Poetry Workshop, Thom-style

Thom's poetry workshops, like his performances, are characterised by his infectious energy. He's very up-beat and barely seems to stop for breath. And yet you don't end up feeling frenetic but inspired. He's light, gentle, fun, non-threatening – and he never for one moment entertains the idea that anyone present 'can't do it'.

Apart from that, like myself he uses the Natalie Goldberg technique of timed writing (outlined in her books for writers, Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind) the first rule of which is 'Keep your hand moving'. She adds, 'Don't pause to reread the line you have just written. That's stalling and trying to get control of what you're saying.' In Wild Mind she says, 'When you sit down to write, whether it's for ten minutes or an hour, once you begin don't stop. If an atom bomb drops at your feet eight minutes after you have begun and you were going to write for ten minutes, don't budge. You'll go out writing.'

There are other rules, such as don't cross out, don't think, don't worry about spelling, punctuation or grammar and 'you are free to write the worst junk in the world'. The idea is to bypass the internal censor or editor and break through to what she calls 'first thoughts' which is where the energy is – and therefore, I would add, the originality. It doesn't mean you never edit your work, but you don't keep stopping to rewrite your first draft; that comes later. First of all go for it and get it down.

Her final rule is 'go for the jugular'. That is, if you find yourself writing something that scares you, that's too rude or too revealing, don't inhibit it. Chances are, there's something powerful there. (And hey, you can always edit it out later if you really must.)

Most writers who read Ms Goldberg find her very inspiring, and if we lead workshops we use her basic method which we have found to work for us. It's a foundation for our own methods.

If you're writing alone, working on your own novel, poem or whatever, you might decide to go for an hour. In a workshop setting with a number of different people, naturally each exercise lasts only a few minutes. (It's wonderful how much you can get down in two, if you keep your hand moving etc.)

In the workshop Thom gave us in Pottsville, I think we had about 20 participants. Thom used all sorts of things as triggers or topics for writing. He was demonstrating to us that we need never be blocked or stuck. We're all endlessly inventive really, and can produce interesting writing on any subject, instantly.

He had a whole stack of pictures he passed around. There were postcards, personal photos, pictures from calendars, advertisements…. He had a number of copies of each, and it was fascinating that people would come up with very different interpretations of the same image.

He also used words as triggers. I was shocked to see him rip pages from an old volume of Robert Frost's poems, and hand them out to people with instructions to read, and then write whatever came to mind. I was brought up to believe books are sacred. You don't highlight passages, you don't annotate the margins, you don't turn down the corners of the pages to keep your place, and you certainly don't tear them up! Even worse, this was Robert Frost, acknowledged as one of the greats.

Then I realised it was a tattered, second-hand copy; it was the classic Penguin edition, unlikely to go out of print; I have the same edition on my bookshelf at home and Thom is not offering to come into my house and rip that up … and maybe he was conveying something important. To love and admire the work of great poets is one thing – to hold them as sacred icons may be self-defeating, leading us to feel there's no point in attempting any writing of our own.

There are some points to attempting it, though.
• Everyone, even Robert Frost, has to start somewhere.verdana;">• We all need self-expression.
• Your own voice may be more valuable than you think. When we write like this in WordsFlow sessions, it's notable that we are all different and that each one of us has fascinating things to say. We each tend to think our own writing is the least accomplished and least interesting – but to the rest of the group it's brilliant and enthralling, and may be exactly the thing that someone else needs to hear.

- Rosemary (Facilitator)