Gathering Stones: Writing Poetry by the River

Emily Lygren, freshly graduated from MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing, is offering a workshop named Gathering Stones: Writing Poetry by the River through S. F. State University, the Sierra Nevada Field Campus.

Writing Poetry by the River

This will be a supportive, generative workshop focused on writing poetry. To craft our poems we’ll look inward, pulling from our own memories and experiences, and turn our attention outward, drawing from our rich surroundings. Prompts will help us put words on the page. We will read and discuss the work of fantastic poets to inform our own writing, including Joy Harjo, Danusha Laméris, J. Drew Lanham, Ada Limón, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mary Oliver, and William Stafford (a partial list). We will spend time with inspiring organisms and landscape features such as cottonwoods, chipmunks, red fir trees, thrushes, rounded river stones, pine cones, and the north Yuba River (a partial list) to populate our writing with deep observations. Each day will include two writing sessions and ample free time for hiking, swimming, napping, adventuring, and relaxing.   

All levels of experience are welcome! If you’re new to poetry or have always wanted to try writing poetry but just haven’t gotten around with it, you’re especially welcome!

Instructor Bio

Emilie Lygren holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geology-Biology from Brown University and has worked extensively as an outdoor science educator and poet. Emilie developed dozens of publications focused on nature journaling, outdoor science education, and social-emotional learning through her work at the award-winning BEETLES Project at the Lawrence Hall of Science. She is also an award-winning poet with poems published in numerous literary journals and anthologies. Her first collection of poems, What We Were Born For, was selected by the Young People’s Poet Laureate as the Poetry Foundation’s monthly book pick in February 2022. In her writing and teaching, Emilie calls on awareness and curiosity as tools to bring people into relationship with place, self, and community. A longtime member of the Sierra Nevada Field Campus community, poet and outdoor educator Emilie Lygren worked in the field campus kitchen from 2009-2012. Whenever Emilie wasn’t cooking, she attended as many classes as she could and made good on her goal to hike to every lake in the Lakes Basin. Contact her at lygren.emilie@gmail.com.