Woodswalking and the Written Word: A Nature Writing Workshop,
with poet Wally Swist

Saturday, October 10, 2009, 9 a.m. to Noon, $25.00 Per Person
A Benefit for The Hitchcock Center for the Environment, 525 South Pleasant Street, Amherst, Massachusetts

For the first hour of a Nature Writing Workshop lead by poet Wally Swist, he will bring those in attendance on a Thoreauvian amble along the wooden boardwalk and among the Hitchcock's Center pine laden paths, eventually ending at the Pond at the far end of Larch Hill Conservation Area, then returning to the main building. Identifying flora and fauna along the way, and speaking about his own methods and tips for nature writing concomittant to woodswalking, Swist will, in fact, give a guided tour of the area, augmented, of course, with a peripatetic discourse on writing, as well.

Once back at the main building, Swist will offer guidance and counsel to the workshop attendants in their writing--either prose or poetry--regarding their impressions of the hike at Larch Hill. Available for constructive criticism and suggestions in not only their own writing and creative expression, he will also offer a reading list for those interested. The list was developed some years ago when he was a mentor to students for several summers in the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival held at the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut.

Concluding the morning session, those who are willing may offer to share their writing. Swist will also avail himself to reading his own recent poems and a Q&A with respect to their origin and composition. Those interested are urged to bring pads of paper that can easily fit into a pocket and writing implements. All ages are welcome.

Wally Swist’s recent poems appear in Appalachia, From the Other World: Poems in Memory of James Wright (Lost Hills Books, 2008), The Light in Ordinary Things (Fearless Books, 2010), and Yankee Magazine. Mr. Swist is the house poet for the publication Many Hands: A Magazine of Holistic Health. Timberline Press has published his latest collection of poetry, Mount Toby Poems, in a letterpress limited edition earlier this year.

He also most recently completed a scholarly monograph on the literary friendship of two great New England poets, entitled High-pressure Weather and Country Air: The Friendship of Robert Frost and Robert Francis, that is forthcoming from The Edwin Mellen Press.

Contact: Casey Beebe, 413-256-6006, casey@hitchcockcenter.org.

"Wally Swist's poems are full of clean perceptions and clear, proportionate feeling. They are easy to read in the sense that they are continually rewarding. They have a fine balance, doing justice to the natural, the human, and the divine, and treating none of these as refuge from another. As a grateful reader, I applaud him."

--Pulitzer-prize winning poet, Richard Wilbur