Viles Arboretum

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.