UPCOMING CLASSES
> poet Jane Hirschfield, online through Seattle Arts & Lectures
> novelist Barbara Kingsolver, online through Seattle Arts & Lectures
> Sentiment & Sentimentality in Poetry, online class with poet Ellen Bass
> Reading Poetry for Delight & Conversation
> 2024 Writing Retreat
Click a class name to learn more — and to register!
If you have any questions about classes, please email us: shawlib@rockisland.com
poet Jane Hirshfield
Monday, October 2nd, 2023 at 7:30 pm
A free, online event for members of the Shaw Island Library & Historical Society
Iconic poet Jane Hirshfield addresses the urgent immediacies of our time in her long-awaited book The Asking, which assays the full ranges of our shared and borrowed lives: our bonds of eros and our responsibilities to the planet; the singing dictions and searchlight dimensions of perception; the willing plunge into an existence both perishing and beloved, recognized in these poems as dazzling, “even now, even here.”
Hirshfield was a member of Princeton University’s first graduating class to include women. She has lived for many years on the West Coast, in the Pacific Northwest and in Northern California. Her poems are distinct for their efforts to stay present in the present, in their attention to the exact details of the objects she observes and to the nuances of a feeling or gesture; to the selection of just the right word, or just the right placement of a line break to shape the movement of the language. Jane Hirshfield’s books of poetry include Ledger (2021), The Beauty (2017), Come, Thief (2011); After (2006); Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Lives of the Heart (1997); The October Palace (1994); Of Gravity & Angels (1988); and Alaya (1982). She is also the author of a collection of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and has also edited and translated a number of anthologies.
This will be a live viewing on a large screen at the library, along with wine and cheese, but — because we are aware that COVID is also on people’s minds — we are offering a limited number of at-home watch options; these are offered first-come, first-served. When you register, you can state your preference.
This event is free, but open only to lifetime members of the SIL&HS.
To register, please click here.
We must have your registration no later than Tuesday, September 26th, at 5pm.
novelist Barbara Kingsolver
Monday, October 16th, 2023 at 7:30 pm
A free, online event for members of the Shaw Island Library & Historical Society
Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Barbara Kingsolver is lauded as one of the most celebrated novelists of our time. With her latest novel, Demon Copperhead, Kingsolver takes on David Copperfield as her inspiration for a story following one boy through the mountains of Southern Appalachia. Reckoning with institutional poverty, opioid addiction, and class divides visible and unseen, Kingsolver’s voice resonates with the truth of loving a place others will hardly believe exists. Kingsolver will appear in conversation with Ruth Dickey, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation.
This will be a live viewing on a large screen at the library, along with wine and cheese, but — because we are aware that COVID is also on people’s minds — we are offering a limited number of at-home watch options; these are offered first-come, first-served. When you register, you can state your preference.
This event is free, but open only to lifetime members of the SIL&HS.
To register, please click here.
We must have your registration no later than Monday, October 9th, at 5pm
Sentiment & Sentimentality in Poetry, with Ellen Bass
A free interactive Zoom class
Thursday, November 9th, 6:30–8:00PM
To attend in the comforts of your own home
This class is for people who love words and enjoy poetry (poets are welcome, too!)
Sentimentality is the only sentiment that rubs you the wrong way. –– W. Somerset Maugham
All poets want their poems to be emotionally meaningful, but how do they express strong feelings without falling into irritating sentimentality? We’ll talk about the courage required to face our tenderness with the knowledge that nothing is permanent. We’ll discuss poems that demonstrate the complex marriage of thought and feeling and investigate how that is achieved. I’ll discuss strategies that poets use to heighten the intimacy of their poems and to transform their private concerns into powerful poems. — Ellen Bass
About Ellen Bass
Ellen’s poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares. Her most recent collection, Indigo, published in 2020 by Copper Canyon Press, was named a new and notable book by the New York Times, who said, “Bass’s work — about marriage and parenting, illness and recovery, small daily pleasures — cultivates an exuberance that’s born of, and balanced by, close watchfulness.”
Ellen’s honors and awards include a Pushcart Prize, a Pablo Neruda Prize, a Larry Levis Reading Prize, and a New Letters Literary Prize, and, most recently, a Guggenheim fellowship that she’s thrilled about. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
This is a free class, but you still need to register for it. Please click here to register.
Reading Poetry for Delight & Conversation
Over relaxed evenings, around the library’s back table, we’ll read poetry together. We’ll share thinking and responses, finding our ways to comfort with different poets’ wordplay and dreaming. As needed, we’ll address topics like meter and rhythm, syntax, word sounds and choices, metaphor, the history of poetry, and so on. We’ll read poetry from a range of places and times (some in translation), focusing on shorter poems. The goal, overall, is for us to delight in the rich and wild possibilities of what we humans do with words and how this can shift how we move through our days.
The poets we read will be determined by your interests, but we will start with a range that could include Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Arthur Rimbaud, Seamus Heaney, Elizabeth Bishop, Jane Hirshfield,
Jack Gilbert, Mary Oliver, Li-Young Lee, Samuel Green, Claudia Rankine, Erin Belieu, Tyree Daye, or Ellen Bass (who will visit Shaw in 2024).
The facilitator: For gaining on forty years, award-winning teacher Anne Wysocki has worked with other adults — in settings such as job training programs in South Central Los Angeles to the English Department at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee — to encourage joy and power with language.
This free class (limited to 8) will meet every other Wednesday, for a total of eight meetings, starting January 10th, 2024. We’ll go from 7–8:30pm around the library‘s big table.
Questions? Email Anne at annefranceswysocki@gmail.com
To register for this free class, click here.
Sharpen your pencil, wake up the magic,& get ready to write!
2024 Writing Retreat
at the Shaw Library
Whether poetry, fiction, non-fiction or memoir inspires you, this will be your time to shake off the doldrums of the pandemic and finally say YES to writing with friends again.
Saturday, February 10th, 6–8:30 pm & Sunday, February 11th, 9 am– 4:30 pm
Shaw Library meeting room
Instructor: Lorrie Harrison
Cost: $150
Overview: Surrounded by books, forest and the warmth of Shaw Library, we’ll begin our retreat on Saturday evening. Using comfortable, non-threatening exercises to get the juices flowing, we’ll write a few new pieces, read aloud, then set our course for the next day together.
The library and its beautiful grounds are ours all day Sunday. Morning time we’ll limber up and stretch our writing muscles with prompts and free writes. Time for instruction next, then we’ll write and share a short piece before lunch. Afternoon we’ll settle in to write a longer piece, read aloud and get feedback from the group.
About the Instructor: Lorrie Harrison’s warm, engaging teaching style helps people naturally develop confidence and skill. A published author, professional editor and writing coach, she has been teaching writing in the Pacific Northwest and France since 2003. Her book Kindred Spirits: Stories, Passions & Portraits from the Heart of Community, written in conjunction with photographer Greg Ewert, won Writers Digest’s Inspirational Book of the Year award in 2001.