Intro to Performance Poetry and Spoken Word: Writing story-based, anecdotal poetry.

1. Introduction: Hey there friends. My name is Joel. I am a performance poet. Poetry spoken word performing is what I've done for the last 15 years full-time, I've been with doing this thing. And there's a whole lot of stuff that I'd love to share with you now to give you an intro to performance poetry and spoken word, but to really focus in on the idea of storytelling of have we can tell great stories throughout poetry. Narrative poetry is one of the most powerful forms of poetry that we can bring. One of the most authentic and life changing as well, not just for our audience, but for us in the midst of writing it to. So I want to, I want to welcome you to this. This is for people who are beginners, for people who have brainwriting for ages. For people who want to make that connection between their own story and poetry. And in that place to write some stuff I'm going to create some things. Didn't go through a whole lot of exercises and prompts, a whole bunch of different stuff to help you to think about the power of story and how to write stories that will, that in a poetic way that will change people's lives. So come and join me on this. In this Skillshare poetry class. We're going to have some fun together. Let's do it. 2. Lesson 1 The Brave Ones: Let me start by sharing with you one of my own kind of story-based poems and area from my book. It's called The brave ones and goes like this. Was on the pavement outside the restaurant that we spoke of. Her life changes and the moments that make us she remembered it being baby sat at our house and she remembered my eating of a tomato sauce sandwich and the source dripping down my cheek. And I remembered years later, my 18th birthday, Rebecca and her had picked me up from my house, so we drove down to the beach and the storm gathered around us out at sea like a curious puppy learning of the loudness. It's Bob stood at the edge of the ocean where the waves kiss the cliff face. Next to the lighthouse, we stood looking out to the sea and we did that puppy dog storm to come at us. She listened and she came bounding. And what else can you do in such a moment but dance. So we dance too wild and unrestrained. We screened and we yelled and the storm barked so loudly, thrash so wildly. And we, three, wilder and wilder still links, lack storm bodies, jerking, barking, and somewhere in the loose movement dilemmas. So go and I lost all sense of the tightness of my skin and I lead that storm come in was the first time that I ever did that surrender. The thunder was crashing and the wind whipping and the lightening striking in the ocean pounding the three of us were all screaming. Everything was alive that night filled with life and the luminosity, including myself, I was alive. Everything was screaming that 90, including myself. Everything is always wind, storm and wouldn't way always be the brave one to turn and face into that surge. Bellow back. Just a little down the track. When Rebecca died. Many years later, the first girlfriend I ever had, she was my first teenage love and in her sleep, she died. We remembered this to my friend and I standing there outside the restaurant, her child eating burgers, tomato sauce now dripping down his cheek. We remembered where we were when Rebecca I had taken all the photos out of her, including one taken of the three of us on that while nine and I had laid them out in the floor all around me, wrote Rebecca letter that I could never send, could not get to the funeral. So I buried her inside means dead. And wouldn't way always be the brave ones. To turn at face in a herd and bellow back wouldn't way. My old friends, she tells me how she's just split with her husband and she feels a widow at 33. I'll let the tears common her hold her arm and what do we always be the brave ones, wouldn't we? The cliff face is still there. And I stand on its edge whenever I go home looking at the oceans. So I go there that night after talking with my old friend, scream at the top of my lungs. I scream. Then I began to dance again. 3. LESSON 2 Story as Meaning Making: I don't know what you heard in that poem. It's a hard one to share. A personal story of mine about my my first ever girlfriend and when she died. And I'd wanted to tell that story because it's one of those stories that it's hard to tell because it was one of those life shattering moments where the way you thought your life was going to be. And then people who were once so close to you suddenly passed away in Everything is shattered like everything's chaos and confusion. And why is this happening and how does this happen? There's been so many speed, so many times in my life when the **** hits the fan and laugh goes off in the direction that you didn't think it was going to and it hurts and it's painful. And in the chaos of that. That's when I go back to my writing into my creativity. And there's something that happens. It's like in the murky midst of those hard moments in our life. Writing kinda helps us just to, to name what needs to be named to give some meaning to the chaos of law. And this friends is what I actually think sits at the heart of what makes storytelling and poetic storytelling so powerful. But not just that. This for me is why story actually sits at the very heart of who we are as humans. Because story is the way that we take the haphazard, chaotic craziness of life and we make some sense out of it. We, we bring meaning to it. Story is the way that we bring meaning to our existence. Now I used to run a course for, for school leavers, people who are just coming out of school, who are going into youth work and social work in that kind of thing. And it was a course that would come and they, one of the first things that we got the students to do was actually to share their life story. To share their life story with, with some people who were with a small group of people and it was fast. A few things were fascinating about it. One is that for most of them, they had never had a safe space in their life where they felt like they could share the entirety of their story before. Which I think is a sad statement about our society and about our schooling. That we just don't have these spaces where the true reality of what is happening in our lives, where we feel safe enough to share. Then as we, as we encourage them to share it, what we were getting them to do is to share not just not just the events of their life. This happened then this happened and this hammer, what we ask them to talk about and to share his who were viewed become because of the events of your life. Who have you become because of the events of your life? And the way that you have told the stories about the events of your life. There's a real big difference there. There's a difference in terms of at one level, we're talking about the level of plot. Let's sequence of events. This happened, this happened, and this happened. But story is something more. Story is how we construct meaning and identity out of those sequence of events. It's the thing, it's the way we construe, meaning we have done this, we've done this forever. Like thinking, like have a look at this. What do you say? It's a Cloud? Yes, but it's a bear, it's Winnie the Pooh or a, put its probe error. We take even the, the clouds like H2O in the sky. We take something that should not have any meaning whatsoever and we attribute meaning to it. We have always done this. Even think about the earliest humans we, we like in the chaos of tribal human civilization. Just trying to get enough to enough crops to feed yourself and your family to bother to check whatever. The ancient human civilization. We told stories and we created rituals to understand the chaos and the hardness of life. And so the rituals that were created to sacrifice to the gods so that your crops, if your crops are going to grow, then you need to sacrifice to the gods. And there's all the stories that are told about the gods and about, about sacrifice and about pain. And about, it's the, it's the tribal stories that are told about grandfather, grandfather eagle. And when we understand the pain that grandfather, grandfather Eagle went through the mythos, mythological stories of a tribe. Then we bring that down. We can understand when we go through pain. Stories have been the way that we like. We're always constantly searching for meaning even in the clouds. And stories is the way that we find that meaning. Stories is the way that we find that meaning. So I wonder, think about your own life. As we come into this practice of writing. I'm going to start to get us to write some story-based poetry. What are some of those events that have been chaotic in your life where story has given you some meaning. Well, you've been able to bring meaning to it by telling a story about it. Because he is the most important thing about what we're doing now. The power of story telling is that when we think about our lives, when we think about identity and who we are, what I would say is who you are. Your identity is not made up of the events that have happened to you in your life. Rather who you are, your identity is made up of the stories that you tell about those things that have happened to you in your life. There's a big difference between those two things. You can have two people who go through the same experience. A one-person comes out telling the story of our everything goes wrong for me. I can't ever do anything wrong. I just suck it live. I'm hopeless at this. This becomes a trajectory of their life based on the story that they tell. Someone else comes out of that same experience. And they tell the story about what if I could take on that? If I could beat that, I can beat anything. I can take anything. I'll come at me. Well, I'm a courageous survivor. Like that's two very different trajectories of life based not on the event itself, but on the stories that we tell about the event. And so kind of begs the question, what are the stories you tell about yourself, about yourself, to yourself? Here's a thing. I think if you made a list of them, probably a whole lot of them could be negative. Like what's the stories you tell about yourself in relation to your sexuality, to your who you are as your physicality. What's the story you tell about yourself and rising to you as far as a as a father like me, as a single person, as a husband, as whatever it might be. One of the stories you tell about yourself. Here's the thing. Isn't it? Time we started telling more generous stories about who we are, more spacious stories about who we are, kind of stories. And this is what creativity and storytelling at the heart of it allows us to do, allows us to reflect on the stories we've told about ourselves. To create meaning. Sometimes change the meaning that we have constructed those stories around. Because we make stories that affirm what we might call our framing story. And so we tend to ignore all the things that would disprove a framing story. One of my stories for a long time was my dad is not proud of me, was a story that I told myself for a long time. And what I would do in my mind is I'd I'd, I'd uphold that, shine a light on all the ways that would prove that dad's not proud of me and I'd ignore I'd put into the darkness, wouldn't even think about all the things that would actually show me that dad was proud of me. He just struggled to show it. And they just showed any ways that I couldn't see it. That isn't allow myself to see it. I take on these wrestle and it was storytelling was creativity that allowed me to do that. And so say that as we come into this writing now that I'm gonna get you to do, I want you to think about the stories of your life, the stories you've told about who you are, and how you could re-tell those stories in narrative. Well, we call this race storying our lives and the power of doing that. I want you to think about the way that we tell our stories to that, that brings meaning to the haphazard chaotic craziness of life. The spheres by which we, there's kinda three main spheres actually by which we make meaning in our world, in our stories. And these are the identity. If you'd look at any story, any movie that you watch or book that you read or whatever it might be. The identity question of who am I, the purpose question of What am I here for? The belonging question of what am I a part of? These three things will come back into every story that you'll ever read or engaged with it. We'll have someone wrestling with one of these three. Then the key meaning, meaning-making spheres of our lives, how we make meaning? The key wrestling questions that we have. And so every, any character, any protagonist is gonna be wrestling with these questions. Wouldn't we always be the brave ones? That poem of mine at the star. It's May trying to wrestle with and trying to find meaning in the midst of this shock of loss and of grief in life. I'm asking questions of purpose and questions of belonging in that. It all comes together in that. But here's the thing and this is really key in Israeli where we're gonna get down into this is that we make meaning. And these, what poetry seeks to do is to take these big questions of identity, of belonging, of purpose, of hope and joy and suffering and regret and all these things that we can't actually say they, what we call abstract. The things that are true, but we can't see them. Poultry brings it down, bring it down, brings it down to something we can see. We tell a concrete story. And the more specific, the more we can use specificity within our story, actually, the more it'll help someone to connect up to these bigger questions of life. These abstract thematic ideas, poetry holds together abstract thematic ideas with concrete reality, smashes them together. Sometimes we use metaphor and imagery to do that. Sometimes we use story. I don't wanna get into how we use story to do that now by focusing in on the concrete specificity, on concrete detail and connecting that then to the abstract. It's what we call going up and down the ladder of abstraction that we come from concrete detail of story. And reflectively, poetically we connect it to those universal archetype or wrestling, meaning-making, trying to figure things out we connected to that. We come down the ladder, Back to the concrete detail and back up the ladder to the level of truth and abstraction and universal archetype on back down the ladder. Poetry that can do that movement is going to be poetry that moves people. It's gonna be poetry that's significantly does something within someone's life because it's going to help them connect to their own deep yearnings for purpose, for belonging, for identity. And it's that connection. It's that where those, their story and my story comes together and connects. That's where the magic happens. So that's what we're going to tap into right now. 4. Lesson 3 Anecdotal Memories: Okay, so let's do some writing to really construct these story-based poetic pieces. I'd love you to start by just writing down. I'm gonna do anecdotal kind of memories. I'd like you to write down just one word answers, like when something comes up in your memory, just write down one word just to remind yourself of that thing later when we come to the writing. So don't write down a lot just like the one word that will remind you that kinda comes up with this memory. I want you to write down. Is there a memory in your life of maybe a day that was like amazing. When was it? Just this or inspiring, amazing, best day ever? This is amazing. Right down as far as the memory that comes with that word. If there's a membrane that comes with when was when was sometime that you've cried? What's a memory of crying? A memory of something painful. Memory if something painful, it's a memory where where you let someone down or someone let you down. What's a memory where everything went wrong? Was I one thing after another went wrong? This one wrong, this one wrong, this one wrong. What's a memory of when you laughed hysterically, hysterical laughter at selling something that made you just lose it. What's a memory of when something dramatically changed for you? When was there a dramatic transition? Life just did not look the look the same after this thing happened. Is there a memory for you of just like a childhood memory when there's there might be a few of these, but when sometimes there's just a memory that always comes back to us for whatever random rays and that just comes into our mind occasionally like me eating me eating chips with my grandma on the beach is one of them from when I was a kid. What's memory or two of from your life or your teenagehood? Your I don't know how old you are now, but just a memory that often just circles around in the back of your head. Write that, write that one down. The memory of when someone has died and your life or something, a pet, perhaps. A memory of, maybe when you were embarrassed. What's a memory of? When you've realized something about yourself? Was a moment, something happened, either positive or negative, you will. That's why, that's why. Maybe what's a memory of a safe place for you? What's been a safe place or a memory of what's being like. Something that just took your breath away was so beautiful it took your breath away. Alright, So you've got, you've had a think grabbing a whole bunch. You've got a whole bunch of memories there now I want you to which one do you want to go into now? Which one do you want to sit in which Steve feel like you could develop narrowing but I don't know you I don't if there's some traumatic memories that you've written down, this is probably not the time to go back into those. You couldn't choose. If you have a support, a good support network around you, crew around you, who you know, if you get some hard stuff comes up that you can chat to them, then for sure do it but just be I don't know you and like, I just want you to take care of yourself. So choose a memory. I don't want you to circle it and we're going to do some stuff with that now. 5. LESSON 4 The Story Tree: Now you might have noticed before that I said that there's a difference between plot and story. Plot is the level of plot is kind of at the level of this happened and this happened in this app. The actions that happen, I just want you to really quickly with that memory that you have written, we're just going to stay in dot point form right now for a little while. So kind of just one word answers or two word answers to a bunch of stuff that I want to kind of get us to think about. Now we're going to zero in on this particular memory, This particular that will become an anecdotal story for you to write. I want you to zero and to start with just give me like five. Let's start with the plot. Just give me like five dot points about the plot. What are the five major action things that happened within your story? Just pause this now and write those. Now, every, every story that we write, there's a few key ingredients to it. One of the key ingredients is plot, just like we looked at, and I don't want you to look at this diagram here. This is what I would call the story tree. And the story traders a number of things with the story tray that I want to point out. Is this the stuff that makes up a story? So you've just put in plot. Plot is right up there in the, it's the very surface level, I suppose you could say when you look at a tree, it's the leaves. That's what you're seeing. You're seeing the plot, the action events that happened. But there's a whole lot more to the story than just the plot. What we see within a story is that a story has the thematic base to it. Those, those thematic wrestling is it around identity, belonging, purpose? There, the roots of the tree they come, they sit beneath that, beneath the ground. And they'd beneath the ground specifically because that's where they're meant to be. There meant to be implicit. They're not meant to be when you start making your theme really explicit, it becomes too heavy handed. The writing becomes too heavy handed becomes almost propaganda. Like you're trying to get someone to believe this exact thing about what you believe and you're preaching at them. Rather than offering of a story is more of a thematic. The themes, the abstract themes, they sit beneath the, beneath the ground. People can't see them. They're implicitly spoken about. Now within poetry and poetry story writing, like I would say with fiction, you definitely don't see that the roots of the tree, the themes, are indefinitely implicit. But with the poetic, we do much more go up into the abstract. And so the showing of some roots is okay, but we need to focus on not the roots. The roots of the things that feeds the rest of the tree and what feeds the rest of the tree? What do we say? Well, we've got them. The, the trunk of the tree, of the story tree is the character, the main character, main character at perhaps if it's a self-expression story is going to be you, you were the main character. But there might be other characters. They might be another main protagonist and might be a different story about somebody else in the story I shared at the very start of this, there were really three main characters. One, it was a personal story, so I'm the main protagonist. And I met with my friend at the, out the front of the restaurant. And so my friend was one of the sub characters. And we reflected a lot on the death of really what that poem was about was the death of the death of one of, one of my old dear friends who was my first girlfriend. And so there were three characters within that story. The main character is kinda the, the trunk of the tree. And then coming out from the trunk of the tree is the, is the branches, which is the structure of the story. We're gonna get into that in a second. Structurally what our story can begin to look like. And then the leaves of the tree, the body of the, of the tree, but like we said, is plot, but it's also made up of the storyworld. What's the context of the story are inviting people into, I was inviting you in that first story into the story world was the restaurant where I met with my friend, that cliff face where that storm came in and my friend and my girlfriend of mine, Rebecca, we danced before under this under this lighthouse on this cliff face, these are elements of the storyworld that we're inviting people into. Um, then, then there's also going to be conflict. Conflict is a major part of these, these, these things plot, world conflicts, story structure, character and theme there. The anatomy of storytelling there, the, the key elements of what every story will have to add in conflict. Conflict often will be, it can be externalized, conflict of friction, etcetera. Often without poetic stories and, and kinda needs to be within it as well as the interior conflict. What are you wrestling with a may wrestling with with grief and death and being unkind of growing up and having innocence and wouldn't we always be the brave ones having that shattered? And it's the interior conflict that's happening. Have a think about that story tray. You've just done plot. Now I want you to, we're going to add to that, and we're going to add to that. Add to that, Let's go with, with the storyworld to start with, can you give me three more dot points? Write them down three more dot points that are, that it's about the setting, it's about the storyworld. Just write down 3325 and write down some more, but some dot points about what's this story world you're inviting people into with this memory and make it concrete. I want concrete details, even if you are really key thing to do, actually even do this. Now this is, I think is important, right there, Three specific dot points, concrete docked points, dot points about the story. But also, I then want you to write, taste, touch, sound, sight, and feel. And I want you to see if you can write down some words next to these, next to your five senses, because our five senses is how we engage with the concrete world around us. Write down a word at least for each of these. What could you here? What are the sounds that you could hear in this memory? What's the smell or taste, what was on? What could you feel on your skin? So spend some time now, pause again and write down these different elements around the storyworld. Go for it. Okay, Now we're going to come into character. I want you to spend some time with your character, what themes, and again, maybe three or four, maybe three dot points for each of those characters. Start with significant concrete details about them. What's their hair, color, their skin? What kind of some interesting stuff like how did they walk or they are, are they shuffling person? Are they a striding, confident person? There's a lot of things we can pick up about who someone is through kind of how they can get their posture towards the world. So make one of them posture. And then a few, a few ideas, concrete details about who they are. Pause now and do that. Now let's get into the interiority of the character, right? Some dot points about like every story is the movement of movement and from what they want to realize what they need and what you'll see Revelation. It's the point often where everything has gone wrong and they've gone through conflict after conflict, obstacle, obstacle. This has gone wrong. Just in a fiction story. He's gone wrong. This has gone wrong there at the end of their rope. And suddenly they have these revelation and it's the revelation that moves them from what they want. Maybe they wanted to be the Olympic champion. And they conflict, conflict. They broke their leg. They've broken their legs. That can no longer be the Olympic change me and we as the audience, we don't give a stuff if they become the Olympic champion, We give us stuff. If they change, if they change who they are. And so it's this moment where their legs broken, they've lost their opportunity. They're never going to become the Olympic champion again. And they come to the mid point. Realisation of maybe life is not about becoming a champion. Maybe they're midpoint realization is the wrestling and realization of belonging. Actually, what this was about is I need my team, I need people around me. I can't do this alone or or, or the purpose wrestling question of what's my purpose and how they come to this thing of if I can't do this, I can't do this world championship, whatever they're doing. What can I do now? What's my purpose in life? Like these are the things that they're wrestling with coming to. So can you write down some dot points around your character? What maybe what they want in this memory? What did the main character which has perhaps you, what did you want? But what did you need? And what's the wrestle, What's the interior wrestle that character who wants something but then there's something inside them that stops them getting what they want. What's the major wrestle their meaning? Major interior conflict for your character within this poetic, this memory, this poetry that you're about to write, really getting into the writing of soon. Go for it. What do they want? What do they need? What was the learning? What's changed? What's the interior? Wrestle? Write some stuff around that. What's the conflict thing? Conflict for the character becomes a conflict for the whole thing. What's the major conflict of this pace? Pause and engage with some of that interior wrestling stuff. Go for it. 6. Lesson 5 Excercise: Alright, so we've got plot and we've got character, and we've got the conflict, interior conflict that's happening. We've got the storyworld are starting to get some ideas. And this is all id creating. And then we're going to do the writing in just a second, but a few more dot points that we need to get down as we engage with this. The next one I want you to do, let's think thematically, if there was, if there, what would be the theme of this? What's the message that this memory that's coming to you as you've been writing this stuff that's, that would be, you will be communicating through this. Is, this, is this a story, is a story about hope. This is a story about bravery. Is this a story about loss, about grief, about what is this message of this story, right? A few dot points that encapsulate some of these more abstract, a universal archetype or meaning message of the story. Pause and do that. Now come to as well the emotion of the story. What if you could write down a dot point word again, a few words around. What's the emotions that comes with this story? Is it, is it frustration? Is that anger? Is it sadness? Is that how it gets them? Emotive, just an emotive word or two down, pause and do that. And now I want you to write down a final, final dot pointing to write down is I'd love for you just to write down what's five insignificant, not significant, but five insignificant concrete details around this story. What's five insignificant concrete details around this kind of memory? Write those five insignificant concrete things you can see touch, taste. Five insignificant concrete details. Write them down, Go for it. Okay, so now you have, you've kind of got a whole lot of dot points and ideas. You've been fleshing out this memory so that now you can bring writing to it. So here's, here's what you're gonna do. What I want I'd love us to do is the idea for writing poetic narrative. Really, it's, you're inviting people into the experience of this story. This is not just about telling the plot. I don't just want you to give us the plot. This happened, this happened, this happened. I want you to invite people into the experience of the story of how you can, you're constructing this up as something with meaning. What's the mean of that abstract message and theme that sits beneath the story. This is what you're inviting people into, but the way you invite people into it is going to be through the concrete. So here's what we're gonna do, here's how you're going to stop. I want you to start by writing. I want you to start by focusing in on a very specific, concrete insignificant detail. One of those insignificant details, you're going to stop there. And you're going to write from that insignificant concrete detail. And then it's because you just kinda, kinda write the story coming out of that insignificant concrete detail. That Here's the thing. The more specific you can get with your writing, the more universal it will become. More specific you can get with Iran. And the more universal it will become, the more specific you can get with your storytelling right now, the more people will be able to engage with the abstract and the universal and the archetypical in this stuff that they're wrestling with. But you've got to bring them into the scene and bring them into the story. Like if you here in my poem that I shared with you guys before, it starts on the pavement outside the restaurant, we spoke of her life changes in the moments that make us. And she remembered being baby sat at our house. She remembered my eating of a tomato sauce sandwich and the source dripping down my cheek. Like that's something totally just an insignificant memory. Like concrete little thing that invites people in. You can see immediately this, the sauce, tomato sauce stripping down the cheeks. I want you to start in the midst of that, you might start with the C glittered on the day the sea glittered on the day that I said goodbye to my grandmother. The, the forest floor was littered with those red white mushrooms and I thought of toadstools and I thought of fairies, and I wondered if this might be a magical place. The like, who knows how you want to stop? But I wanted to start with concrete details and here's what we're gonna do. Let me give you the secret to writing good poetry. Poetry or about drown. Here's the secret. The secret is this. Stop trying to write good poetry. This is first draft. Allow whatever wants to come out, allow yourself to write crappy poetry, bad poetry, that's what you're gonna do now. You're going to add some bad poetry for me. One of the ways that I do this in my life every day I write a poem, it's my creative practice every single day. Most of that poetry is crap, but it's meant to be. But the only way I can get to the good stuff is if I allow myself to write the bad stuff. So we're just going to add some bad poetry now and see what happens. Turn off that negative inner critic. Turn off that voice the way that I do this, to start with these flow of conscious writing, stream of conscious writing, pen to paper. Your pen starts writing and you're not allowed to stop. You're not allowed to force yourself not to stop and think about what's next. Instead, just write whatever wants to come out. Don't judge whether that's good or bad or right or wrong or anything like that. Instead, you're just going to write and create. You have all these dot points there to flesh out this story. From there. I'm gonna give you time yourself. You're gonna, I'm gonna hit pause on this. I won't let this go for the whole 10 min, but I want it, I want you to give yourself 10 min straight flow of conscious writing. Where you start with that insignificant concrete detail and you just write, you write and you write and you write and you see what comes out of that at times go up that ladder into abstraction and reflection into the universal archetype. I'll bring it then bring it back down into the concrete detail. If he gets stuck, jumped to jump to another of those insignificant concrete things and start there again. You've got all these thoughts already down. Now you're going to spend 10 min and you're going to write flow of conscious. You're just gonna get it out. Don't let yourself stop. See what happens. Bring in metaphors as you go. It was hot as this. However, whatever you want to bring in, Just have a go. 10 min. Are you ready? Go. Alright, How is that? Hopefully you got through 10 min of writing and hopefully you have something now perhaps you've finished, give yourself some more time doing it more if you didn't finish and you want to get it out there. This is just the first draft. Remember, these are just the first draft. And if you've allowed yourself just to play with words and see what happens, then something poetic will be sitting there in front of you. So you've done that major, major step of allow fine, seeking to find that creative flow and allow whatever it wants to come out of you to come out of you. From here the idea is now you take it and you develop it. You take it and you develop it into a poetic pace. Let me talk about that in the next lesson. 7. Lesson 6 Construction: From now having this, this, this first draft, this is when I now go to the computer often maybe you did type it up already, maybe you typed it or maybe you wrote it. But this is when I go to the computer and I sit there and I have my draft open, I've got my blank Word document and I start bringing in what I want to bring in. And I might be that the poem that I'm about to construct starts where I started it. Or I might be that I go through them all and I'll leave that out. That wasn't very good. Let me start with that line that's maybe five lines in. Yeah, actually, that's a really good start. So I bring that in, bring that section. I'll leave that, I'll bring that section there and that's really good. Let me bring that in. Now, jump back to that first metaphor that I use because that was really good. So this is where you construct it up. This is where you take that initial dump of writing that you've just done and start to work out how does this come together as a strong story? And this is where some of the story structure stuff can really come in and be helpful. I remember a story often we think about stories as having three parts to it at the beginning, the middle, and the end, you would have heard that from like, from like primary school. Story begins with the normality of life or the way you have seen things before. It begins at a home space begins at this is how I think life is. Just kinda begins. You set up the story, is some setup for it. Then there's often this inciting incident. What's the thing that kicks the story off? Where's that in the writing you've just done is that there is a strong enough all bring it in. What was the thing that first initially led to this moment way that you wrestled, struggled with this thing, bringing that inciting incident. The moment is how my my kids, primary school teachers, or what's the moment? What's the thing that kicks the story off where now nothing can be the same again, have a think of that way. Does that lie within this writing that you're doing? The moment leads to this crossing of the threshold. We talk about it in story structure of this choice to know, I need to find out the truth or I need to change. I need to leave home, to leave the shy or two to go on the journey. I'm going to question this thing, that things aren't right. What Is there a moment where there's an intentional choice to leave within your, within your poem. And then there's gonna be the conflict. There's an obstacle. There's an obstacle. What are the things that obstacle they seeing these obstacles and then coming to that midpoint realization that we talked about before the revelation. What are they read? What's the true wrestle of this pace and what's new knowledge, wisdom. And they coming to as this happens, Is there a moment where they were? Where it kinda leads to the climax where the main character, the protagonist, uses the knowledge they came to, the wisdom they came to through that regulatory midpoint moment. That's what they use to defeat the body that are growing on it alone. And now they realized in that moment that they needed a tribe. They needed a crew if they were ever going to get through life and now they can do it. They can defeat the body not on their own, but with their people. Translate that into your poem. What's the, what's the crisis and the climax? And how is how you coming to that point of new revelation of holding? And even if it's as simple as something you remember my poem, if finished with me being back on my me having spoken to my friend about about our other friend dying Rebecca. And then that night, after I had done encounter at the, at the restaurant, I chose to go back to that lighthouse straight afterwards to that cliff again. There I screamed and I screamed, and then I danced just like we had danced all those years ago on that cliff face. The conclusion, how I brought it together at the end, the climax and the conclusion was, was this moment of coming to that cliff face and screaming, screaming my hot adding gray in grief. It was one of the first times I let myself down there and then and then dancing and just that dancing is the resolution. All the stories have a resolution that is coming back home moment. This the road home that ever since then that holds that the ties that together in some way I didn't give them the answers. There's no answers to grief and people dying and to growing up in the reality of life hitting us. But perhaps that holding those two things together, the screaming and the dancing is my answer. That life is about both of these things, holding these things, so I wonder what that is for you. So this to say go through and have a look at the structural stuff around your story now, is that building to that climax? Is it a character who's, who's hitting these, these obstacles and pushing through them and coming to what they need and not what they wanted. Have a look through and see how you're structuring it up in a way that will draw people into the story. Take it and structure it up. Now, one of the things just to finish this, the editing part of this is that one of the things I like to do is make sure that the key things within the story that you have, that you have dropped bread crumbs along the path that leads to the key things that you've foreshadowed some of these key things. If you think back to my story again, there's, there's a whole lot of moments within this story that I foreshadowed lack that key moment at the end where I go back to the Lighthouse. I talk about the lighthouse at the star and dancing there and the freedom that we all fell. Then everything was alive and we were young and we were full like the whole world before us. And then I'm back there again at the end. That linkage between the end and the start is really important. Again, like the poem starts at the restaurant is the first little chromosome at the restaurant. And we're remembering this moment where she used to babysit me, my eating of a touch. She remembered babysitting me and tomato sauce dripping down my cheek. And then halfway through where I am. No, not halfway through towards the end. I then talk about how she has just split with her husband and she feels a widow at 30 at 33. I let my tears come. I hold her arm. I'm there kinda back at the restaurant with her. And there's this moment just before this, the moment where we remembered remembered Rebecca. And we're standing there at the restaurant and I looked down and her son her son is the one with the dripping source dripping down his cheeks. Just these little connections that allows you to take. Think about it as if there's a key moment in your story that the story should lead up to that moment by the dropping of breadcrumbs that takes people to there. That's like, yeah, inevitably this was what was going to have an inevitably Joel was going to end back up, end up at that lighthouse again. If you look through, there's a scattered moments that point towards that, that foreshadow this thing. So just like we would do with fictional novel writing with foreshadow events. Think about that in terms of the small poem that you've written still you can scatter just a few things that lay. Everything is leading up to that climactic moment, leading up to that, to that thing. So hopefully this is helpful. Let me finish off in the next lesson. 8. Lesson 7 Shaping Identity: All right, friends. So this was just a kind of a small introduction into the writing of when narrative and poetry come together for me and how I do this thing. Hopefully it's been a helpful process for you. But remember, the heart of it is the authentic sharing of your story. The more real and authentic you can get with this pace that the better it's going to be, the more you can focus in on that concrete specificity, that detail. Connect it out, go up and down that ladder of abstraction to connect it to those universal wrestling. What begins to happen is what's happening through this is, remember, this is not just writing a poem so that you can perform your pace for someone else, but in the very writing of it, if it's true, remember we said that who we are is based not on the events that have happened to us, but the stories that we tell about the events that happened to her, then what you are doing in that moment that riding you weren't just reflecting on your life, you know what you're doing. You were shaping your very identity. The person that you are. You're construing of that story around meaning, around that abstract universal archetype, all that thing. It directly is shaping the way you see yourself. That is the power of story. This wasn't just a moment of poetic riding. This was a moment of reorientate in your life. And every time we come to write poetry, that is what we are doing and especially when it's self Poetry based on the stories that we tell about our lives. You would just race storying some of your life. And how important is it to do that? How much life can be changed? When we do that, when we listen to the interiority, when we listened to our memories. And our memories are telling stories and some of those stories are pretty crappy. And it's time we told better stories are more generous stories and more kind of stories as I said. And I hope that what this has led you to is to thinking about the stories that you tell about your life. And the great. Maya Angelo says that there is no greater agony. Then bearing an untold story inside g is no greater agony than bearing and untold story inside you may you now take this story and offer it out into the world. Go and share it somewhere, performance somewhere. We haven't done a whole lot on the performance side of things. In one of my other performance poetry introductions, there's, there's a segment or two on performance and I'll get around to doing a full performance thing course at some point soon for Skillshare. But for now, the whole idea of performance is this. You've thought about in your writing, how you're going to invite people into the experience of this story. And now performance is simply asking the same question. How could I perform this in a way that invites people into the experience, this story. So that if this story is an inspirational story, then you perform it in a way that inspires. If it is a sad story, then you perform it in a way that draws people into the sadness. If it's an angry story where you get frustrated and this happens. You draw people into that through tone, through, through the intensity of your performance, through all the different things, pace and volume and all those kind of thing. Have a think about the performance of another thing about the rhythm in which it comes. But the idea from here is to bring this out into the world as a story, I wanted to focus on the writing specifically of this. Remember what you're doing in this moment is not just reflecting on story and not just sharing story. You're changing your very identity. And by doing so, by sharing this story, you have the potential to change the lives of so many people. I know this because I've seen in my life again and again and again, as I've shared poetry over the last 15 years, lives will be changed just like that kid who came up to me and one of the first things, public performance speaking things I ever did and said, You know what, I heard your story and I just I don't feel so lonely anymore. Friends. What you have to say in your story is more important than the fear that stops you from saying it. So go and say, go and share this story with someone. Go to a poetry night, go to something, get the story that you've been writing and bring it out there. Feel free to put it onto the, It'd be great to see them in the class. The class, whatever it's called. Uploaded thing that you can do. Assessment, little piece for this class. I'd love to read some of these, bring it into there, but otherwise go share it with friends, family. And may your stories, may your poetic stories change people's lives? Go for it. 9. Conclusion: And so this has been intro to performance poetry, writing poetic, narrative poems. I hope that it is giving you a, just an intro and a little dabbling, a little exploration into that intersection between your story and between poetry writing, between narrative and identity. And I hope that that has helped you. If this is your thing, if you love poetry and writing and creativity, I run the school for creative development. If you go to Joel and the carrow.com, you'll be able to see all about it there where we were, I run courses and classes in poetry writing and career development, in creativity and credit practice in lots and lots of different things. You can also check out my other things on, on Skillshare, I have another intro to performance poetry course, which is just like straight intro and a whole bunch of other different prompts and ideas for how to get into the writing of your performance poetry. And there's some stuff on performance within there as well. And then I've got a whole, I've got a three-part course series called creative vocation here on Skillshare that is about developing your creative practice, your creative career. It's about yeah, so there's business and career stuff in there. There's kinda vocational calling ideas. How do you, how can you create a sustainable practice, this stuff around values and, and the, the goals that you're heading towards, there's a whole lot of different stuff there. So check out that, um, credit vocation cause otherwise it's been wonderful to have you here. And I'd love to read some of your projects if you want to upload those. And I will see you next time you do a John McCarthy Skillshare course.