Let's write poems about objects, whether ordinary or extraordinary. Even the things of everyday hold mystery and power. Perhaps it’s the sparrow that is inadvertently smacked into your window or perhaps it’s something as simple as a bobby pin or that fresh tomato from your garden. Maybe it’s that key you don’t (yet) know what it opens. Use your imagination and the power of words to find an opening for you and your writing. It's especially important to use your senses when writing about objects. 

Bring a pen/pencil and favorite notebook. Bring an object or two to inspire you. Bring your willingness to explore and write. 

Led by Karla Huston, author of Ripple, Scar, and Story: Kelsay Books, 2022. Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-2018. Learn more about her on her website. 

Workshops are free and a benefit of membership, but please register in advance.

Workshop 1, January 19: Craft talk, poetry examples.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvceGrqTktHNL-0O_b6QgxXYb1DN3vAEky

Workshop 2, February 23: Poetry feedback.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtcOqhqT8oE9wKBsRXtEr4Xd5eil_7MLc6

Let's write poems about objects, whether ordinary or extraordinary. Even the things of everyday hold mystery and power. Perhaps it’s the sparrow that is inadvertently smacked into your window or perhaps it’s something as simple as a bobby pin or that fresh tomato from your garden. Maybe it’s that key you don’t (yet) know what it opens. Use your imagination and the power of words to find an opening for you and your writing. It's especially important to use your senses when writing about objects. 

Bring a pen/pencil and favorite notebook. Bring an object or two to inspire you. Bring your willingness to explore and write. 

Led by Karla Huston, author of Ripple, Scar, and Story: Kelsay Books, 2022. Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2017-2018. Learn more about her on her website. 

Workshops are free and a benefit of membership, but please register in advance.

Workshop 1, January 19: Craft talk, poetry examples.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYvceGrqTktHNL-0O_b6QgxXYb1DN3vAEky

Workshop 2, February 23: Poetry feedback.
Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtcOqhqT8oE9wKBsRXtEr4Xd5eil_7MLc6

Join Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs as they lead this generative workshop. To truly understand ourselves, we must attend to our origins, to the people and circumstances that shaped our childhoods and laid the foundations for the adults we have become. In this workshop, Jessica Jacobs and Nickole Brown, award-winning poets and co-authors of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire, will lead you through a series of prompts meant to get you writing, inspired by close-readings of poems by Marie Howe, Li-Young Lee, and Ada Limon.

Don’t miss their reading on Thursday for more inspiration.

Both the reading and the workshop are free, but we ask you to register for either/both in advance:

Reading - September 8, 6-7 p.m.
Register on Zoom

Workshop - September 10, 1-2:30 p.m.
Register on Zoom

Nickole Brown’s first book of poems, Sister, is in the form of letters written to her younger sister, and her second, Fanny Says, is a biography-in-poems of her tough-as-new-rope Kentucky grandmother and won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. Currently, she volunteers at several animal sanctuaries and rescues, and her latest work investigates the interdependent and often fraught relationship between human and non-human animals in two chapbooks—To Those Who Were Our First Gods, winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, and The Donkey Elegies.

Jessica Jacobs’ first book, Pelvis with Distance, is a biography-in-poems of the painter Georgia O’Keeffe and the story of a month she spent alone in the high desert, and won the New Mexico Book Award for Poetry. Her second, Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, winner of the Devil's Kitchen and Goldie Awards, is a memoir-in-poems about coming of age in Florida and the complexities and joys of early marriage between the poet and her wife. Her collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis will be out with Four Way Books in 2024.

Nickole and Jessica live in the mountains of Asheville, NC, in a house chock-full of books and lovable, ill-behaved pets. Together, they give readings and lead writing workshops around the country, including online workshops through the SunJune Literary Collaborative.

Join us as WFOP hosts a virtual reading with two phenomenal poets-editors-teachers, Nickole Brown and Jessica Jacobs, co-founders of the SunJune Collaborative and co-authors of Write It: 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire. On Saturday, Nickole and Jessica will lead a workshop for interested WFOP members called “The Winged Seed: writing about the people who made and raised us.”

Both the reading and the workshop are free, but we ask you to register for either/both in advance:

Reading - September 8, 6-7 p.m.
Register on Zoom

Workshop - September 10, 1-2:30 p.m.
Register on Zoom

Nickole Brown’s first book of poems, Sister, is in the form of letters written to her younger sister, and her second, Fanny Says, is a biography-in-poems of her tough-as-new-rope Kentucky grandmother and won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. Currently, she volunteers at several animal sanctuaries and rescues, and her latest work investigates the interdependent and often fraught relationship between human and non-human animals in two chapbooks—To Those Who Were Our First Gods, winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize, and The Donkey Elegies.

Jessica Jacobs’ first book, Pelvis with Distance, is a biography-in-poems of the painter Georgia O’Keeffe and the story of a month she spent alone in the high desert, and won the New Mexico Book Award for Poetry. Her second, Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, winner of the Devil's Kitchen and Goldie Awards, is a memoir-in-poems about coming of age in Florida and the complexities and joys of early marriage between the poet and her wife. Her collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis will be out with Four Way Books in 2024.

Nickole and Jessica live in the mountains of Asheville, NC, in a house chock-full of books and lovable, ill-behaved pets. Together, they give readings and lead writing workshops around the country, including online workshops through the SunJune Literary Collaborative.

Jessica's SM links:
Twitter: @jessicalgjacobs
Instagram: @jlgjacobs
Facebook: www.facebook.com/jessica.jacobs.7140497|
Author Site: https://jessicalgjacobs.com/

Nickole's SM links:
Twitter: @nickolebrown
Instagram: @nickole.brown
Facebook: www.facebook.com/nickole.brown
Author Site: www.nickolebrown.com 

The real key to writing a memorable villanelle?  It lies in mastering the skill of repeating yourself—which is great news for poets.  Because every once in a while, a memorable phrase or sentence will spring to mind—something that’s so insightful, so fresh, that your Inner Poet suddenly starts asking: shouldn’t this little gem be transformed into a villanelle, so it can become the repeated refrain?

Maybe it should!  Participants in his two-session workshop will learn how to do just that, in two surprisingly easy steps.  First, just turn that brilliant zinger of yours into a rhymed couplet.  Then, simply drop it into the pre-fabricated framework of a villanelle (cheerfully supplied by your instructor), and there you are.  It’s much easier to accomplish than you think, because the intrinsic quirks and turns of the form itself will provide some unexpected pleasures and surprises.

So why not give it a shot?  It’s going to be intensive, it’s going to be fun, and you may find your poetry striding boldly into places where it’s never gone before.

This workshop is free but please register.

Part 1 - Thursday, June 16
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckcuqqrD8uHtRoYXznGGPW_MMOgIHeiDeW

Part 2 - Thursday, July 14
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvf-CtqTwrHNxnSCv6ykljQbvX6_nRDnUk

Marilyn L. Taylor, the former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee, is the author of eight collections of poetry, and editor of the anthology titled Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle.  She also co-edits two poetry journals,Third Wednesday and Verse-Virtual. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Able Muse, Measure, and The American Scholar, and it has won awards in a number of poetry competitions, including the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for Verse in Forms, and the 2021 “Better Than Starbucks” sonnet contest. A former Milwaukeean, she now lives in Madison, where she continues to present readings and independent workshops locally, statewide, and elsewhere.  Her new collection, Outside the Frame: New and Selected Poems, is now available from her website: www.mltpoet.com/books  

The real key to writing a memorable villanelle?  It lies in mastering the skill of repeating yourself—which is great news for poets.  Because every once in a while, a memorable phrase or sentence will spring to mind—something that’s so insightful, so fresh, that your Inner Poet suddenly starts asking: shouldn’t this little gem be transformed into a villanelle, so it can become the repeated refrain?

Maybe it should!  Participants in his two-session workshop will learn how to do just that, in two surprisingly easy steps.  First, just turn that brilliant zinger of yours into a rhymed couplet.  Then, simply drop it into the pre-fabricated framework of a villanelle (cheerfully supplied by your instructor), and there you are.  It’s much easier to accomplish than you think, because the intrinsic quirks and turns of the form itself will provide some unexpected pleasures and surprises.

So why not give it a shot?  It’s going to be intensive, it’s going to be fun, and you may find your poetry striding boldly into places where it’s never gone before.

This workshop is free but please register.

Part 1 - Thursday, June 16
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZckcuqqrD8uHtRoYXznGGPW_MMOgIHeiDeW

Part 2 - Thursday, July 14
Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEvf-CtqTwrHNxnSCv6ykljQbvX6_nRDnUk

Marilyn L. Taylor, the former Poet Laureate of the state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee, is the author of eight collections of poetry, and editor of the anthology titled Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle.  She also co-edits two poetry journals,Third Wednesday and Verse-Virtual. Her work has appeared in Poetry, Able Muse, Measure, and The American Scholar, and it has won awards in a number of poetry competitions, including the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize for Verse in Forms, and the 2021 “Better Than Starbucks” sonnet contest. A former Milwaukeean, she now lives in Madison, where she continues to present readings and independent workshops locally, statewide, and elsewhere.  Her new collection, Outside the Frame: New and Selected Poems, is now available from her website: www.mltpoet.com/books  

Jessica Barksdale

The most painful experiences are often those we truly want to write about. But how do we approach hard topics without sinking our poetic ships with excess melodrama and pathos? How can we invite our readers in and ask them to stay and bear witness without them running from our poems as if their hair were on fire?

In these two sessions, we will look at examples of how other poets have found ways to write about life’s most difficult challenges. Humor, hyperbole, specificity, detail, tone, voice, narrative all provide ways into profound writing about loss and grief.

The first session will focus on craft and studying examples as well as some brainstorming for our own work. And the second session will be dedicated to workshopping poems together.

SESSION 2
Thursday, November 11
7-8:30 p.m.

The session is free, but we do ask that you register in advance for this meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwocO6upzspGNJZyGudeb6Xj6JJKD5pXNgS

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

The first session is Thursday, October 14, 7-8:30 p.m. Make sure to register in advance for that one first.

Jessica Barksdale’s fifteenth novel, The Play’s the Thing, and second poetry collection, Grim Honey, were both published Spring 2021. Her novels include Her Daughter’s Eyes, The Matter of Grace, and When You Believe. A Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee, her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in the North American Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tahoma Review, and So to Speak.

Recently retired, she taught at Diablo Valley College for thirty-two years and continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Learn more on her website.

Jessica Barksdale

The most painful experiences are often those we truly want to write about. But how do we approach hard topics without sinking our poetic ships with excess melodrama and pathos? How can we invite our readers in and ask them to stay and bear witness without them running from our poems as if their hair were on fire?

In these two sessions, we will look at examples of how other poets have found ways to write about life’s most difficult challenges. Humor, hyperbole, specificity, detail, tone, voice, narrative all provide ways into profound writing about loss and grief.

The first session will focus on craft and studying examples as well as some brainstorming for our own work. And the second session will be dedicated to workshopping poems together.

SESSION 1
Thursday, October 14
7-8:30 p.m.

The session is free, but we do ask that you register in advance for this meeting:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMvd--hpj0pGNcWSHEO_fQwwVfzPqi3Xmed

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

The second session is Thursday, November 11, 7-8:30 p.m. Please register in advance for that workshop, too.

Jessica Barksdale’s fifteenth novel, The Play’s the Thing, and second poetry collection, Grim Honey, were both published Spring 2021. Her novels include Her Daughter’s Eyes, The Matter of Grace, and When You Believe. A Pushcart Prize and Best-of-the-Net nominee, her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming in the North American Review, Salt Hill Journal, Tahoma Review, and So to Speak.

Recently retired, she taught at Diablo Valley College for thirty-two years and continues to teach novel writing online for UCLA Extension and in the online MFA program for Southern New Hampshire University.

She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. Learn more on her website.

On the Front Lines / Behind the Lines - Part 2

Political Poetry

Margaret Rozga creates poetry from her ongoing concern for social justice issues. She was a participant in Milwaukee’s marches for fair housing and later married civil rights leader, Father James Groppi. She will share her process in a workshop.

August 19, 7 p.m. - Part 1:
In the first session On the Front Lines, Peggy will offer suggestions, prompts, and guidance that work for poets concerned about social justice issues in a variety of ways and in a range of engagement with those issues.

This workshop is free, but we ask you to register in advance on Zoom.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcpdu6urTIiH9JtLonWwwbXsxVxKZnH4agN

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

September 16, 7 p.m. - Part 2:
In the second session Behind the Lines, Peggy and participants will look at more sample poems, including those of participants. Participants will have a chance between August and September to revise an August draft or write a new draft. Then, for those who'd like more feedback, there will be time allotted to look at their work.

This workshop is free, but we ask you to register in advance on Zoom.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkduyprjgpHtDplik0N4CAqHQ0D2RUDpkZ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

On the Front Lines / Behind the Lines - Part 1

Political Poetry

Margaret Rozga creates poetry from her ongoing concern for social justice issues. She was a participant in Milwaukee’s marches for fair housing and later married civil rights leader, Father James Groppi. She will share her process in a workshop.

August 19, 7 p.m. - Part 1:
In the first session On the Front Lines, Peggy will offer suggestions, prompts, and guidance that work for poets concerned about social justice issues in a variety of ways and in a range of engagement with those issues.

This workshop is free, but we ask you to register in advance on Zoom.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcpdu6urTIiH9JtLonWwwbXsxVxKZnH4agN

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

September 16, 7 p.m. - Part 2:
In the second session Behind the Lines, Peggy and participants will look at more sample poems, including those of participants. Participants will have a chance between August and September to revise an August draft or write a new draft. Then, for those who'd like more feedback, there will be time allotted to look at their work.

This workshop is free, but we ask you to register in advance on Zoom.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkduyprjgpHtDplik0N4CAqHQ0D2RUDpkZ

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.