Carrie Etter’s Poetry Workshop at Devizes Arts Festival

By Helen Edwards

American poet, Carrie Etter has been a resident in England since 2001, and a reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She published four collections, most recently, The Weather in Normal, and numerous chapbooks. On Saturday Carrie gave a poetry workshop and reading at Devizes Town Hall, as a fringe event of Devizes Arts Festival…..

‘Carrie’s workshop was absolutely fantastic, a distilled overview of prose poetry with many examples to show the variation in style and our own time to create (with no pressure).  Carrie was inspiring, impassioned and quick as a whip.

Her students at Bristol University are very lucky to have her as a teacher (as were her many past students from at Bath Spa University). The open mic at the end was inclusive, supportive and fun. Carrie’s final poem saw me wiping away tears; beautiful.

I wish I could write a longer review but I am doing this one-eyed with a poorly optic nerve. I’m effervescing with words which will have to wait or be dictaphoned, when they come I now have many tips as to how to form them better.  Thanks Carrie, your generosity is abundant – I’ve a feeling you’ll get a roomful’s worth of follow up messages. Helen.


Trending…..

Book Review: Dave McKenna’s Death Wish

It was back in March last year when I last mentioned Devizes author Dave McKenna, reviewing his debut, The Killer & The Catalyst. He’s returned with…

My Reflection on the Fate of Carnivals

It’s Saturday morning on the 13th July 1985, and there’s a dilemma brewing in my household I’m indifferent with. I’m twelve, aware I should do…

Leave a comment