This is a four-session workshop held on Tuesdays from 6:30-8pm. Session dates are April 1, 8, 15, and 22. Registration includes all four weeks.

Join us for a creative and inspiring workshop that combines birdwatching, writing, and art to deepen your connection to nature. In this four-session workshop, we’ll read and discuss select passages from The Backyard Bird Chronicles and use these as inspiration to create illustrated journals of our own bird observations.

Amy Tan’s delightful book The Backyard Bird Chronicles demonstrates how careful observation and recording of the activities of the feathered visitors to our yards and feeders can turn these mysterious wild creatures into familiar friends, each with its own story to tell.

Through in-class lessons and take-home exercises, participants will:

• Learn the basics of nature drawing and writing.
• Develop skills in observing and recording bird behavior.
• Cultivate a creative practice that fosters a deeper appreciation for the natural world.

Each participant will receive a blank book for their backyard bird journal, and art supplies will be available for use during class. This workshop welcomes participants of all experience levels—no prior writing, art, or birdwatching skills are required.

To fully enjoy the workshop, participants should have access to:

• A place to observe wild birds outside of class.
• A copy of The Backyard Bird Chronicles.
• A field guide to birds.
• Basic art supplies (pencil, pen, and colored pencils) for at-home exercises.

Accessibility Information

We aim to make this class as inclusive as possible. Please reach out if you have accessibility concerns to see how we can accommodate.

• Location: The venue is wheelchair accessible, with accessible restrooms
• Seating and Workspace: Tables and chairs are provided

About the Instructor

​Andrea Lani is the author of Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail (Bison Books 2022). Her writing has recently appeared in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Northern Woodlands, and Labor of Love: A Literary Mama Staff Anthology, among other publications, and she's a regular contributor to Green & Healthy Maine Magazine. She's been honored with two Hewnoaks Artist Residencies, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist in the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance 2024 CrimeFlash fiction contest. Andrea has degrees in human ecology and creative writing from College of The Atlantic and the Stonecoast MFA Program and was an editor at Literary Mama for nine years. ​As an Author Accelerator certified book coach, Andrea guides emerging writers in developing and revising novels and memoirs, and as a Maine Master Naturalist, she teaches nature writing and nature journaling workshops around the state. She lives in central Maine.​​​

Website: www.andrealani.com

Register early and save! Only $250 if you sign up by April 15th—price increases to $275 on April 16th.

Members recieve a 10% discount on this program! 

Click here to become a member! 

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Sit in the grass. Trace raindrops down a windowpane. Examine a tree. Take a walk.Watch the light reflect off stone sculptures. Observe. Immerse. Beauty is everywhere.

In this 6-week workshop, held at Viles Arboretum either outdoors or indoors dependingon the weather, we will write poetry in response to the landscape by using observational journaling and fresh poetic techniques.

If you love learning about nature and learning new tools to expand your poetry practice, this workshop is for you. Go out into a field, agrove, a barn, and write poems about what is all around you, and how you are part of itall. From romantic poetry to ecopoetry, this workshop will inspire poetry that, as Joseph Campbell says, “to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match yournature with Nature."

Workshop Schedule

5/21 - Week 1—Seeing. Craft technique: Imagery.Welcome, Introduction, free write, craft lesson, nature writing. HW: complete poem.

5/28 - Week 2—Listening. Craft technique: Anaphora.Introduction, free write, craft lesson, nature writing. HW: complete poem.

6/4 - Week 3—Feeling. Craft technique: Syntax. Introduction, free write, craft lesson, nature writing. HW: complete poem.

6/11 - Week 4—Remembering. Craft technique: Still Life poems. Introduction, free write, craft lesson, nature writing. HW: complete poem.

6/18 - Week 5—Desiring. Craft technique: Portrait poems. Introduction, free write, craft lesson, nature writing. HW: complete poem.

6/25 - Week 6—Imagining. Craft technique: Modern sonnets. Introduction, free write, craft lesson, nature writing. Share favorite poem written.

About the Instructor

Meghan Sterling lives in Gardiner, Maine with her family. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Rhino Poetry, The Los Angeles Review, Rattle, Colorado Review, Pinch Journal, Radar Poetry, Rust & Moth, SWIMM, The West Review, Pirene’s Fountain, the Inflectionist Review, Rise Up Review, the Mom Egg Review and many others.  Her chapbook, How We Drift, was published by Blue Lyra Press. She was Featured Poet in Frost Meadow Review’s Spring 2020 issue, a Dibner Fellow at the 2020 Black Fly Writer’s Retreat, and a Hewnoaks Artists’ Colony Resident in 2019 and 2021. She was co-editor of the anthology, A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis, published by Littoral Books.  Her debut full-length poetry collection, These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books) came out in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Eric Offer Grand Prize Award. Her second full-length collection, View from a Borrowed Field, won Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize and came out in March 2023. Her chapbook, Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions) came out in April 2023. Her third full-length collection, Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) came out summer 2023. You Are Here to Break Apart (Lily Poetry Review Press), is forthcoming in 2025 and Sick Poems from the Lovebed (Harbor Editions) is forthcoming in 2026. When she isn’t writing poetry, being a mom or swimming, she teaches workshops and works as a professional writer.