The Monadnock Pastoral Poetry Retreat
Join me this April in Southern New Hampshire!
Hello, friends!
I’m writing today to tell you about a weekend-long writing retreat that will take place at the Barbara C. Harris Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire from April 19 to 21.
The retreat, now in its nineteenth year, grew out of the work Jim Beschta, Pat Fargnoli, Terry Farish, John Hodgen, Adelle Leiblein, Susan Roney-O’Brien, and Rodger Martin, who were classified by Chinese poet, translator and critic Zhang Ziqing as the Monadnock School of New Pastoral Poetry. What began as a reading series morphed into a retreat back in the early 2000s.
Today the retreat brings together both poets and prose writers in an idyllic rural setting for a weekend of creativity and fellowship. Workshops are led by pairs of writers, so there is no single “sage on stage” telling everyone what is and is not good writing. Rather, we are a community that shares ideas and supports one another. It is truly a beautiful thing. Each attendee has the opportunity to give a brief reading of his or her work, and the weekend culminates in a reading by the workshop leaders followed by a celebratory banquet.
Visit our website to learn more and to sign up! After all, writers need other writers!
I also have a poetry workshop coming up in early April. Kick off National Poetry Month with a workshop designed to help you develop a daily poetry practice.
Developing a Daily Poetry Practice, Morse Institute Library, Natick, MA, April 4, 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Are you looking for a way to become more observant and present in your life? Writing poetry can help you capture the moments as they pass and create an artful record of your days. In this workshop, we will discuss strategies to silence inner critics so we can get words on the page, and you'll learn five exercises for generating poems. These exercises are infinitely repeatable and will help you through the days when inspiration feels hard to find. Armed with some concrete strategies, you'll be ready to launch your own daily poetry practice.
Stay creative!
Cheers,
Diane