How to host a poetry workshop

Introduction

Hi, my name is Fatima Jalloh. I facilitated my first poetry workshop in the sixth grade. It was our after-school Creative Writing Club: a generative workshop based on a prompt chosen by my favorite teacher of all time, Ms. Hash. I forced all of my friends to show up (at a STEM school, mind you) because “hey, we could become better writers if we just worked on it.” And I had definitely heard that on YouTube somewhere as I binged video after video, trying to follow every tip and instruction to accomplish my dream of becoming a writer.

No one actually liked poetry back then, and I eventually opened it up to writing of all types, but for that one Thursday, we all learned to write haikus. We looked at famous haikus, and traded synonyms to put together haikus of our own to show off at the end, where we would share what we wrote. And though no one actually liked poetry, it was a space for all of us to come together and share our favorite words in the best order. And for 12-year-old me, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Almost ten years later, I still love facilitating these spaces, forcing poets out of their comfort zones and into an enriching community of creatives. My most recent workshop was on “Revolutionary Poets: Disorienting Your Poetry” with i2i, a poets-of-color collective I founded with one of my favorite poets, Atarah Israel. We’ve hosted other poetry workshops like “Palestine, Poetry and Resistance” and “Trans Poetry.” It’s been a way to unite our writing community in times of struggle while contributing to and sharing our knowledge as we collectively strive toward liberation.

I’ve created this guide to empower poets at every level, from amateur to professional, in hosting workshops for their community. It draws on my personal journey and the wisdom of four accomplished poets—Ola Faleti, John McCarthy, Fullamusu Bangura, and Rachel Webster—who have all shared their diverse workshop experiences.

Part 1: Understand the Different Types of Workshops

Understanding different poetry workshops is crucial because it helps you tailor the experience for your participants. It ensures you meet diverse skill levels, set clear expectations, and inspire creativity, all while fostering a strong sense of community. This way, your workshop will be both effective and suited for the participants. There are many different types of workshops, with different audiences, settings, and formats.

Audiences – Academia vs. Community, K-12 vs. Higher Education

Poetry is for everyone. However, some workshops are better suited for younger audiences and others for seasoned pros. A significant aspect of your workshop planning should be understanding your audience and community.

Community workshops are typically open to all types of poets, allowing for a much wider range of attendance. You never know who will show up to these (unless you have some sort of RSVP form), so make sure to be flexible and open to any audience you get. John McCarthy, who authored the lauded collection “Scared Violent Like Horses,” has led seminars for several years and is currently the managing editor of RHINO Poetry. When facilitating community workshops at the Evanston Public Library, he says, “Some weeks, three or four people would show up, but other weeks, we would have over 30 participants, which can be hard to wrangle.”

Community workshops can be hosted in public library meeting spaces, local college campuses, or outside (if it’s nice out)! Fullamusu Bangura, a poet-in-residence at the Chicago Poetry Center, hosts an informal writing workshop for her friends in her apartment called Writing Queer-ies. Fullamusu suggests keeping your number of participants under 15 for hosting workshops. “There’s an intimacy I appreciate about smaller groups, and I think it aids people to feel more at ease and safe to share their poetry,” she says.

Every poet is at a different stage in their writing career. Any poet, whether intending to publish a collection, write a love poem for their fiancé, or just put some thoughts down on the page, should feel welcome in a community workshop. Some participants at your community workshop session may show up without having encountered the terminology for literary devices or the work of classic poets. And that’s okay! You want to make people of all different skill sets feel comfortable enough to enter the workshop space, participate in the writing exercises, and share their work without feeling judged for being an “amateur writer.”

For your community workshop to be accessible to everyone, try to keep things simple:

• Avoid using overly academic language
• Instead, stick with layman’s terms so everyone can follow along.
• Avoid making assumptions about your community
• Instead, communicate with participants in your workshops to understand their needs
• When using poetic terminology, make sure to introduce those terms with simple definitions and examples
• Or, have access to definitions on handouts or slides
• Avoid unsolicited critiques
• While workshop spaces are commonly used to give and receive feedback, community workshops might not be the space to engage in unwanted criticism.
• Encourage writers to ask for feedback, being specific on the type of critiques they’re looking for.
• Validate all work after moments of critique to encourage poets to continue writing.

Academic workshops are slightly different. They typically target undergraduate or graduate-level poets. These workshops are meant to hone in on improvement of craft and technique, so they have a more critical style, diving deep into syntax and grammar. Participants, whether students in a class or community members, explore the work more analytically than in a community workshop. In John McCarthy’s academic workshop experience, he said, “There’s some sort of contract by being in the room that you’re open to receiving critical feedback on what is and isn’t working well in a piece.”

Academic workshops can sometimes come with an entrance fee. When contemplating charging participants for your workshop, consider the costs it may take to run it (i.e., reserving spaces, hiring guest speakers, catering). These things can add up, but many poets are willing to spend a bit to enter an academic workshop, especially if they regularly schedule workshops with a sustained group of writers. It’s fair to ask for compensation for facilitating a workshop and providing resources to your community, especially if you’re taking the time to prepare lectures, rent out spaces, and potentially pay honorariums for guest speakers. However, not all poets have the resources to attend paid workshops. To keep things accessible, consider having a “suggested donation” or a sliding scale cost as the entrance fee. This eliminates the cost barrier for poets who can’t afford to pay. Another option is to consider offering scholarships or grants on an application basis so that you’ll be able to name a fair price for participants while also providing accessibility to those who would otherwise be unable to afford it.

Age appropriateness is crucial if hosting workshops open to all ages or for younger crowds in school or after-school programs. In Ola Faleti’s experience as a poet-in-residence with the Chicago Poetry Center, she says, “This work brought me a lot more middle schoolers and elementary students. They have an eagerness to them, and they’re naturally really great poets.”

For dealing with children and young adults, Ola puts more consideration into the poems she brings into her spaces, “Not just thinking about their reading level, but also what is appropriate for their age.” A certain consideration also goes into working in public school settings, which are typically less political and advocative in material. Following recent discussions [possible link] about restricting “woke” content, some parents are sensitive to matters that may carry political messages. Make sure to run any poems and lesson plans by the primary teachers.

When working in open-to-all community spaces, similar sensitivity should be considered. While poetry is a historically radical space, try to avoid including obviously partisan content in instructional material.

This isn’t to say you can’t bring poetry that tackles topics of conflicts, gender and sexual identity, race, and religion, as examples, but that you should avoid advocating against any specific group or identity, whether that be political or not.

Poetry is for everyone. It is an art form that transcends barriers of language, nationality, class, etc. Keep this in mind while you facilitate a workshop that brings together people of all different backgrounds.

That said, you can also tailor workshop spaces for specific affinity groups. While poetry is and should be for everyone, it is perfectly fine to tailor affinity spaces (e.g., Black Women Writers Workshops, Queer Poet Workshops, Trauma-informed Poetry Workshops, etc.).

Generative vs. Writers vs. Craft

Poet Dimitri Reyes, author of Papi Pichón and Every First and Fifteenth, lists three types of writing workshops in a blog post and accompanying YouTube video. I’ve incorporated and built off of these types to describe and distinguish these types of workshops, so that when you build your own, you know how to keep it focused, how to organize the structure, and how to make it the most useful for the kind of support people are looking for when they come to a poetry workshop

Generative Workshop — A generative workshop is a workshop in which poets come to create, draft, or generate new material. Seasoned poet and workshop facilitator John McCarthy describes this workshop model as a “space where people will feel comfortable to write and share their writing.”

The structure of these types of workshops often involves an educative portion in the beginning in which a skill is explained, followed by a writing session, generally based on the educative portion, and then an open mic where participants can share the work they have produced. McCarthy recommends maintaining a theme and/or topic for each workshop. You can use aspects of language like ‘metaphors’ and ‘similes’ as themes. You could also focus on poem forms like ‘sonnets’ or ‘haikus,’ where you focus on learning and generating. Themes can also be based on a shared prompt or topic, as abstract as ‘being’ and ‘belonging,’ or as specific as ‘writing about the dead.’

For the educative portion of his generative workshop, McCarthy often invites guest lecturers, typically professional/published poets or educators, to share their knowledge of poetry with the community. If you don’t have the budget or resources for a guest lecturer but still want to facilitate learning in the space, a simple presentation or reading led by the workshop facilitator is just fine, too. Ola Faleti has led many workshops revolving around themes and topics such as “Self Portraits with Words,” “Persona Poems,” and even “Making Poems out of Poems.” Her workshop curriculum, “Poets in Revolt!” for young adults, was nationally distributed and sparked a youth poet anthology of the same name. This lesson plan includes instructions for four 60-90 minute sessions for generative workshops.

The writing session of a generative workshop typically follows a lesson or lecture. This is the time allocated for workshop participants to write. Ola suggests creating a cozy atmosphere—perhaps with soft background music, candles or incense, and offerings like drinks or snacks—so that poets feel comfortable expressing their ideas. If the space allows, poets should be encouraged to move around and find comfortable writing positions.

The amount of time dedicated to this portion may depend on the amount of time you have — if you want your workshop to span over two hours, you might want to devote 30-45 minutes for poets to generate work; if you only want an hour-long workshop, maybe plan for 20 minutes of writing time. Even with these rough guidelines, be flexible with your participants. Allow for more or less time to write based on their needs. If everyone seems finished before the allotted time, allow writers to begin sharing their work. If participants are eager to continue writing, give them more time to work or encourage them to continue writing outside the workshop. If you’re unsure of timing, the best thing to do is ask poets for their feedback throughout. Remember, the workshop is for them. Avoid being overly strict with timing unless it is necessary.

If time allows and the group feels up for it, the workshop’s sharing section/open mic portion is a great space for community building and validation. Participants should feel encouraged, not forced, to share their work from the writing session. The work produced won’t feel finished or polished, making poets feel insecure. Assure poets that they aren’t alone in that feeling (and even that it might never go away). Let them know they can share portions of their work rather than all.

After sharing, poets should be met with encouraging feedback rather than critique and applause rather than silence. As a facilitator, you can model what an active listener looks and sounds like with snaps, nods, and backchanneling (i.e., assuring mmm’s and ah’s). As Ola puts it, participants should “feel heard if they want to be heard.”

Part 2: Writer’s Workshop

A writer’s workshop varies in length and function from a generative workshop. A writer’s workshop may span over a length of time, whether that be several days, weeks, or even months. That’s because the function of this workshop is to bring in work written (and perhaps even edited) beforehand to discuss and improve. This may look like several meetings coming back to the same poem or collection of poems for each workshop participant. Academic or university workshops may take this form to provide a more sustained, intimate form of critique and feedback for poets.

Just as for generative or community workshops, it is your responsibility as the workshop host to facilitate a safe space where participants feel comfortable and compelled to continue participating.

Because of the collaborative nature of these workshops, poets may also feel comfortable bringing in more seriously themed pieces (potentially discussing grief, violence, sexual trauma, or other possibly mature themes). This can also be preemptively discussed when establishing community agreements (which are expanded upon below).

The time and space requirements for this type of workshop also differ from those for generative workshops in that time is often divided between discussing each individual poet’s piece. Rather than an educative portion, writing portion, and open mic, this workshop’s aims are to equally distribute time and space for each poet and the discussion of their poetry. If a writer’s workshop has ten sustained participants for two hours each week, each participant would theoretically have 12 minutes dedicated to their work. Because of this, you may want to limit the number of participants to a smaller number or devote more time/sessions to maximize the utility of the group workshop. If all poets only had five minutes to discuss their work, for instance, they may leave the workshop with only shallow critiques of their work, unable to go in-depth into even one poem.\

To get the most out of these workshops, try to build small but tight groups that significantly contribute to the growth of all poets in the workshop. Encourage attendance and meaningful participation, as this type of workshop is only as helpful as the feedback it provides.

Part 3: Craft Workshops

The creative or craft workshop similarly aims to improve poets’ work. The difference between a craft workshop and a writer’s workshop is that participants focus more on the craft of writing, on the level of technique, concentrating on figurative language, line breaks/edits, tone, point-of-view, etc.. A craft workshop can be a space to look more closely at the poem and the poet, aiming to articulate why certain lines or images may not work in a poem and how specific techniques and elements of craft can help improve it. It seeks to identify aspects of each participant’s style and voice to improve and polish their craft so they can continue writing with better techniques and analysis in the future. It doesn’t just look at the body of work presented and provides critiques, but attempts to deconstruct the poems into their constituent elements and the poets into their constituent voice/style.

Understand your role as a facilitator

Your job as a workshop host is to be a facilitator. The poets I’ve interviewed have laid out some of the most important components of facilitating a workshop: creating a safe, welcoming atmosphere, managing time, and filtering feedback.

Creating a safe, welcoming atmosphere

Community agreements:

To best serve the needs of workshop participants, poets suggest establishing community agreements at the beginning of the workshop. These agreements can act as the “rules” of the workshop and be referenced if something goes wrong. You could go simple, with agreements as easy as “Be kind, appropriate, and respectful.” Or, you could get more specific, laying out ground rules for sharing, listening, and respecting all workshop members. The New School has this helpful guide for establishing community agreements, with examples such as making “I” statements, practicing active listening, not making assumptions, and honoring silence as a tool for reflection.

Many poets come to workshops to share more serious work involving heavy topics like sexual abuse, death, and trauma. Depending on the workshop type, these poems might not be appropriate for broader audiences (for instance, K-12 audiences or in large community spaces). So, stipulations should be made on the type of content that can and can’t be shared at your workshop and how to go about content warnings. Smaller, more intimate writer’s workshops are suitable spaces for working on this type of work because, ideally, you would be working with the same group of writers over a more extended period.

And remember, even if the poet is comfortable sharing their innermost private thoughts, that does not mean that the audience ought to be subjected to them. Community workshops can provide guidelines on inappropriate content to bring to the space. If serious topics are discussed, let poets know to share content warnings before sharing their poetry so anyone uncomfortable with it can leave the space.

Here is a helpful guide from author Gigi Griffis on content warnings:

Setting the stage for the workshop and its sections

Make sure to let workshop participants know the workshop format at the beginning and throughout. Establish what type of workshop you will be hosting (whether a generative or craft workshop) and the sections involved (e.g., lecture, guest speaker, writing time, group feedback sharing, etc).

Wrangling poets

Poets can be dramatic. Poets can be loud. Poets can be inappropriate. It’s the nature of poetry. It is your job as a host, though, to wrangle poets (especially when sharing) without stifling creativity. Of course, this depends on your audience and the community agreements they establish.

Time management

Time caught (enough time for everyone): As host, you are responsible for figuring out how long each section lasts and moving your workshop forward.

It is typically good to allow a grace period at the beginning of the workshop, or what John McCarthy calls “trickle-in time.” The workshop may start around 10-15 minutes late, depending on when all participants arrive (People are often late–life happens!). This time doesn’t necessarily have to be wasted–it is the perfect time for introductions, ice-breaker questions, and sharing information about yourself or your organization before getting into the workshop.

Again, lay out the order of events at the beginning of the workshop. If you start with community agreements, restate them throughout the workshop for late participants who might’ve missed it.

While generative workshops are fun for creating new work, they can’t go on forever. Remind workshop participants that they do not have to produce perfect works of art in the time allotted. Remind them that it’s okay to share unfinished work, even ideas, during sharing time.

When it comes time to share, it is also your responsibility to allocate enough time for as many poets to share their work as soon as possible. Sharing is often the last part of the workshop, but it’s also what many poets look forward to the most. So, encourage them to share while also setting time boundaries. This may look like only allowing everyone to share 1-2 poems or asking everyone to share for less than 5 minutes. Again, this is based on your time for the workshop and how many participants you have.

Filtering feedback: If your workshop has space to share feedback, it is your job to be the filter praises and critiques. Of course, you can’t control what comes out of their mouths. But you can establish guidelines for feedback in the community agreements. You can also be the first to share praises/validation for a poet to set positive examples of feedback. Here are some of the tips I’ve gotten from workshop hosts on filtering feedback:

Separate the speaker from the poet: Now is the time to separate the art from the artist. The poet is not to be confused with the speaker in the poem. Even if “I” pronouns are used, refer to the poem’s speaker rather than the poet when giving feedback.

The sandwich model: Use the common template of praise → critique → praise to sandwich any critiques in praises/validation. Getting feedback on artwork can be difficult, and even though comments are made in good spirits, they can be hard to hear. Validate the poet and their work whenever possible.

Only give critiques to those who ask: try not to give unsolicited advice to poets. Allow them to share what type of feedback they are seeking (whether that be on the level of line edits, storytelling, pace, etc)

Be flexible: these aren’t rules but suggestions. I asked many of these poets about common problems that arise during workshops. I’ve incorporated some of their responses here.

Be adaptive to your community; it’s for them.

As a workshop host, understand that this experience is not for you but for the poets. It can be easy to get caught up in the little details — whether that be the snacks offered or the notable guest speaker you feel you desperately need — that, many times, workshop participants don’t think twice about.

Open yourself up to the possibility that the workshop will not go exactly as planned or expected. Prioritize and center the main goal of the workshop: the poets who come to hear, learn about, interpret, and improve poetry (both their own and that of their communities).

If something goes “wrong,” work around it in a way that diminishes that problem and refocuses the workshop.

What could go wrong?

Know-it-all poets: Expect poets of all different experience levels to attend your workshop, regardless of how it was advertised. Recognize that independent poets of all different levels may find themselves in your space and that “experience” itself is subjective.

Many inherently consider the established, hegemonic techniques and forms of poetry to be some objective facts of the literature and genre, but these are often confined to institutional standards and expectations.

You yourself might be a know-it-all poet. Expose yourself to different forms and techniques of poetry. If you grew up on Shakespeare, try understanding the musicality of other forms of poetry, such as hip-hop and rap music, that exist outside the Western standard of poetry. This goes for other workshop types like fiction or journalistic. Don’t allow the dominant styles to dominate your worldview, potentially tunnel visioning into exclusionary literary methods.

Offensive content

Poetry often deals with challenging issues; every poet has a different idea of what is and isn’t okay to bring to a reading. As stated before, establish some community agreements at the beginning of the workshop that dictate what your community thinks is appropriate for sharing.

If offensive language or content does arise, whether in poems read on paper or aloud, try to address it directly after it happens, acknowledging and apologizing for any possible harm that could come about from workshop participants. If someone offers something overly critical or rude to another poet, feel free to disagree with and/or make it clear if the feedback does not follow the community agreements.

Behavioral Management and Interruptions

Working primarily with K-12 students, Ola and Fullamusu agree that you should meet people where they are. Like Ola says, “poetry is meant to spark joy rather than stress.” So, if someone isn’t tuned into your workshop or interested in poetry, don’t try to force it. As long as they aren’t distracting from the workshop, they aren’t hurting anyone.

However, behavioral issues do arise (e.g., disrupting presentations or readings, disrespecting fellow poets). In that case, it might be best for both the workshop and the disruptor to invite them to leave the space. Of course, this is up to your discretion. Have grace when it comes to disruptions, especially in the case of open community workshops or workshops held for in public school spaces. Everyone deserves poetry, regardless of who they are and despite possible behavioral issues.

Sources

Ola Faleti ola.faleti@gmail.com
Fullamusu Bangura fullamusub@gmail.com
John McCarthy jjmccarthy90@gmai.com
Charif Shanahan charif.shanahan@northwestern.edu
Rachel Webster r-webster@northwestern.edu
Brandon Stosuy brandon@thecreativeindependent.com

About the Author

Fatima Jalloh (they/them) is a poet and journalist from Jacksonville, Florida, currently based in Chicago, Illinois. With an education in Journalism, Black Studies, and Poetry, they currently work on personal writing projects and as an editorial intern for In These Times.