Poetry from the Prairie: Coming to Our Senses

Come join us for an immersive experience in art and nature workshops! Connect with the local environment while preparing for the Nature Center's 25th-anniversary celebration on September 14. Your artwork could be displayed during the anniversary celebrations! Remember to enroll in each workshop to secure your spot.

Poetry and the prairie both call on us to open our senses to experience the living earth in real time. Poetry connects us—through images that evokes our senses, rhythms that resonate with our heartbeat, and language that go beyond common human speech—to the places where we live and traverse and to what David Abram calls the “more-than-human species” all around us. The prairie—in its flora and fauna diversity, deep roots, long history, and threatened survival—offers us vast possibilities for interaction and calls on us to speak and act for its survival and flourishing.  In this workshop, we’ll hone our attention and senses on original and vibrant detail, making the poem itself a place for the reader to enter and explore. We’ll also home in on what we’re drawn to say to and for the prairie. 

We’ll experiment with prompts and approaches that bring greater presence to our poetry and lives while also considering the poetry of writers such as William Stafford, Denise Low, Pattiann Rogers, Joy Harjo, Roy Beckemeyer, David Abram, Harley Elliott, Linda Hogan, and others.  Please bring something to write with and in for this generative workshop.

You can register through Lawrence Parks and Rec right here. Thank you to the Prairie Park Nature Center for hosting this and the Heritage Conservation Council of Douglas County for funding this program.