I was a co-founder with Duncan McGibbon of the Poetry Workshop group. I value the Poetry Workshop as one element in a strategy for striking a balance between the need for solitude and the need to be part of a creative community.
As an Amercian, I contribute to the Workshop one of the things I also value as a contribution of others in the group: variety of voice, style and cultural and educational background. (The others come from Canada, England, India, Scotland and Wales.) My American vocal rhythms and pronounciation are still strong enough that my reading aloud can surprise folk who first read my poems off the page. My choice of subject matter and approach to subjects sometimes causes discomfort in ways I have come to identify with my working out of an American tradition of poetics.
When others read, I listen to the discussion as critically as to the poem, honing my understanding against that of others in the group. I don't speak often or long. I thought my contributions were meager in content and well as quantity, until I read the transcripts for the workshops. When a poet explains a poem at the end of the discussion (as our "rules" allow), sometimes I put my fingers in my ears so as not to have my perceptions coloured by the explanation while I still haven't worked through my own responses to the piece. Sometimes I find the richness of a poem can be "explained away" by the poet.