Poetry workshop: Learn to create poems using objects and words

This workshop pushes poets to walk around their surroundings and create poems with objects and words that catch their attention

Fans of found poetry have an engaging Sunday evening to look forward to, thanks to poet and writer Ankita Shah who will focus her upcoming session around this form of poetry. A found poem is simply one that’s created with the help of objects and text already available to poets. The result, therefore, is something borrowed turned anew.

A poem created by a participant

Shah plans to focus on the broad theme of spring, an opportunity for new beginnings or change. She will take the participants to the garden at the studio in Bandra, where they will be given time to forage for material, fallen leaves, flowers, and things that inspire them. After this, they will proceed indoors and work with text by cutting out words and phrases from old magazines and books. Finally, using both — collected objects and words — the participants will write their poems.   

“What I really like about found poetry is that it is almost always a reflection of what you’re thinking about subconsciously, but until then, you don’t realise. To me, that idea is really exciting because you’re not just creating a poem, you’re also discovering something that’s emotionally important to you, but you hadn’t taken the time out to express,” shares Shah.

Ankita Shah

Having conducted these workshops before through her initiative The Poetry Club Mumbai, a poetry community that supported writers by giving them a platform to share their work, she believes something beautiful always emerges from it. For writers struggling to write regularly or those new to poetry, it is particularly helpful because it can act as a doorway or a bridge. Shah adds, “The idea is ultimately to treat the poems as pieces of art and push the participants to freely play with colours and words.” The process of exploration is a brave chance to find out how far you can go when you follow your curiosity without giving up.

ON April 14; 11 am onwards
AT One Design Studio, Pali Hill, Nargis Dutt Road, Bandra West. 
CALL 9987929000 (to register)
ENTRY Rs 1,500

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