For most of 2020 our workshops were suspended because of the Corona pandemic. Finally we decided to run a series of mini-workshops via Zoom: two-hour meetings featuring two one-hour presentation-and-exercise sessions.
Our first Zoom workshop, on the subject of Metrical Poetry, took place on December 29th, 2020.
The two presentations, both given by our President, Judy Koren, were:
- Metrical Pets – on the basics of prosody and metre
- Suiting metre to subject and “tricks of the trade” for varying the metre.
Members were clearly eager to get back to having workshops: registration for this somewhat technical subject was over-subscribed within a few days of opening, and the workshop was attended by the maximum 25 people, including one or two overseas members (an advantage of having online events). We somewhat overran the planned time but almost everyone stayed for the full 2:20 hours.
Our Membership Coordinator, Yochanan Zachantov, provided an online evaluation form and many of the attendees took advantage of it to give us feedback on their experience. Many thanks to Yochanan, to our Secretary, Linda Suchy, for her able administration of the registration process, and to our Past President, Susan Olsburgh, in her current role as Zoom administrator, for handling the Zoom invitation process.
Everyone was invited, as usual, to submit the poems they wrote during the workshop – after editing and polishing if they wish – and these were included in an “e-chapbook” (in PDF form) of the workshop, which was distributed to all participants.
Being new to Zoom, we regretfully didn’t record this workshop but the first exercise was to write a metrical poem on an object in the room, so here are a few photos of objects chosen as the starting-point for poems:
Voices Israel Group of Poets in English 