Spring Writing Circles
Last week I attended a poetry retreat in Honeymoon Bay, on Lake Cowichan on Vancouver Island. I try to do this at least once a year. That good habit started in 2006 when I began attending poetry retreats with Patrick Lane. Patrick died in 2019 and it’s now his partner and fellow poet, Lorna Crozier, who has taken on the leading of the poetry retreats in Honeymoon Bay. It’s wonderful to work with a master poet and teacher.
The other fabulous part of attending a retreat is being able to hang out with fellow poets. There were nineteen of us and we were able to write together, share our poetry, eat our meals together, and hang out to compare notes on our writing lives. The social time is as important as our learning about the craft of poetry. And there is time for walks down to the lake where a poet friend and I spotted trilliums under the trees in the park.
Writing in community is something I’ve done for a long time. I’m thinking back to a women’s writing retreat I attended in 1993. It was in 1997 I began to offer writing circles and I continue to do that as they offer some time to be with other writers, setting aside the usual responsibilities of every day. Spending time with the writing of your own stories from life is really a boost to everything else that you do. I found that when I got home from the retreat I really felt blessed having taken the time for myself.
There are three opportunities coming up for writing together: in person in Nanaimo for one day, and there’s a six-week women’s writing circle, also in person in […]