Poet Kay Ryan--a self-proclaimed hermit who does not as a rule go to conferences or really any institutionally supported gathering of writers--attended this year's annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, at her editor's behest. The resulting essay, "I Go to AWP," is not to be missed. Here is a characteristic excerpt:

My First Panel Experience

The Creative Process: The Creative Writer as Teacher Thursday, 31 March. 9:00-10:15 AM.

I'm sitting in the Vancouver Island Room on the Conference Floor of the Fairmont Hotel. The draped and elevated table of the panel setup looks like the Last Supper but with just water glasses. The room is aggressively paneled in white with elaborate gold trim. Even the chandeliered ceiling is paneled and trimmed. Good motif for panels, I guess.

The question to be addressed by our panel is, How does the creative writing teacher stay creative? I have chosen this panel using my current selection method: what looks most inimical to your nature?

These creative writing teachers have apparently gone into this line of work because they felt themselves helped by a writing teacher and feel a desire to pass it on. They resort frequently to various forms of the words "mentor," both noun and verb. They share a meaning for this word so that it requires no explanation.

Nor are they confused by the verb "to workshop." As easily and comfortably as I might say, "We started sanding the table" do these creative writing teachers say, "We started workshopping poems."

Before we get on to the question of how the creative writing teacher might stay creative, I would like to pause at these words, mentor and workshop. If, as my dictionary tells me, a mentor is a wise counselor, then to mentor would surely be to give wise counsel. And of course it would imply somebody on the other side receiving the wise counsel. Because it seems to me so deep and intimate, I have always had a very cautious feeling about this word mentor, as something far beyond the teacher of a class a student signed up for. It would be specific to two people who found some particular affinity, a relationship that would develop gradually. It would rarely occur.

[...]

Workshop. In the old days before creative writing programs, a workshop was a place, often a basement, where you sawed or hammered, drilled or planed something. You could not simply workshop something. Now you can. You can take something you wrote by yourself to a group and get it workshopped. Sometimes it probably is a lot like getting it hammered. Other writers read your work, give their reactions, and make suggestions for change. A writer might bring a piece back for more workshopping later, even. I have to assume that the writer respects these other writers' opinions, and that just scares the daylights out of me. It doesn't matter if their opinions really are respectable; I just think the writer has given up way too much inside. Let's not share. Really. Go off in your own direction way too far, get lost, test the metal of your work in your own acids. These are experiments you can perform down in that old kind of workshop, where Dad used to hide out from too many other people's claims on him.

As Kingsley Amis once wrote: "If there’s one word that sums up everything that’s gone wrong since the War, it’s Workshop."

Reminds me of something written long ago by Paul Goodman..."a workshop where there are no tools and nobody works."

That was an outstanding link, Erin. Thanks so much!

There is clearly not enough poetry in this lawyer's life. *sigh*

Reminds me of something written long ago by Paul Goodman..."a workshop where there are no tools and nobody works."



I had the opposite reaction, as it struck me that workshops are quite heavily populated by tools...