Saturday, February 25, 2012

9 am-3 pm, Wild Geese Room, Tamarack Wellness Center, 3575 Donald St # 120  Eugene, OR 97405-4753

You love to write. You love dogs. You’ve noticed all the bestsellers and blockbusters about dogs and other animals. You are working like a dog on your next character, book, or essay. This workshop is a unique opportunity to go from working like a dog to writing like (and about) one. Participate in this all-day workshop about writing dogs in to your story, article, screenplay, or other genre. Workshop leaders Debra Durham and Debra Merskin (bios below) will take you into the minds and lives of dogs so that you can bring them to life on the page, screen, and stage.

Our time together will be spent in presentations, discussion of readings, writing, workshopping, and other activities. We will focus on cultural and scientific understanding of dogs and dog-human relationships. We will also consider how dogs are used in American popular culture through readings and other media.

Books such as Garth Stein’s Racing in the Rain and Virginia Woolf’s Flush: A Biography prompt readers to think about what we have in common with four-footed friends and what we do not. Above all else they force us to acknowledge that animals-other-than-humans have points of view and distinctive ways of looking at the world. These concepts are at the very heart of this workshop. We will explore the psychological process of perspective-taking as a writerly skill and an empathetic tool. Individual and group activities will help us to expand our understanding of dogs and write from and about that experience in order to reveal richer and more authentic dogness that can be buried in stories and characters.

Want to be part of the pack? Find out more or register by emailing dmerskin@gmail.com. The cost for this workshop is $79.*  Registration is open until 2/18. For more information go to: www.Writelikeadog.blogspot.com Bring: your favorite writing tools (laptops are fine, pencil and paper preferred) and a photograph or other image of a dog who inspires you. Lunch is not provided.

BIOS: Debra Durham, PhD – Debra is a modern day Dr. Doolittle who specializes in the field of animal behavior. She has traveled the world studying animals in the wild and in captivity to understand how they cope with change and stress. She has published a number of scientific and popular articles and book chapters about animal behavior and human-animal relationships. She lives in Seattle with three dachshunds.

Debra Merskin, PhD, is associate professor in the School of Journalism & Communication at the University of Oregon. Her writing and research explore how and what we communicate about people and other animals. She has published a number of book chapters and popular press pieces about the human/animal relationship. Shares her home with three cats and Wicker, a Shetland sheepdog.

*$25 non-refundable deposit is needed to secure your space.

Exploring Sacred Space through words, we’ll use writing to identify architectural elements. We’ll write to remember and analyze the way flame, water, earth and air uplift the human spirit. We’ll consider which sounds, smells, lights, colors, tastes and touch expand the soul. Though this workshop focuses on places of corporate worship, it is applicable to all the spaces we wish to make sacred. Presenter: Nan Phifer is an associate director of the Oregon Writing Project at the University of Oregon, Eugene and author of Memoirs of the Soul: A Writing Guide.

Friday, November 12, 7- 9 p.m. and Saturday, November 13, 9:30 – 3:30.

For information and to register, see  http://www.benedictine-srs.org/shalomevents.html, or call Sister Dorothy Jean Beyer at 503 845-6773.

Save October 7^th and 8^th (Thursday and Friday) 2010 for the 3^nd Annual POETRY WORKSHOP IN DUFUR, OREGON – THE MUSIC OF SURPRISE: Writing for the Ear as well as the Eye – Work with sound and rhythm to make your poems fresh and unexpected. Start new poems and take old poems a step further. Give yourself two days to fine tune your poetry. Come stay at the charming Balch Hotel in Dufur, Oregon, and practice a better ear for your own writing. Learn to manipulate meter and see what happens as you experiment with the flexible music of our rich English language.

The Music of Surprise is a two-day workshop full of sound-oriented writing prompts and radical revision of new and old material. We will spend one night (Thursday, October 7, 2010) at the hotel with no television or phones to distract us. There we will work in the beautiful parlor and in our own private rooms. On Thursday we will have lunch and dinner at the hotel plus an after-dinner reading just among ourselves followed by a brief homework assignment. Our Friday session will include breakfast and lunch.

The workshop will be limited to nine participants so that everyone gets time and attention. Cost for the workshop itself is $125 plus hotel and meals (both reasonable).

If you are interested, request a registration form and send two recent poems. For more information, please e-mail, phone, or write to: Penelope Scambly Schott at 507 NW Skyline Crest Road, Portland, Oregon 97229 — Phone: 503-291-0159,  e-mail: penelopeschott@comcast.net. Why have a workshop in Dufur? Because it’s a quiet little town with a view of the east side of Mount Hood and a charming small hotel (www.balchhotel.com) where we won’t be thinking our ordinary thoughts. (In case you’re curious, the town is named after Andrew & Enoch Dufur who came in 1859.) Where is Dufur? From Portland, drive out through the Columbia Gorge and turn south.  Dufur is twenty minutes south of Route 84 on 197.  It’s a beautiful trip. From the east side of Portland 1 hour 45 minutes (100 miles), from The Dalles 20 minutes (15 miles),from Bend 2 hours 30 minutes (115 miles), from Pendleton 2 hours 20 minutes (140 miles), from Salem 2 hours 35 minutes (150 miles)

Deanna Ludwin, who met Lisa at Colorado State 25 years ago, has given a gift of $200 to sponsor workshop scholarships in her honor. The scholarships are available to women poets who want to attend one of the Guild’s one-day craft workshops. Lisa’s love of poetry lives on — thank you Deanna, for your generous gift! If you would like to apply for a workshop, please get in touch with Toni Van Deusen at tonipoet@gmail.com.

The Power and Play of Discovery

John Morrison

What is more seductive in a poem than discovery? Be it fresh, new language, an overwhelming image, or an inescapable momentum like the current of a fierce river, we might all die of boredom if poetry couldn’t strike new sparks and lead us to a new aural or interior landscape. So how do we invite discovery into our work?

Our session will be part workshop, discussion and exercise, where we will share our own poems and be open to opportunities for new possibilities and strategies. We will also ask about the bloodlines and life-blood of our poems, and move the pen across the paper in vibrant explorations. As time allows, we may share our own writing “practice,” the rituals we employ to move us from first notion through revision to the version we trust to the mail. We may also step into a few models from contemporary poetry.

Come ready to share and risk a bit, and we’ll make our way to new ground.

John Morrison earned his MFA from the University of Alabama and received the 2003 C. Hamilton Bailey Poetry Fellowship from Literary Arts. His book, Heaven of the Moment, won the 2006 Rhea & Seymour Gorsline Poetry Competition and was a finalist for the 2008 Oregon Book Award in poetry. His poems have appeared in numerous national literary journals, including the Cimarron Review, Poetry East, Southern Poetry Review, and Poet Lore. He has taught poetry at the University of Alabama and Washington State University, Vancouver, and is a Writer-in-Residence for Literary Arts’ Writers in the Schools program in Portland, Oregon.

MARCH 6, SATURDAY — LAMB COTTAGE IN SKINNER BUTTE PARK

Guild members, $50, non-members, $65. Scholarships available. For more info contact tonipoet@gmail.com.