Exploring Our Poetic Terrain
A Poetry Workshop
As a homesteader-poet who is intimately acquainted with the river, valley, and mountains surrounding the location where this workshop will be held, I am deeply excited by the opportunity to consider poems in terms of physical terrain. What topographies and landscapes do we encounter among our words as we step out onto the expanse of the page? Where are the hills, the valleys, the well-trod paths and ruts, the unexpected drop-offs, the old stone walls and foundations and cellar holes? What happens when we enter our poems as a traveler, with new sets of eyes and feet? Together, we will work to develop a greater understanding of our poems’ terrains, of the histories they carry and the unexpected wilds the contain, and use this understanding to strengthen existing pieces and map out new possibilities.
This workshop will provide a space for discussion, feedback, and revision of work-in-progress while also offering opportunities to generate new poems through prompts and possibly some outdoor exploration.
+ SUBMIT Participants are asked to please submit in advance 3-5 pages of poems. Email the manuscript no later than 9:00 a.m. on October 16 to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “BOUSMA MSS.”
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, small-town librarian and the Maine Poet Laureate (2021-2026). Bouwsma is the author of three poetry collections, Death Fluorescence (forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2025) and Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both of which received the Maine Literary Award for Poetry. Other honors include a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, the Poet’s Out Loud Prize (2016-17), the Cider Press Review Book Award (2015), and residency fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, and Annex Arts. Bouwsma’s poems and book reviews can be found in Cutthroat, Green Mountains Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She currently serves as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield.
Registration
To register, click the button below. To read more about the prices and the room & board options for the Harvest Writers Retreat, please go to the Room + Board page.