Writing The Field: A Guided Nature Walk & Writing Workshop

316 Willow Street,Fort Collins CO 80524

09 October, 2022

Description

In her book, Upstream: Selected Essays, Mary Oliver says, "Attention is the beginning of devotion.” Alongside Gary Snyder's list in the poem "What You Should Know to Be a Poet" we can find our elders instructions, our guide to poetic work, and the poetic mind in regard to Nature Writing. William Carlos Williams argued that “our poems are not subtly enough made, the structure, the staid manner of the poem cannot let our feelings through.” Citing “the rigidity of the poetic foot” as a significant obstacle to contemporary poetry. His theory was later developed by poet Charles Olson as his “composition by field,” which focuses on the motion and space between elements in a poem. Guided by environmental educator, poet and publisher David Anthony Martin, writers will use their experience of natural setting and information to take field notes and craft works. Writers will be encouraged to consider some liberating and inspirational innovations in form and typesetting by poets such as William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson and Brian Teare to see possible correlations between the field of experience and information they move through and the field of the blank page. Registrants are encouraged to bring their preferred tools for taking field notes or writing (journals, notebooks, phones or other devices), water and to dress for the weather and for walking through outdoor spaces, both on and off paths. David Anthony Martin is an environmental educator, hike guide, camp leader for the Nature & Wildlife Discovery Center. He is a writer, columnist, poet, founder of Middle Creek Publishing, and author of four collections of poetry most notably Bijoux and The Ground Nest.