Collaborative Poetry Improvisation Workshop

Discover the world of collaborative poetry improvisation in these three workshops with Robin Vaughan-Williams on Thursdays 10th and 24 October and 7 November (7 to 9pm) in Ealing, West London.

Poetry improvisation is about trusting in your voice, opening up to others, and seeing where it takes you. In these workshops the focus will be on collaborative improvisation—bouncing our voices off one another and developing threads that sometimes twist together and sometimes spin off in their own directions. We will be working as a whole group and also in pairs and threes—no one will be expected to improvise solo.

We’ll explore different improvisation techniques, such as working with music and prompts, using breathing and voice exercises, and ways of structuring an improvisation. There’ll also be space to share observations on the experience and our compositions, and to move towards performance or recording, for those interested in taking this path.

Past participants have said:

‘One of the collaborative pieces felt like being in a poem as it was being made. V powerful!’
‘It was really exciting to see a different approach to poetic collaboration.’

Attend a single workshop as a taster, or book all three to develop your technique and spontaneity and explore how we can use poetry improvisation as a group.

ABOUT THE FACILITATOR

Robin Vaughan-Williams is a poet and producer and first started exploring poetry improvisation in 2008. He developed an improvised poetry performance with a group of emerging poets for Apples and Snakes in 2015 (‘Grey Parrot Singing’), has collaborated with Quick Shifts dance improvisation collective in Leicester and Sheffield’s jazz improvisors Charlie Collins and Derek Saw, and ran a poetry improv group in Nottingham with Mark Goodwin and Rich Goodson.