How to: Feedback, Originality & Ownership in Poetry Workshops

In this series, we interview our tutors about poetry and its place in their world. These interviews will cover creative writing tips, excelling in a poetry workshop, building a literary career, and finding your poetic voice. Here’s Natasha Hakimi Zapata on ‘Feedback, Originality & Ownership in Poetry Workshops’

Can you discuss the emotional aspect of receiving feedback on something as personal as poetry? How do you navigate feelings of vulnerability or defensiveness while still remaining open to constructive criticism in a poetry workshop?  

The most important thing in a poetry workshop environment and in general with writing is to find a way to emotionally separate one’s self from the work itself. Poems (and most works of art, I believe) take on a life of their own, and although their emotional truths and even some of the details may be based in our personal lives, once they’re on the page and put in front of a reader, they can become something else entirely.

That said, it’s a vulnerable process to put your work in front of others, but it’s part of why I implement a ‘sandwich’ approach to feedback in my workshops, so that we’re always pointing out both things we love and others that can be improved. I also fully subscribe to what the late great Louise Glück once told The Paris Review:

If a workshop is going to be useful, you don’t just say what’s wrong

—you have to think in terms of alternative strategies the poet can

use to reenter the poem and approach the weak places […] have to

figure out why the poem goes dead and what would make it not dead.

During every workshop we should ask ourselves how to make each other’s and our own poetry better, or, to paraphrase Glück, more alive!

Can you share an experience where feedback enhanced your work without compromising your originality?

I am a poet, journalist and translator, and I almost cannot count the ways that feedback has enhanced my work over the years. In journalism, there is a constant relationship with an editor. This has taught me that although writing can be quite lonely, the revision process can turn into a wonderful, fruitful conversation. With translation, there is a conversation with the original writer. Whether or not they are alive, this can turn into a dance of sorts in which both of your languages are coming together to create something else entirely while also retaining individual forms and meanings in separate languages.

In poetry, workshops serve this purpose of bringing us into community and conversation with other poets. – Poets who love verse just as much as we do. They will be thinking of ways to help with the revision process. These suggestions are always optional, of course, and it’s important to remember that because at the end of the day, it’s just your name on the page.

How do you differentiate between poetry worshop feedback that is constructive and helps improve your poem, and feedback that might lead you away from your original idea or voice?

These are the sort of questions that only a writer can answer for themselves. You will know, deep within you, which feedback to take and which to put aside. Each work has its own demands, and you must listen to these above all else, and to your own internal voice, forged from personal experiences and reading as many poems as possible.

In your view, does collaboration or taking feedback diminish the ownership of a poem, or can it enhance the creative process? How do you strike a balance between staying true to your vision and being open to others’ perspectives?

Again, a conversation about words, in my view, is always precious. Of course, you must also consider who your interlocutors are and where they are coming from. It is possible you will meet poets in workshops who don’t connect with your work or whose feedback seems to miss the mark. However, sometimes even those dissonant voices can prove just as valuable as those who do see your work as you intend because they can reveal where, perhaps, you may be able to clarify or adapt certain lines or forms – even if that’s not by following the feedback given.

Natasha is teaching Weekly Workshops for us from 11th October 2024. This course is suitable for developing poets wishing to improve their writing through feedback and close reading.