The NEA Big Read's theme this year is "Our Nature: How Our Physical Environment Can Lead Us to Seek Hope, Courage, and Connection." In this 90 minute generative poetry workshop students will explore different forms of nature poetry, including the relationship and difference between prose poetry and free verse, and how revision plays a key role in the creative process. Students will read and discuss a variety of “nature” poems in lead-up to creating their own “wild delicate second”—be it with bumble bees, birds, or bears—focusing on their own encounters with wildlife, and then using the tools of revision, to rework and craft their first drafts into finished, final poems. Seating is limited, register below.

Charles Finn is the former editor of the literary and fine art magazine High Desert Journal, author of the nonfiction collection and Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters. With photographer Barabra Michelman he co-created On a Benediction of Wind: Poems and Photographs from the American West, winner of the 2022 Montana Book Award, and he is the author of the recently released A Mountain’s Idea of Time. He is the co-editor of the textbook/anthology The Art of Revising Poetry: 21 U.S. Poets on Their Drafts, Craft, and Process, as well as co-editor of the poetry anthology, We Are All God’s Poems. He lives in Havre, MT, with his wife Joyce Mphande-Finn and their two cats, Tija and Rilke.

Brought to you by the Lewis & Clark Library as part of the NEA Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit http://www.arts.gov