell you what you are doing wrong and what's good, which is the essence of workshop. Workshop has done two things for me: it's made me appreciate the art and process of poetry, and it's taught me to become a better writer. I'd also like to say that it's made me a more confident person as well.
Perhaps the only drawback I can think of is that we're only doing one poem. Other than that, though, I can't think of any negatives to fellow poets discussing each others' material and helping each other to be better writers. Workshop has allowed me to think of poetry from a different angle than what I'd grown up with. It's been a daunting, new experience, and I'm glad my first foray into workshop is a positive one.
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