Book Clubs: Take Your Writing Practice to the Next Level
ICYMI: BookBash has launched!
On January 24, we had our first BookBash (BB) sesh ever! If you haven’t heard, BookBash is The Poetry Lab’s new poetry book discussion club. It’s super simple: We announce the collection we’re reading each month, then meet on the 4th Tuesday via Zoom to discuss the book.
You can join the club from anywhere in the world. Inside BookBasherHQ we provide study guides, questions, and additional learning materials. Plus, the forum is always open for BookBash members to comment and discuss books throughout the month.
For our first poetry book selection we chose Joshua Bennett’s Owed (2020). Here’s Bennett’s own take on his third collection of poetry, from his website:
“[Owed’s] primary concern is how we might mend the relationship between ourselves and the people, spaces, and objects we have been taught to think of as insignificant, as fundamentally unworthy of study, reflection, attention, or care. Spanning the spectrum of genre and form—from elegy and ode to origin myth—these poems elaborate an aesthetics of repair. What’s more, they ask that we turn to the songs and sites of the historically denigrated so that we might uncover a new way of being in the world together, one wherein we can truthfully reckon with the brutality of the past and thus imagine the possibilities of our shared, unpredictable present, anew.”
Bennett’s collection provided us with so many different elements to chew on. When The Poetry Lab team and our community members came together, it was easy to gush and bash-on this collection. In particular, we discussed word choice, cultural references, and aspects of craft and style. But more on that later.
How It Began
The Poetry Lab team meetings regularly sidebar into:
“have you read….”
“what should I read next?”
“if you enjoyed xyz…I think you’d really love zyx”
conversations. As we began making plans for the 2023 programming year, we had a lot of discussions about how to deepen our writing practices and provide support to our community members. We wanted to re-create a space similar to that of the traditional poetry classroom: we wanted to read the same book, openly investigate it’s origin, author, and context, then discuss everything we’d discovered.
We all knew the feeling of reading poetry books on your own and longing to share our enthusiasm for the language with someone. Or an incredible image! Or a heartbreaking line! Or a kick-ass title! Yes, there’s the option to post it on Instagram, Tweet about it, call up your poetry bestie and gush…but even after all that we still felt like our admiration wasn’t often returned. A poetry discussion group has the power of shared experience and reciprocity. Plus! There’s the opportunity to learn from someone’s insights, to deepen our reading and learning process. We think this results in a stronger writing practice.
The best part of our plan for the book club was that we do it as The Poetry Lab, which means we’re here to meet and hold a space for you as you are. We do not believe that you have to mold yourself into a certain shape to sit at our table. Plus, we believe life is hard enough so we try our best to make our events fun and entertaining. The BookBash doesn’t take place in a banal, repressed lecture hall—this is a party! 🎉
The punchbowl is our pre-written reading questions, the snacks are tasty tidbits about the writer’s life, and on the dance floor we are serving up writing prompts and teaching you how to two step.
First Rule of BookBash…TALK about BB!
The basic rules of BB are: be curious and kind. Try and read as much as you can. There are no grades here and you’ve got nothing to prove. If you don’t finish the book—you’re still invited to the discussion! Let’s talk about why it was hard to finish. Maybe there’s a great poem you missed towards the end—let’s read it together. We’re here to love on poetry and each other.
One of our goals is to do as much as we can to make you feel supported. That’s where the BookBashHQ comes in. Our team works to provide as much material as we can while you read. We also leave plenty extra so you can throw your own afterparty! We hope to make the experience of reading and discussing poems joyful and engaging.
Most important rule of BB: don’t forget your snacks! Keep that bevy nearby! And don’t worry, we’ll make sure there’s an intermission for refills.
Who HOSTS the Bash?
Lucky you, I (Kris Kaila, Education Coordinator Extraordinaire) am hosting the BookBash until you get sick of me! With over 300 books read in 2022, I snagged the title for most books read at The Poetry Lab last year. Please trust you’re in good hands.
While I help facilitate the conversation, steer us when we need it, confess my many secrets (like how one of my childhood heroes and I have something scandalous in common), we as a group get to decide the format of BookBash, and how each session runs. When you join our club, you have your say on what books we read and how we discuss them. Though anyone can answer your BB questions, Kelsey, Jess and I are the BookBash Committee so we’ve got our party hats on for all your questions, comments and concerns.
Have questions? Reach out to us here.
How It’s GOING So Far 🥳
In our first meeting, we flexed our trusty brain muscles talking about craft, diction and philosophized structures–poetic and societal. A mini lesson on the sestina devolved into a laughing fit when we turned the conversation back on ourselves, asking each other about childhood heroes, how they aged, and nostalgia.
We started with general conversation about the book, and then focused on a few poems that stuck out to us. A few of us took turns reading aloud, while we chatted like corn popping. The excitement about getting out our thoughts or piggybacking/encouraging another person’s ideas our voices were respectfully tripping over one another’s.
We try to ask a range of questions. One question posed from our Craft-Focused Questions section was:
“What do you think of the first 3 poems in the collection? Did they grab you to keep reading? Was it hard to get into?”
There were several different answers, and a lot of “but what if this…” and led us into a Culturally Responsive Questions frame of mind. There were so many different elements that we all came up with to say why the three poems were rightly chosen, or not, or we could see why but didn’t necessarily agree with. In the end, Jess summed up the whole debate by saying: "If you can't handle me at my Book of Mycah then you don't deserve my Cheese Bus,” referring to two of our most hotly debated poems in the book. It was a great moment and made us all laugh.
Prompted
As poets ourselves, reading poetry is important and inspiring to our own work. One of the reasons we read whole collections is to find prompts in the wild. Whether from the text itself or our discussions we tend to come away with a writing project of our own. This month it was Bennett’s dedication to childhood and imaginative language that inspired us.
Return to: the poem “When Thy King Was A Boy” from Joshua Bennett’s Owed
When you come back to the page: make a list of your childhood heroes. Now, set a timer for 15 minutes and write an ode to one of them. Remember that an ode is a lyrical poem that addresses and often celebrates a person, place, thing, or idea.
Take it further: how would your ode change if the speaker of the poem was you as a child?
Did you use this prompt? If you post on Instagram tag @thepoetrylab. We’d love to read it.
ready to rsvp?
If you missed our January bash, good news: our February BookBash is on FEBRUARY 28, 2023 and you’re invited! We’ll be reading Wade in the Water by poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Tracy K. Smith. We’re looking forward to a deep dive into this acclaimed collection and we hope you can join us.
Here’s one of our favorite poems from the book so far:
Oh, and did we mention that becoming a member of BookBash means you’ll get access to all the generative BrainTrust workshops for the year—for free!?
Again, our goal for 2023 is to help writers in our community create new pathways toward consistent writing practice. This means inspiration, study, support, and engagement. Our generative classes are full of prompts and short lectures on craft, theory, and forms. We can’t wait to see you twice every month on the 2nd and 4th Tuesday for the BrainTrust and the BookBash. Party hats welcome! 🎊
BACK TO THE RESOURCE CENTER >
💡Pro Tip!
We have open discussions inside our workshops and classes about what we’re reading, and we take it to the Resource Center as often as possible. Here are some articles specifically about reading poetry books that will help motivate you and give your insights on how to file yout TBR pile:
Bash On! 📗
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This article was posted on February 14, 2023. Written by:
