We don’t often promote writing competitions, but this one was too good to pass up. It is the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest.
The deadline is April 1, which should give you a hint as to the 17 year old poetry contest topic. Prizes total $2250, and the winners will be published online.
There are no restrictions, no limits. Just make it humorous.
Enjoy!
A special afternoon session at the 2018 Authors Conference on January 27, 2018, in Forest Grove, Oregon, will be presented by Paulann Petersen.
Paulann Petersen is an award-winning poet and former Oregon State Poet Laureate. She is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and author of several books of poetry including The Wild Awake, Blood-Silk, A Bride of Narrow Escape, Kindle, The Voluptuary, and Understory. She has also published five chapbooks and her work has been published in many anthologies, magazines, and websites.
Paulann teaches poetry workshops for colleges, libraries, and writer’s conferences, and serves on the National Advisory Board for Friends of William Stafford. She will be presenting an afternoon poetry workshop to help you not only improve your poetry but also move toward publishing your work.
She joins a group of extraordinary professional editors, writers, and poets in our first writer’s conference. Other speakers include Deborah Reed, Chip MacGregor, Holly Lorincz, Jessica Morrell, MaryJane Nordgren, and Kristin Thiel.
Register today to learn from Paulann Petersen on professional poetry writing at the 2018 Authors Conference in January as space is limited.
This is a fundraiser for the Forest Grove Senior and Community Center, a non-profit community center and the host of Writers in the Grove weekly meetings. The Center provides free and low cost meals through their dining services and Meals On Wheels outreach program, as well as a wide range of educational, recreational, wellness, and community events and educational opportunities.
Writers in the Grove is a free weekly workshop for those wishing to develop their creative writing skills. The group meets Mondays at the Forest Grove Senior and Community Center on Mondays from 9-11am, and on the second Saturday of the month at the Forest Grove Public Library from 10:30-noon. Writers in the Grove supports the freedom of expression and creative writing spirit in Forest Grove, Oregon, and around the world.
VoiceCatcher is an online magazine that features the creative writing voices of women. Published in the Portland, Oregon, area, Writers in the Grove member, Ann Farley is featured in this month’s issue with her poem, suRReal WOman walked oFF Canvas.
Ann will be among the featured readers at a special event for VoiceCatcher on Wednesday, December 6, 2017, at The Corkscrew in Sellwood, South Portland at 7PM.
Congrats to Ann!
The following is by Writers in the Grove member, Bunny Hansen.
A letter arrives.
A price is paid.
A lover returns.
Anticipation rises.
Sometimes a morning sun
Warming new beginnings
Sometimes a midnight moon
Cooling dark endings.
Spring sap, anticipations pulse
Surges through sleeping branches
Inciting covert riots, among
Winter started roots.
Dormant blossoms provoked
Into multi-hued revolutions
Overthrow cold suns and short days.
A stalking tiger watches, waits in ambush
Frozen in stealth, muscles twitching
Stripes screened by sun-streaked grass
Saliva drips from emblematic fangs.
Hunt’s end, foreseen from the beginning.
Anticipation, gallant, armored knight
Charges onto epic battlefields
Reclaims golden fleeces of the heart
Slays doubt breathing Dragons
Plundering priceless dreams.
A dazzling gold vein exposed in white quartz
Detonates a miner’s expectations: “Mother Lode.”
A silver candelabra, darkened, tarnish-shrouded
Is rubbed and polished until purity appears.
A trickling brook meanders, swallowed by
A desert flash-flood, it carves a grand canyon.
Expectant prisoners, tenacious caterpillars
Anticipation etched on their hearts
Push against restriction’s limit
Struggle with confinement’s boundary
Natures mutate, time tempered
Finally, sentence served,
They catch the wind.
Opening nighters are seated
Orchestra, mezzanine, balcony
Critics view, review and preview
Backstage nerves infiltrate anticipation
Costumed in repetitious rehearsals
An actor reruns his lines
A tenor re-trills his scales
A dancer perfects a last leap
The theater strains, tension taunt
Listening for the call: Curtain up!
The following is by Writers in the Grove member, Patti Bond.
Friendship is priceless strength.
Friendship is understanding the motivation of others.
Friendship is peachy keen and appreciates you for who you are.
Friendship is rewarding and unique.
Friendship is ours.
The Scrivener Basics Workshop by Writers in the Grove begins September 21, 2017, Thursday at 6:30Pm at the Forest Grove Senior and Community Center in Forest Grove, Oregon. There is still space available.
Scrivener isn’t just for writing and publishing fiction or non-fiction. Many successful poets use the power of Scrivener to not just create their poetry books, but also to track poetry submissions to contests, magazines, and other publishing media.
Here are some resources to learn more about how poets are using Scrivener for their own poetry books and for anthologies.
The prompt today was:
It was never loving that emptied the heart, nor giving that emptied the purse.
The following is by Writers in the Grove member, Patti Bond.
When you feel like
You are beaten down,
Maybe you are.
Never give up!
You get bad news
Feel like you can’t go on.
Yes, you can.
Never give up!
Given a life-threatening health crisis.
Feel like life will not get better.
Yes, it will.
Never give up!
Berry picker, babysitter, nursing assistant.
Feel like you are
Overworked and underpaid?
Yes, you are.
Never give up!
Wherever life takes you
Remember to never give up
For you never know
What is waiting for you
Around the corner.
Never give up!
Oregon City Library is celebrating its 175th anniversary with a free writing workshop with Cindy Williams Gutierrez and Paulann Petersen on Sunday, July 30, 2017. The workshop will help participants generate new writing of prose or poetry on their library experiences, “with treasured books, with the magic process of reading.”
The workshop is from 1-5PM, followed by a dinner (bring your own sack dinner) together, and a reading that is open to the public at 6:30PM at the newly expanded and remodeled library in Oregon City, Portland.
Please register for the workshop by calling the library at 503-657-8269 ext. 1017.
The following is by Writers in the Grove member, Bev Walker, based upon the prompt, The Roles We Play.
“Why can’t a woman be more,
More like a man?” he said.
“Because then you wouldn’t be here,” says I.
Would I trade having kids,
Watching them grow,
Laugh, learn,
For the hard labor of a
Construction site?
Or sitting in an office all day?
No.
Would I trade the warm scent
Filling my kitchen
As I take loaves of fresh bread
Out of the oven,
For the oil and grease
Of a mechanic, a factory,
Or the dry sterile atmosphere
Of a skyscraper downtown?
No.
Would I like to be an astronaut,
Like Peggy Whitson,
Out there, exploring the stars?
Yes!
But the time is not,
Nor ever was,
For me to fly to the moon,
Discovery electricity,
Romance in Paris,
Dance across the Great Wall,
Or pet a tiger.
But I can.
I can do whatever anyone
Throughout time has ever done,
Feel what they’ve felt,
See what they’ve seen.
So, show me, storyteller.
Where have you been?
What have you done?
What have you seen?
Tell me a story
So I can go, too.
8 May 2017
Writers in the Grove 