In my undergraduate poetry workshop, I studied the craft interviews in George Plimpton’s Poets at Work, and though the pages of the book are now fragile, I can still turn to the James Dickey interview and find the line I marked: “You have to keep to your sources as a writer” (qtd. in Plimpton 359).
This lesson is useful for poets, but also for teachers of poets. When I teach undergraduate poetry workshop, my source is not canonical poems, not student poems, but the processes of poets. I am not teaching my protégés to know poetry, nor am I teaching them to do poems—I am mentoring them to be poets.
My process for mentoring begins by turning the lens of the craft interview from canonical poets and toward student poets. I choose to function as an interviewer, asking questions a protégé poet might ask a published poet. First, I ask about process:
When did you first start writing? What made you feel the need to express yourself in this form? How did you “discover” poetry?
Then, I ask about aesthetics:
What types of poems do you find yourself writing most? What kind of work are you most drawn to reading? Do you find yourself reading work like your own, or completely different?
I ask about context:
How do the locations you have called home affect your writing? How do your closest relationships affect your writing? Some poets are also active in other creative areas; what other creative outlets are you pursuing?
I ask about language:
All poets have several words that come up repeatedly, words or sentences that they just can’t help but use in their work. What are three of your necessary words?
I ask questions that position me as a person who cares about their development:
Tell me about the poem you are most proud of writing. What abilities do you need to develop to write more poems that will make you proud?
The results of my most recent craft interview with students revealed two productive goals: my students wanted to learn how to generate ideas and how to shape those ideas into poems. By knowing and responding to my students’ goals, I was able to create an instructional plan that served as the foundation of a successful semester.
While craft interviews allow students to express productive goals, they also reveal nonproductive ideas, including the idea that creative writing is done by geniuses, that writing is a “magical, solitary occupation,” that good writing comes from a single idea, and that writers are more interesting than other people (Bishop 2). When exposed, these ideas can be dispelled, and more realistic foundations can be established.
The craft interview serves as an essential tool, allowing mentor and protégés to work together to dispel unrealistic ideas about the writing process and to set realistic expectations for the creative writing classroom.
Works Cited
Bishop, Wendy. Released into Language: Options for Teaching Creative Writing.
Calendar Islands Publishers, 1998.
Plimpton, George. Poets at Work: The Paris Review Interviews. Viking, 1989.
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Brent House is a contributing editor for The Tusculum Review. His poems have appeared in journals such as Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, The Journal, Third Coast, and Kenyon Review. He holds an M.F.A. from Georgia College, and he lives and works in Western Pennsylvania.