Where Does Poetry Come From? Julia Shipley Writing Class April 30, 2015 Cobleigh 7-9pm

Cobleigh Public Library

For writers at any level, this program explores the various springs of poetic inspiration and can help provide a rope bridge over the abyss of  “I don’t know how to write a poem ” into “Oh, would you look at that!”

We’ll hear the “backstory” behind several poems and then, instead of merely hoping for inspiration to strike, we’ll play with new ways to launch a poem using five different writing exercises. This is a generative workshop, hence giving and receiving and extensive feedback will take a back seat to the act of generation.

Whether you’ve just published your ninth volume of poetry or never written a poem at all–join us for a fun romp through words, ideas, images, sounds and surprises. Bring: curiosity, writing materials.

Julia Shipley is the author of Adam’s Mark, (Plowboy Press, 2014), selected by the Boston Globe as a 2014 Best Book About New England. Her poetry collection, The Academy of Hay won the 2014 Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize and is forthcoming from Bona Fide Books in August. She is also the author of four poetry chapbooks, One Ton Crumb (CC&B, 2014) First Do No Harm (Honeybee Press, 2014), Herd (2010), winner of the Sheltering Pines Press Chapbook Award and Planet Jr. (2012) winner of the Hazel Lipa Environmental Chapbook Award from Flyway Journal of Writing and Environment.

Her essays and poems have been included in Wildbranch: an Anthology of Nature, Environment and Place-based Writing (University of Utah, 2010) and Fields of Learning (University Press of Kentucky, 2011), as well in variety of journals including Alimentum: The Literature of Food, CutBank, FIELD, Fourth Genre, Green Mountains Review, Hunger Mountain, Orion, Poetry, Poet Lore, Poetry East, The Rumpus, The Toast, Taproot, Terrain.org, USA Today, Verse Daily and Yankee Magazine.

She is a two-time recipient of grants from the Vermont Community Foundation and the Vermont Arts Council and has also received fellowships from the Frost Place (NH) and the Center for Books Arts (NYC) and The Studios at Key West (FL). She raises animals and vegetables with her husband, and hosts writers in her farmhouse studio rental in Craftsbury.

Her website is: www.writingonthefarm.com

WHAT: Where Does Poetry Come From? class with Julia Shipley
WHERE: Cobleigh Public Library, 14 Depot Street, Lyndonville, VT  05851
WHEN: Thursday, April 30, 2015 from 7 to 9 pm
WHY: To get to "Oh, would you look at that!"
HOW: Free
INFO: Cindy Karasinski, Library Director, (802) 626-5475