Writing Toward the Light

The Possibilities of Fall

I don’t know what it is about the fall. There’s something I feel in my bones even before the temperatures drop. I felt it last week, sitting in a bench on downtown Santa Cruz, watching the passers by. Not a chill, but an electricity, carried on the breeze. Every year, I wait to feel it, and then mark the moment it happens. Some part of me is still twelve years old and waiting for school to start again, waiting to need a stack of number 2 pencils to tuck into a zippered pouch, to get a new binder with color-coded dividers. Bliss!

And that twelve-year-old me can’t help but pine to get back to the classroom, back to the rickety seats and smell of chalk dust. Even though that’s a lost world. Even though I don’t really want to go all the way back there. But I DO want to be in class still, and to be immersed in some subject I adore. Like poetry, for example. And, especially now, I want to spend the fall with like-minded friends who love what I love. Friends who may listen to the news, but then want to attend to the threads that connect us all, those deeper ties.

I am excited to say that I will be doing exactly that! Poet and memoirist Maggie Smith and I will be co-teaching an online class in October. We’ll meet every Sunday from 4-5:30 Pacific Time (7-8:30 Eastern), exploring what it is to write poems that celebrate life as it is.

We love a poem of praise, but love it best when it nods—or bows—to difficulty. We want the poem to mirror our real lives: the beauty and wonder, yes, but also the difficulty and loss. 

Together we’ll spend four online sessions exploring poems that ferry us across rough seas, a lantern in hand. Each Sunday will include a craft discussion of some of our favorite poems, a Q&A period, and an in-class writing session. Participants will receive packets of the poems and prompts we feature in class. Together we’ll develop new strategies we can apply to existing drafts and to brand-new work, and we’ll build creative momentum to carry forward into our own writing practices.

Get unstuck. Gather in community. And join us!

We look forward to seeing you there!