It was my poetry teacher, Pele, who recommended to me a couple of years back that I must do an Arvon retreat. Unfortunately at that time all the courses I wanted to do were sold out, so last year I became an ‘Arvon Friend’ solely to get priority access to their 2017 schedule. When I saw a course on creating poetry that is ‘alive’, tutored by one of my favourite poets, Moniza Alvi, along with Pascale Petit, I was pretty clear that that’s the one I want to do. Booked my place right then, and a couple of weeks ago boarded the train from London to Exeter St. Davids, in the trek to Totleigh Barton.
I had some idea about the course structure – huddle on day 1 evening, then each day sessions in the first half, writing time in the afternoon, readings in the evening, plus 1-on-1 sessions with tutors during the week. But I was nervous – what would the group be like, would I be the odd one out, would it be a safe space to share, would I be able to write that much (hadn’t done more than 1.5 hours continuous writing sessions before, and here we are talking about a week!).
My nervousness disappeared on Day 1 evening – the tutors, the group, the staff – they were so amazing – the entire environment had the energy of creativity, compassion, support and enablement. Yes I was the odd one out (Asian, one of two males in the group of 16), but it didn’t matter. I haven’t felt so self-expressed in such a long time. A very productive week – 12 poems commenced, of which 3-4 are nearly complete, with peer/tutor feedback. The 1-on-1 sessions and conversations with the group made me get clear about the direction in which I want to take my poetry and the pitfalls to avoid in my writing. What I found specially inspiring were the direct words of encouragement from Moniza and Pascale.
Here’s a snapshot of activities, exercises and experiences that stood out for me:
An exercise in univocalism (writing with just one vowel in your work) to free up the mind
Getting randomly assigned images and objects (through draw of lots!) to write about.
Animal poetry – writing a poem inspired by an assigned animal. I was hoping to get a timid animal like a cow, but got a ‘Grey Wolf’ instead. It triggered deeply, buried, disturbing memories but the process of writing enabled wounds to be healed.
Dress poetry – writing about an item of clothing, which in my case was my grandfather’s drawstring boxer shorts in an Indian print called ‘patta’
Getting present to the power of language, including my own native language, Hindi. I wrote a couple of small poems in Hindi. One moved me so much that all day I was in tears!
Understanding line breaks and titles
Discovering the poet Sujata Bhatt – don’t know how I missed her. One night when I was browsing the library for my bedside reading (my room was next to the poetry library), I randomly picked a book by her. Our exercise for next evening was to read a poem by another author that leaps out. One of Sujata’s poems, ‘Sherdi’, literally made me leap out of bed, and that’s the one I read. Her work I found simply amazing, specially the way she interweaves her Indian culture.
Overall, I went to places I would have never ventured into, and this week was a big leap in my quest to write better poems.
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