Patriot of Place
This will be a mixed-genre generative workshop where we write poems, stories, songs, blessings, and other forms of testimony for the places where we most come alive—wild places, hidden places, neglected places. Bombarded by the far away, we will attend to the local, the personal, and the sacred. When things fall apart, the writing we compose with courage and affection can bolster kinship and defend—let’s name it: the land of the truly free and the quietly brave.
Kim Stafford is Emeritus Professor at Lewis and Clark College in Oregon. He writes, teaches, and travels to raise the human spirit through poetry. In 1986, he founded the Northwest Writing Institute, and he has published a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: How My Brother Disappeared. His most recent book is the poetry collection As the Sky Begins to Change (Red Hen Press, 2024). He has taught writing in dozens of schools and community centers, and in Scotland, Italy, Mexico, and Bhutan. In 2018 he was named Oregon’s 9th Poet Laureate for a two-year term.
