What Wildness is This
Susan Hanson and Paula Williamson: "'Our Endless and Proper Work': the Act of Attention"
Learning to pay attention is the life's work of the writer. In this workshop, participants will read examples of prose and poetry that get power from the use of accurate and telling descriptive detail. In addition to practicing this type of writing, we will learn techniques for identifying and describing plants in the field and learn about resources to help us with this process.
Kathleen Dean Moore: "The Osprey's Art"
Here is how an osprey hunts: soaring over water, patiently watching. All she sees are surfaces, reflections on the riffles, the glistening pines. Then something changes—the angle of the light or the movement of wind—and the osprey catches a glimpse of a shadow under the surface of the water. She tucks her wings and dives. So it is with us when we write the nature essay, beginning with the patient, grateful, informed observation of a particular location, then pursuing a truth briefly revealed in that place.
Linda Joy Myers: "Writing Your Way Home"
The places where we spend childhood remain within us, embedded in our bodies and appearing in our dreams. Through visualization, mind-mapping, poetry, and story, we bring into the present the place(s) that formed us, enhancing our experience of our personal history and the power of place to shape our psyche.
Jo Virgil: "Rock Water Sky Green: Writing Your Perfect Place"
How do the four basic elements of nature speak to each of us? By considering the order in which we list the attraction of rock, water, sky, and green, we can discover who we are and how we experience the natural world. We will consider our "perfect environmental setting" as well as the natural environments in which we grew up, evaluate the relative importance of the four elements in these settings, and write.
Lisa Shirah-Hiers: "In a Good Place: Creating a Nurturing Space"
What spaces nurture our bodies and our souls? We'll create an inner place and explore it using visualization, art materials, and writing exercises. We'll discover and write about what our special place can teach us about ourselves and our lives, and discuss how our "good places" can be brought into our daily lives.
Cindy Bellinger: "Journaling in Place: The Way to Deep Ground"
This workshop offers enlivening and unusual techniques for enlarging the reach of journaling to include specifics of place, whether a landscape, town, house or inner terrain. Combining writing, doodling and downright scribbling deepens the way we come to know ourselves in places that matter.
Matilda Butler: "The Writer's "Inside-Out" View of Place: Subjective Geography in Storytelling"
In this workshop, we will discover the satisfaction of using the five senses to capture a sense of place. Find how using our senses can lead to a better understanding of the importance of place in our lives. Workshop exercises based on sight, touch, smell, sound, and taste will help us create strong and effective personal narratives of place.
Shaun Perkins: "Journey in Words: Journey Inwards"
As writers, we can arrive at a personal mythology through writing about the places and experiences that influenced and are still influencing our lives. This workshop will engage participants in a journey with words to discover the places in our pasts that inform our present lives. We will begin with warm-up writing exercises and proceed with more in-depth exercises, allowing participants to find their own personal mythologies.
Jan Seale: "From Bud to Beast: Honoring Nature in Your Poems"
This workshop will give participants the courage, tools, and expectation of joy as they write poetry focused on animals, plants, and habitats. We will read and discuss examples of published nature/habitat poems, create lists of poem topics, and work with suggested opening lines to write three short poems.
Susan J. Tweit and Linda Elizabeth Peterson: "At Home: Rooting Your Writing in the Land"
We will focus on observing and asking questions about the landscape with the eye of a field biologist—or a writer. Participants will learn how to use field guides and immerse themselves in the lives of the animals and plants that enliven the landscapes. Our goal is to discover the details of geology, natural history, and human history that create an intimate knowledge of the land, make landscape a powerful character, and enable us to read and tell the land's story in a rich and believable way.
Joyce Boatright: "Breakfast in the Desert"
What happens when we lose our place? This workshop will explore those times of defeat or failure when we feel lost in the desert—a place that seems unforgiving in its hardscrabble isolation. We will examine the loss people feel when they lose their place (the farmer who loses the family farm; the spouse who loses her/his place in a marriage; the employee who loses his/her job). Reading, writing, and sharing, we will focus on celebrating the human spirit that survives.
Marisa Taylor: "Genealogies of Place"
Family trees have roots in many places, yet genealogy usually focuses on our ancestors' names and dates rather than the places they called home (or, perhaps, were glad to leave). In this workshop, we'll move beyond family history to explore ways of tracing the places where our ancestors lived and worked and document genealogies of place. No previous genealogy experience required.
Elizabeth O'Herlihey: "Place as Metaphor"
In this workshop, we will use the creative writing technique of collage to craft a memoir piece. Through writing, cutting and pasting, we will weave two disparate stories together to create a new story, revealing place as a metaphor for self. Participants will be asked to work with two previously written pieces (either written at home or at the conference)—one about place, the other about self or family. Through a careful, though intuitive, editing process, we will cut our stories apart and then reassemble the pieces on paper as a new story/collage.
Connie Spittler: "In the Shadow of Georgia O'Keeffe"
In this workshop, we will look at a short videotape of the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, then choose from an array of natural objects (feathers, stones, leaves, bones and flowers). Using words instead of brush strokes, participants will write a piece drawn from elements of the land, as far as possible, relating the natural object to his/her life and personal view of nature.
Paula S. Yost: "Place as Character"
This workshop will stress the importance of using details and sensory input to bring the environment to life and transform it into a key "character" in writing about place. Through timed writings and discussion, we will learn how the myriad, seemingly insignificant details of nature (plants, wildlife, climate, etc.) come together in our memories of a place, and how to include those details in our writing in order to make it come alive for readers.
Matilda Butler: "Places that Shape Us"
How are we, as writers, influenced by place? How do we convey these influences to others? How do we create a place using words? Sometimes we describe place by what it is and sometimes by what it is not. In this workshop, we will explore ways to express both the "inside" influence place has on us and the "outside" face of place.
Lisa Shirah-Hiers: "The Rhythm of This Place"
In this session, we'll explore different "rhythms" (cycles, repetition, periodicity, pattern, movement, shape) in art, music and literature. We'll talk and write about how rhythms manifest in different places (urban and natural) and environments, and how these rhythms affect us. We'll also describe our own rhythms (diurnal, lunar, seasonal) and write about how these are influenced by the places and spaces in our lives.
Linda Joy Myers: "Landscape as Healing"
How do landscapes heal us? We will explore these healing landscapes through visualizations, making poems, and writing stories that recreate those places. Remembering our favorite healing places brings us full circle, helping us to appreciate the child within the adult and offering compassion for the situation that existed in the past. Writing about places of safety reminds us of our strengths and renews our relationship with the sacred space of our personal landscape and history.
Janet Riehl: "Always Coming Home"
Where are our homeplaces? In this workshop, we will look at homeplaces as a point of origin, learn how they shape us, and examine our feelings when we return after absence. Together, we will make a list of topics related to the rich themes of time, past, impermanence, belonging, family, identity. Then we'll write from this list and share our writing.
Susan Wittig Albert: "Personal Maps and the Meaning of Place"
A "personal map" is a representation of our personal understanding and awareness of the places we inhabit, based on our daily practices, life experiences, and cultural values. Whether our maps focus on the external geography (the physical reality of a place) or our inner geography (the way we feel about it), they help to clarify not only our understanding of a particular place and its local and larger contexts, but our changing relationship to it. In this workshop, we will look at and discuss several personal maps, construct our own, and write about the most important features of our maps.
Last updated: 05/10/07