RECOVERING WORDS IN ITALY A Generative Poetry Writing Retreat with Richard Osler – experienced poetry facilitator and author of Hyaena Season “Catching Fire – Writing En Plein Air” I write from habit, not because I am on fire. — Vittoria Colonna (1492 – 1547) La Romita School of Art Terni, Umbria, Italy 10 Days Oct. […]
Category Archives: General
Catching Fire -Writing En Plain Air – An Invite to Richard’s October Retreat in Italy 2018
April 9, 2018 – 5:09 pm
And Still He Sings – A Celebration of Patrick Lane and his New Novel, Deep River Night, Released Today
February 13, 2018 – 10:04 pm
The Beauty This too, the beauty of the antelope in snow. Is it enough to say we will imagine this and nothing more? Who understands that, failing, falters at the song. But still we sing. That is beauty. But it is not an answer any more than the antelope most slender of beasts most beautiful […]
The Bigness of Small Poems # 34 in a Series – Winter Solstice – Winter Poems by Sarah, MacLeod, Lane, Crozier
December 21, 2017 – 11:24 pm
Solstice A sly gift it is, that on the year’s shortest day, the sun stays longest in this house – extends the wand of its slow slant and distant squint farthest into the long depths of our wintry rooms – to touch with tremulous light, interior places it has not lit before. Robyn Sarah […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – #33 in a Series – The Ah! Ha! Genius of Jack Gilbert
September 2, 2017 – 10:49 pm
The Cucumbers of Praxilla of Sicyon What is the best we leave behind? Certainly love and form and ourselves. Surely those. But it is the mornings that are hard to relinquish, and music and cucumbers. Rain on trees, empty piazzas in small towns flooded with sun. What we are busy with doesn’t make us groan […]
Daily Miracles – Virginia Woolf and Robert Cording
August 10, 2017 – 10:24 pm
What is the meaning of life? That was all – a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with the years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. Virginia Woolf from To the […]
Poetry La Romita, 2017 – We Discovered a Wider (Wilder) Eye
August 4, 2017 – 4:44 pm
Oh, the world, the world, What eye is wide enough? What pupil sufficiently diligent. — Greg Orr ………………………I want to go howl in the city, or smash windows, or make my life sheer shine in this miracle ache of the world. — Dennis Lee Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks. — […]
Poetry as Prayer – Dialog June 2017
June 23, 2017 – 3:04 pm
This article first appeared in the June 2017 Issue of Dialog: The Texas Episcopalian published by the Episcopalian Diocese of Texas. I have been privileged during the past eight years to lead poetry-as-prayer retreats for participants from Episcopalian parishes in Lake Jackson and Houston. In those retreats I have witnessed many people, almost all of whom […]
In Great Company – Heidi Garnett’s Poem in Your Pocket
April 28, 2017 – 9:36 pm
Wish List I want to meet a blue parakeet that reads the future pulling Tarot cards with one delicate outstretched foot, the hanged man uncovered. I want to own a Corvette, a 1960 red and white convertible hardtop and drive around town with my dog Bud. I want to write love poems as if world […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 28 in a Series – The Delicacy and Ferocity of Franz Wright
April 1, 2017 – 11:33 pm
I’m trembling with fear. Just as well that what I’m about to write is already somehow written within me. What I have to do is copy myself out with the delicacy of a white butterfly. Clarice Lispector from The Hour of the Star, New Directions, 2011 I am addicted to great quotes on writing, especially […]
A Few Spaces left – 10 day Poetry Retreat in Umbria, Italy – June 23rd to July 3rd
February 26, 2017 – 3:35 pm
I am so happy to announce that the desired minimum number of registrants for this retreat has been reached! The retreat is now an official GO! I am looking forward to going back to La Romita School of Art for a second time to adventure into the heart of Umbria and to turn these adventures […]