Collaborative Poetry Improvisation Workshops

Poetry improvisation is about trusting in your voice, opening up to others, and seeing where it takes you. In these workshops we'll be exploring collaborative improvisation—bouncing our voices off each other and developing threads that sometimes twist together and sometimes spin off in their own directions.  

We'll be looking at different improvisation techniques and working with breathing and relaxation, vocal warm-ups, stream of consciousness, movement, awareness of body and surroundings, and pairwork and groupwork. It may sound scary, but workshops are structured to help participants trust in their inner voice and find 'the zone' where they can vocalise freely and connect with the voices around them. 

The workshops are open to anyone who wants to be creative with words, and you are welcome to try out a single workshop, or attend a series to develop your feeling for improv and working with a group. One of the aims of the workshops is to bring together a group of practitioners who would like to start to collaborate on poetry improv recordings and performances. 

The workshops will involve some lying on the floor and moving around. We won't be seated at tables as in a conventional poetry workshop. There might be some writing, and improvisation can be used as a writing tool, but we will primarily be working with our voices. If you may have some challenges with lying down or moving around, please let us know in advance so we can find ways to accommodate you. Bring a yoga mat if you have one!

Some quotes from past participants:

• '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.' 
• 'It reinforced the idea of the ordinary being extraordinary.'
• 'It's changed my relationship to speech and the things people say.'  

On 24 October we will be joined by artist and musician Martin Lau, who will bring his blend of acoustic and electronic sounds to the session. Martin runs the experimental music evening @EalingExtranormal, improvises on electronics, woodwind, and percussion, and is known for his photomontages, which explore identity and duality. 

Dates: all Fridays, 7.15pm to 8.45pm (please arrive a few minutes early so we can start on time) 

1. 19 September
2. 10 October
3. 24 October (with guest artist Martin Lau)

Tickets are £5, £10, or £15 on a pay-what-you-can basis. £10 will help cover costs and keep these workshops sustainable. 

A limited number of tickets are also available to members of Wandsworth's Access for All scheme at £3 + booking fee. To request an Access for All ticket, please send a message via this form, giving your name, email, the date(s) you want to book, and your Access for All membership number. 

Venue

The Omnibus Theatre is (1 Clapham Common Northside, SW4 0QW) just a few minutes walk from Clapham Common tube station. We're in their Studio Upstairs, which has step-free access via a lift. How to find The Omnibus.

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 trio in Nottingham with Mark Goodwin and Rich Goodson. 

You can listen to some of the poetry improv soundscapes he has put together on SoundCloud. 

Robin's publications include The Manager (Happenstance Press), How to Fix a Human (Sampson Low), and poems in magazines like Acumen, Anthropocene, Dream Catcher, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Under the Radar. He has a background in live literature, having run events like Spoken Word Antics in Sheffield and Word of Mouth in Nottingham, and organised a series of sound-poetry collage performances weaving together the voices and sounds of poets and musicians. 

@robinrvw on Instagram. 

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