Spencertown Academy Arts Center presents “Poetry & the Art of Paying Attention,” an in-person workshop with Even Christine Gardiner. The class will meet for six sessions at the Academy from October 25 through December 6 on Tuesdays between 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Enrollment is limited to 15 participants (with a minimum of seven) and the cost is $120. To register, please see www.spencertownacademy.org.
“I believe in poetry as a healing art and teach writing as a meditative practice,” says Gardiner. “In this workshop, participants will be invited to write intimate poems grounded in close attention to their personal experiences of the world.”
This writing workshop will explore the practice of poetry as a form of attentive presence. Participants will read and write poems that elevate the ordinary and render the inherent beauty in the fabric of daily life. The program will include study of poems by poets like Joy Harjo, Pablo Neruda, and Bernadette Mayer (among others) to reinforce the foundations of poetic technique and explore forms ranging from diaristic writing to list poems to epistles.
“Even Christine led a Spencertown Academy-sponsored weekly poetry workshop this summer at the Town of Austerlitz Recreation Program and the work that the children generated was inspiring,” says Jill Kalotay, Spencertown Academy board member. “In becoming familiar with her curriculum, we realized how easily it could be translated to an adult class. This offering has come out of that experience.”
Gardiner is the author of the blog Pet Murmur and the poetry collection My Sister’s Father (Black Lawrence Press, 2017). She studied the literary arts at Brown University (BA, MFA) and the University of Denver (Ph.D.) and taught writing, research, and poetics at the college level for over a decade. She now works as an independent educator and is currently researching and writing an experimental memoir called Investigative Poetics.
This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The Academy has installed multiple Blueair HealthProtect 7470 air purifiers in the building. Academy leadership is closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation in Columbia County, as well as recommendations from health authorities, and will adjust protocols as necessary.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Spencertown Academy arts organization, and the 175th year since the Academy was built as a school in 1847. Housed in a landmark 1847 Greek Revival schoolhouse, the Academy is located at 790 State Route 203 in Spencertown, New York.
I have a love of writing and I am seeing beauty in the poems that I write. It’s a journey of self exploration. I also write short stories.