We were honoured to have Jan Watts, Birmingham’s current poet laureate with us for July’s meeting. She brought her highly effervescent and infectious style talk to us about writing funny poems and later performed a few from her collection for us.
Among the advice she gave were:
Write in a parallel reality, include twists and turns and exaggerate.
Keep a funny journal – put any funny saying, situations you encounter into it for later use
Put poems in unusual places
Use the familiar and the unfamiliar
Make the ordinary special
Use pantoums, satire, parody
Use the ‘found poetry’ form and personification
She then regaled us with some of her favourites, and we persuaded her to share one of her ‘praise’ poems with us, even though it wasn’t strictly funny, but it was very moving.
I was so enthralled with her performance I forgot to take a few pictures for the blog. However Jan can be found on www.janwatts.com
To round off the meeting a few members shared their poems, humorous and otherwise with Jan and the group.
Writers Without Borders 