Ideas Everywhere! Inspirations for Poetry

Ideas Everywhere! Inspirations for Poetry

September 22 to 24, 2023

Facilitator: Marjorie Maddox,

Award Winning Author, Retreat Leader, & Poet

The everyday, the eternal, and everything in between—ideas for poems are everywhere! During this retreat, we’ll focus on generating poems from both the mundane and the miraculous, using—as time permits—the arts (paintings, photographs, movies, music), sacred texts and rituals, nature, news, place, sports, and the medical as springboards. By drafting, revising, and discussing poems in a supportive community, we’ll consider how one poetic choice leads to another, each contributing to the work’s overall effect. Arrive ready to engage, experiment, write, laugh. Leave with new ideas and strategies for future poems.

Professor of English at Lock Haven University, Marjorie Maddox has published 13 collections of poetry—most recently Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation (Yellowglen Prize); Begin with a Question (Paraclete Press, International Book Award Winner), and Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For (Shanti Arts), an ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Karen Elias. Her poems are featured in Christian Poetry in America since 1940 (Paraclete Press), edited by Michael Mattix and Sally Thomas. In addition, she has published the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite); 4 children’s and YA books—including Inside Out: Poems on Writing and Reading Poems with Insider Exercises (Finalist International Book Awards), A Crossing of Zebras: Animal Packs in Poetry; I’m Feeling Blue, Too! (a 2021 NCTE Notable Poetry Book), and Rules of the Game: Baseball Poems —plus the anthology Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania (co-editor) and the literary journal Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (assistant editor). In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind, based on her daughter’s paintings (www.hafer.work) + works by other artists, is forthcoming in 2023 (Shanti Arts). Please see www.marjoriemaddox.com

Offering: $275.00 (includes 2 nights, meals, lodging and deposit)

Deposit: $75.00