A Nature Poet’s Field Guide 4-Week Online Workshop, Starts Monday, June 3rd, 2024
Class Starts Monday, June 3rd, 2024
Now Enrolling
**This Class is Open to All Writers**
Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.
Led by Holly Lyn Walrath, a writer, editor, and publisher. Her poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Analog, and Flash Fiction Online. She is the author of several books of poetry including Glimmerglass Girl (2018), Numinose Lapidi (2020), and The Smallest of Bones (2021). She holds a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. In 2019, she launched Interstellar Flight Press, an indie SFF publisher dedicated to publishing underrepresented genres and voices.
Is every poem a nature poem? Create a "field guide" filled with poetry inspired by nature and influenced by the nature in your own backyard.
Sit under the moon. Climb a tree. Take a hike. Observe. Nature is everywhere. In this workshop, we’ll make our own field guides to the natural world around us by using observational journaling to craft new poems. If you love learning about nature while writing poetry, this workshop is for you.
Go out into the world and write poems by learning to observe and appreciate the natural world. From ecopoetry to seasonal poetry, this workshop will inspire poetry “from emotion recollected in tranquility,” as William Wordsworth said.
COURSE OUTLINE:
Week 1: Creating Your Nature Poetry Field Guide
Week 2: Accurately Describing Natural Phenomenon
Week 3: Crafting Emotion in Nature Poetry
Week 4: The Healing Power of Nature
- Adventure into your own city and region to explore nature and write poetry
- Explore the history of field guides and create a poetry field guide of your own
- Learn techniques for describing nature accurately in poetry
- Explore the emotional center of nature poetry
- Learn how to be more mindful and aware of the world around you through poetry
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
This class is asynchronous, meaning you complete the weekly assignments on your own schedule. There are no set meeting times in order to allow for greater participation; your cohort will consist of writers from across different time zones, which allows for a wonderful diversity of voices.
Along with your weekly deadlines, there is plenty of interaction with Holly and your peers within Wet Ink, our dedicated online classroom. Craft materials, lectures, reading assignments, and writing prompts are all available through the online classroom. Students also post work and provide and receive feedback within the online classroom environment.
You can finish the work as you see fit week-to-week, which is perfect for any schedule. There are discussion questions each week inspired by the assigned readings and topics in the lecture notes. Students are encouraged to take these wherever is most compelling and/or useful for them. Holly engages with these discussions throughout the week, and you will receive feedback from all assigned writing activities.
HOW DOES WET INK WORK?
Wet Ink was built and designed specifically for online writing classes. Wet Ink is private, easy to use, and very interactive. You can learn more about the Wet Ink platform by Watching a Class Demo.
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
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Instructor: Holly Lyn Walrath
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Starts Monday, June 3rd, 2024
- Course is fully ONLINE; students can work according to their own schedule within weekly deadlines. Once you have enrolled the instructor will send you a link to our online classroom, provided via Wet Ink.
Instructor Holly Lyn Walrath is a freelance editor based out of Houston, Texas. She holds a B.A. in English from The University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Analog, Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, and in the Other Terrors anthology from the Horror Writer's Association, among many more publications. Holly is the author of the collection The Smallest of Bones, published by Clash Books in 2021 and Glimmerglass Girl, winner of the SFPA Elgin Award. She is the managing editor of Interstellar Flight Press, an indie press for underrepresented voices and genres. Visit Holly's website here.