Refuge and Reciprocity: Writing Poems that Ground Us in Place and Widen Our Circles of Belonging
What if we think of home not as something we have, but something we do, a way of working and playing in the place we find ourselves, actively embracing both our inner lives and the wider world?
In this workshop we’ll practice homing, writing from our personal sense of home toward more reciprocal relationships with the soil, the rain and rivers, the birds, insects and mammals, the grasses, shrubs, and trees, and the fellow humans with whom we share our beloved Earth. Acknowledging the challenges we face—personal, societal, and environmental—we’ll take a cue from Robin Wall Kimmerer, who writes, “Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
This will be a generative workshop. We’ll write a lot. We’ll practice writing poems as gifts we can offer the world. There will be daily writing prompts, craft lessons, and plenty of sharing, discussion, and feedback. We’ll prowl our Wallowa Lake surroundings and revel in the aspens and the mountain air. We’ll consider our kinship with all the creatures and processes of the planet. We’ll create a refuge with our mutual regard. We’ll encourage one another’s efforts while protecting our vulnerabilities, helping each other deepen our writing, and widen our circle of care. My hope is that we’ll all leave the workshop energized and inspired, heading home with a bundle of draft poems and fresh ideas about homing and being in the world.
In his mid-30s, Charles Goodrich built a small house at the edge of town intending to live as a hermit-writer. He discovered, however, he’d landed in the midst of a vital human-and-natural community, and he was drawn ineluctably into a wider sense of home. Charles worked for twenty-five years as a professional gardener, then served as the Director of The Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. He is the author of four volumes of poetry, a book of narrative essays, The Practice of Home, and a novel, Weave Me a Crooked Basket. His poems and essays have appeared in Orion, The Sun, Terrain.org, and many other publications, and his poems were read a dozen times by Garrison Keillor on “The Writer’s Almanac.” He lives near the confluence of the Marys and Willamette Rivers in the traditional homeland of the Ampinefu Band of the Kalapuya in Corvallis, Oregon. charlesgoodrich.com