This past weekend we at Damfino Press, Sarah, Lea and I, held our first 2-day workshop at the Barred Owl Retreat in Leicester, Massachusetts. It is an amazingly beautiful space, inside and out. Participants worked with Patricia Smith from 9-3 each day with a break for lunch, and Saturday evening some of us went to dinner, which was a lot of fun and gave us time to decompress from the days writing intensive.

Last night I completed facilitating a 3-part poetry workshop series called “A Beautiful Catastrophe” at the Southborough Public Library. This too, was a wonderful experience, writing with others, discussing poems each week with starting with Frank O’Hara followed by e.e. cummings, and ending with Elizabeth Bishop. I love how reading the work of others and engaged conversations create a generative writing experience. I’m adding two more workshop dates at this location for July and two for August; I am thrilled they are keeping me around.

I am so tired:)  Where am I going with all this at 4:39 in the morning? I guess what I am trying to say is that amazing things can happen when we want them to. We do not have to wait for aspects of our writing lives to just appear, we can make things happen that reward us with renewal and experience. Make things happen, take yourself seriously, and have a good time.