Surprise - Poetry Workshop Recording

Hello, I’m Wendy Pratt; author and poet. I wrote a memoir, The Ghost Lake, about my experience of living on an ancient extinct glacial lake called Paleolake Flixton in North Yorkshire, and how I found my place in a long line of lake ancestry going back to the palaeolithic. I also wrote a poetry collection, Blackbird Singing at Dusk, a kind of sister project to the memoir.

• Monthly Dawn and Dusk Chorus zoom write along groups

• Quarterly zoom writing workshops

• Subscriber only essays of behind the scenes of the writing world

• Access to my entire archive of subscriber only posts

• Discounts on some external writing courses

• Occasional month-long online courses

• Occasional one to one writing surgeries

• Supporting me to write my new book

A subscription is £6 per month or £50 per year when done through the Substack website, rather than the app. You can unsubscribe at any time.

The next Dawn and Dusk Chorus sessions are on Tuesday 28th July

7-8am and 6-7pm UK time

Thanks so much to those who came along last night, it was, as ever, a warm and nourishing hour and a half full of interesting poetry discussion. I enjoyed chatting to you all and hearing your poems and left to watch the England match with a full heart.

Which was then mercilessly broken by the match. Onwards.

When we talk about adding surprise to poetry, we’re talking about engaging the reader, jolting them out of a passive experience. How do we do that?

Surprise is all about subverting expectations.

Let’s have a look at what we discussed. First here’s the recording…