Workshops
Guided by Tess Taylor, immerse yourself in the poetry of place amidst the captivating Midcoast of Maine. This poetry workshop uniquely combines inspiration and exploration, delving into the narratives of our surroundings and celebrating the beauty of our connection to land and history.
Dates:
Sep 16, 2024 - Sep 20, 2024
Levels:
All
Workshop Fee: $1595
Workshop Duration: 1-week (Monday-Friday)
Workshop Location: On-campus
Class Size: 10
How do we write our way home? How can naming the stories of our places— our homes— lead us toward the stories of our lives? Come celebrate the poetry of place, ecotone, and belonging. In the stunning Maine landscape, we will examine and excavate what it means to write our connectedness to the places we live, and we’ll study the way writing gains richness by engaging nuance and specificity— and by delving into biology, geology, history, and art. Each day will be part writing, part field trip. We’ll read poems and also hear a lecture on ecology at a local pond. We’ll write art poems at the Farnsworth Museum. We’ll look for unexpected artifacts at the town archive. We will also hear some tremendous new work of visiting writers. In this 5-day poetry workshop— geared toward poets but open to writers of all genres— we’ll learn how thinking through place can anchor and reveal our deep stories, poems and songs. Looking at art, studying our soil, watching the beauty of one stunning Maine September, we’ll also unearth hidden histories.
Come prepared to take risks, generate new work, and explore the beauty of Midcoast Maine. This poetry writing workshop is open to writers of all experience levels.
Header image: Richard Brunck – Dawn at Rockport Harbor, Maine
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Instructor: Tess Taylor
Tess Taylor’s body of work deals with place, ecology, memory and cultural reckoning. She has published five celebrated poetry collections: The Misremembered World, The Forage House, Last West: Roadsongs for
Dorothea Lange, and Rift Zone, one of the Boston Globe’s best books of 2020. Her book Work & Days was one of the NY Times' best poetry books of 2016. Her work as a cultural critic appears in Harpers Magazine, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Times Literary Supplement, CNN, and The New York Times. She has taught widely, from UC Berkeley to Queen’s University Belfast. She is currently at work on two plays, one of which is a stage adaptation of her book of poems about American photographer Dorothea Lange. In fall 2023, she published her first full length poetry anthology: Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them, a collection of contemporary gardening poems for an era of climate crisis. She lives and gardens just outside Berkeley, California.
