A very intense week

Last week was my juried intensive poetry workshop.  I crawl out of bed  each day, get organized, put the day’s handouts and lectures into my old brown leather tote and get a ride to class.  We meet at the Senior Center.  It’s airconditioned, the chairs are very comfortable and we meet around a long table.  There are bathrooms, coffee, scones, a copy machine and a huge parking lot.  It’s in the woods but in front of it you see the Wellfleet community garden plots. I talk briefly, we look at examples of what I’m discussing – imagery the first day, oral effects the second.  I give an assignment based on the craft element we are dealing with that day.  The next day, they hand around copies of what they wrote.  Then we move on to the next element of poetic craft.  The first and last days we workshop poems they’ve brought – there are twelve participants.  Some arrive with significant others or family members. One poet brought her cat and bird. I open the class up December first.  I read the five poems applicants have sent as they come in.  I pay no attention to their degrees, publication, positions when I am reading the poems.  I have to feel they have reached a certain level and that I believe I can work with each to bring them to a more accomplished level.  There’s always a considerable age range and different amounts of publication, but each one has something I like. Afternoons I meet with each of them for a conference on my land.  Usually we meet in my screened in gazebo, but this week it was too damned hot and humid on Wednesday and Thursday, so those days we met in my airconditioned diningroom, with a couple of cats kibitzing. Generally the class is full by the end of January.  In February I start helping them find housing they can afford.  This year, several of them roomed together in one or another cottage.  They got to know each other even better than they did with the rest of the group.  Some strong friendships formed.  My first class is still largely in touch after three years.  I accept a couple of poets as alternates, and almost every year someone drops out before the final payment and an alternate gets to come. Ira sets up a Ning in February so participants can get to know each other and so that I can communicate with them about what they need to bring to class, the additional poems I’ll need from them the first week In May, what lodging they might like, transportation, what they might enjoy doing in Wellfleet. I send them a map and a brochure about the town.  My philosophy is that they should have a good time while they’re here.  We always have a beach party one night.  We have lunch together one day.  There’s a public reading at the library.   They each read one longer poem or two shorter ones and then I bring up the end.  We get a good crowd every year. The room was packed. I work with them all week on delivery.Since the point of sale for poetry books or chapbooks is right after a reading, being able to perform your poems is crucial. I’m so worn out by the time I finish my last conference every day, I just collapse.  Ira has to make supper or we get pizza or some other take-out that week.  Normally I enjoy cooking but not Monday through Thursday of that week.  Friday afternoon I do only one last conference, then I do start cooking for the party in our garden that ends the class.  The weather was great, the roses were in bloom.  It didn’t get too buggy till the party was almost over.  A few of us went inside and continued talking.  I let the cats out and they flirted with company.  After all, that week they were feeling neglected.  This week I have to make up with them. Always some good entries come in after the class has filled, so I preaccept a few people for the next year.  Then in early November, I get in touch with them via email to check if they are still interested before I throw the class open December first. Of all the workshops I do every year in memoir, fiction, poetry, this is my favorite because I hand pick the poets I want to work with.  Even though it’s exhausting, those who have been through it say there is nothing like it and that it has a lasting effect.  I hope so. Now back to my life.  Time to make zucchini relish tonight and black currant freezer jam tomorrow, if the rains hold off long enough to pick the currants from our bushes.  Our bushes share a garden with our roses.