Mid-Valley Willamette Writer’s Presents: Practice Your Book Pitch – July 24, 2010 — Practice your book pitch before your sit down with an agent or editor.  You learn the essential details that will help you craft a killer pitch. Bring your pitches for revision and practice or write one at the workshop.  This interactive class will give you the foundation to write and deliver an attention grabbing pitch!  JoJo Jensen is leading this dynamic and fun workshop, where you will leave feeling energized, excited, and confident about pitching your manuscript!

When: Saturday July 24, What time: 9am – 1pm, Where: Community room @ Market of Choice, 29^th & Willamette, Eugene, Cost: $25.00. Arrive early to secure your seat. For more information www.willamettewriters.com. JoJo Jensen,midvalleyww@yahoo.com

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)

Writing to Explore Your Spiritual Journey, a seven-week, on-line, summer course, will be taught by member, Nan Phifer, author of Memoirs of the Soul: A Writing Guide. Offered through Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA, find descriptions at http://www.cdsp.edu/center_online.php and www.memoirworkshops.com. Nan’s description– We’ll go beyond chronological, autobiographical writing to focus on our most significant spiritual experiences.  I’ll guide you in identifying the landmarks of your spiritual journey and lure you with writing prompts that lead into not-yet-explored territory.  You’ll write to recognize your inner light, to reconcile your sorrows and blessings, to forge paths toward altruism, and to express the presence of the numinous.  I’ll illustrate a technique you may employ to breathe life into narration. You’ll write in pace with each other in small, ongoing groups, sharing drafts and responding to them in a prescribed, constructive way.  From the affirmations and questions of group members, you’ll gain personal insights and collegial affiliation, for supportive bonds often form within the small groups.  From the course overall, you’ll master a writing process you can continue to use any time you want to write so vividly that you awaken readers, as well as yourself.

Nan Phifer

http://www.memoirworkshops.com

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.