Britt and Becky, Collective Poems

Britt and I enjoyed a spectacular workshop last week. We've been wanting to focus on the process of creative expression and less on the product, since we've been feeling that the latter has been getting a lot more emphasis in our workshops, unintentionally. So, we devised a low-tech workshop to construct work together and focus on the writing process:

-We handed out blank paper to everyone, and said to label the lines 1-10
-Then, we told everyone to write the same line in Line 1: "Scraped up and put back down". We used this line because we wanted it to go in any direction--it's pronoun-less, direction-less, time-less, etc.
-After everyone wrote those words in line 1, we passed the papers to our left. Then, everyone would write down a new line in Line 3, and try to connect it to the line in Line 1. (We apparently didn't communicate this so clearly, and someone chose to write random lines without any connection to the other lines)
-We kept passing the papers with everyone filling in the odd Lines, then we reversed the direction and filled in the even numbered lines.
-We each read the poems out loud once, then read them out loud a second time: the second time, we took notes on each poem while the reader was reading, and we referred to each poem as "Britt's poem" if Britt was the reader, etc.
-We then had a discussion on each poem: thoughts, impressions, favorites, confusions, criticism--which was really important, to discuss what worked and what didn't

We then did a second prompt: "Set in motion", with a shorter number of lines, and we also read them aloud twice. The women really loved the workshop, and it was definitely one of mine and Britt's favorites. Here are some poems from our workshop:

Set in motion

A lit candle and lotion

That landslide you put me on, it sent me back fast.

Shivers up my spine, I can’t walk

You shook my world. How do I move forward?

Frozen, I want to make a move – my body says yes, but my mind says NO!

Legs like Jello. Feet tingly and mouth dry.

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Scraped up and put back down again

We found elevation, you gave me altitude, we had an atmosphere

A helping hand, I was lifted by a friend

Lifted from below

Thought I couldn’t get any lower than where I’d been

To the depths I fell, now how will I recover?

I stood up straight and just lifted my chin

And the right side of my jaw swelled up again

Now I knock on my window and let myself in

Hello is anybody in here?

The Alpha and the Omega where it ends is where it begins

But you’ll die forever if you don’t forgive yourself of your sins.