* Announcement face * I’ve got a collab going with Morocco Bound Wandsworth next month!
So, fun news, in April I’m running a three-week course on how to apply what stand-up comedy has taught me to poetry, for Morocco Bound Bookshop’s new outpost in Wandsworth.
You can come to any one class, or all three - just bring along something to read out for Week 2 or edit in Week 3. However, coming along to Week 1 and bringing that poem through Weeks 2 and 3 is a good way of trying out how I write, perform and edit poems!
You can buy the whole course for a discount here.
OR - week by week. More info and links below:
The sessions take place in the lovely new Morocco Bound Wandsworth branch, near Wandsworth Town rail station: 3A Pilot’s Walk, New Acres, London SW18 1UZ
So I promised you a little look behind the scenes, and here we are.
I’ve been surprised by how much comedy has informed my poetry. Not neccessarily that the poems have to be funny, but I often write about grief and its associated horrors, so humour is helpful in lightening that up. I’m also writing about people who are dead but were fun when they were around, and so the character themselves are funny to portray in poetry.
But more than that, stand-up and comedy writing on HIGNFY have informed how I write medium-length projects (two Edinburgh shows, now a 12k-ish poetry book - these are long projects for me, but not in the greater scheme of things, they’re no 80k novel). Writing and performing comedy has shown me:
Point of view can have humour baked in
How to build rapport as soon as you get behind that mic / on stage
Where to place phrases that elicit laughter inside the poem to give the audience space to react
How to use silence and facial expressions
How to approach those bits that trip up your performance
And more!
I’ve facilitated a lot of workshops in my time, including in journalism (I was Editorial Trainer at Reach Plc / the Daily Mirror, and I taught a personal essay class with the London Writer’s Salon around the pandemic). Personal essays were a great stepping-stone from journalism into fiction / creative-non-fiction writing.
Reply to this email or comment if you have questions!
Dhruti Shah’s excellent Substack has a poem and lots about travel writing in the latest issue!
Maya C. Popa is consistently great on poetry:
Literary Listings is super-helpful!
And of course:
That’s all for now, thanks for reading x
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