Poet on Poet: Geraldine Green comes to Ipswich!

About fifteen of us enjoyed a stimulating poetry workshop with Geraldine Green last Friday. The workshop took place at UCS, and was followed by a delicious meal, poetry reading by Geraldine and Open Mic session at Arlington's in Ipswich.

The day of poetry was organised by Ian Griffiths and The Suffolk Poetry Society. I, for one, came away with pages of draft poems and raw material on subjects as diverse as gooseberries and the Caryatids on the Erechtheion in Athens!

Geraldine's relaxed approach gave us the confidence to experiment, and we enjoyed sharing our efforts - and making new friends in the process. I never cease to be amazed (and impressed!) by the care and neat hand writing employed by some poets in their initial phase of drafting. I like to throw in all my ideas as fast as possible, which inevitably leads to much crossing out and illegibility on the paper in front of me. I realised some time ago that A5 is too small for me to use 'comfortably' (or 'productively'?) at this stage. I seem to need the space afforded by A4. This may be partly because I normally draft poems on the computer, often using the delete key and 'strike through' facility etc. in the initial stages. I wonder how others like to work ...

Geraldine read from her various collections, and particularly from The Other Side of the Bridge, published by Ronnie Goodyer and Dawn Bauling at Indigo Dreams Publishing. I bought a signed copy, and have enjoyed reading poems we heard like 'Me and Janine' (a compelling British poem about the shipyards at Barrow-in-Furness) and 'Walt' (a brilliant poem set on Long Island, addressed to Walt Whitman).

My thanks to to Geraldine, Ian and the Suffolk Poetry Society!

Incidentally, you will find Geraldine's answers to The Next Big Thing here. Thank you, Geraldine, for enabling me to host these.