How to tell if my serious poems are drivel?

[MostlyGuesswork]

I've been accepted to join a serious poetry group but haven't attended my first meeting yet.

As an intro, I bought some of the books of poetry by a couple of their members, and read others on websites. The writers are clearly well-regarded, winning top prizes and published by good publishers... but tbh I wasn't particularly impressed and felt some of them were rather pretentious, and others left me thinking, WTF??

At present, my poetry is competent, but I'd like to kick it up a notch and be more powerful and experimental. Obviously, I have a lot to learn, but how can I judge the quality of the work I produce, if I don't appreciate high-quality poetry when I read it?

Well poetry is subjective like all forms of art. There really is room for all different kinds.
For instance I love Nikita Gil, Sharon Olds, Edna St Vincent Millay and Roger Mcgough!

Please don't let it put you off, it's natural to have a few butterflies but it's more likely to be excitement than nerves. (That's what I tell myself about things all the time, anyway.)
I completely get that you are "putting yourself out there" and I think it's great. I would hope that they have created a " safe space" for the group as a whole but if you don't like you don't have to go back.
I hope you have a fantastic time though!

** should say 'it' - if you don't like it! 😁

How did you find the group and go about joining? I’m writing a bit but have no idea how to push it either - let us know how you get on?

No idea how to judge your own writing - not a clue. It’s definitely subjective.

I don’t think it’s the right writing group for you, if you feel wholly disassociated from the kind of work they’re producing, and don’t think you’d want to be workshopping their work or have them workshop yours, because you’re not interested in their approach?

How did you find the group and go about joining?

I joined a Facebook group for local writers and asked for recommendations. It's actually the Stanza group, associated with the Poetry Society.

My previous poetry group were the sort who wrote every poem in rhyming couplets or ABCB without worrying about the metre (or, indeed, the rhyme), and the only feedback given was stuff like, "Oh yes, that reminds me of a cat I used to have..." - so this will be quite a jump up!

Thanks, that’s helpful. I feel like a bad person because of how much your cat poem group description made me laugh. I’m trying to learn about meter properly (as in how to use it, rather than just recognise it) and keep getting stuck in iambic pentameter like a precocious gcse student, but have not yet reminded anyone of their cat. As far as I know.

Thing is that there's a great variation of what can be regarded as good poetry.

I think Andrew Motions poems although
They are
Regarded as excellent by
Some people. Just
Sounds
To me
Like he's taken a paragraph of
Prose
And written it out like this
And recited it in a breathless voice.

So they might be great poetry, just not to your taste. And that doesn't mean that if your poems are different that they're no good.

Thanks for all your comments. I'll certainly give the group a proper try before I decide if it's for me. At the moment I feel like a good musician who wanted to find a jazz band that's going places and has accidentally joined a symphony orchestra!

@MargaretThursday

Thing is that there's a great variation of what can be regarded as good poetry.

I think Andrew Motions poems although
They are
Regarded as excellent by
Some people. Just
Sounds
To me
Like he's taken a paragraph of
Prose
And written it out like this
And recited it in a breathless voice.

So they might be great poetry, just not to your taste. And that doesn't mean that if your poems are different that they're no good.

But it could well mean that the OP might well find being workshopped by poets who don’t share her tastes or techniques less than useful, much as a jazz and a classical pianist are not going to be much use to one another because they’re doing different things…

@AgedVellum exactly!