Gallery

• The 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar Readings
• Wingbeats Events

Wingbeats Events

• Wingbeats at Poetry at Round Top
• Wingbeats at BookPeople
• Wingbeats at the Georgetown Poetry Festival
• Wingbeats at the Twig
• Wingbeats in Alpine

Wingbeats at Poetry at Round Top

On Friday, May 4, 2012, Wingbeats co-editors David Meischen and Scott Wiggerman (second row, left and right) conducted a workshop, “Four Poems in Two Hours,” using exercises by Susan Terris, Ellen Bass, Oliver de la Paz, and Ravi Shankar.


On Saturday, May 5, featured festival poets Naomi Shihab Nye and Ed Madden (top row, left and right) participated in a Wingbeats panel discussion addressing the value of poetry writing exercises. Scott Wiggerman was also a panelist; David Meischen served as moderator. This event was so well received that Wingbeats became the best-selling title at the festival’s weekend bookstore.

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Wingbeats at BookPeople

• Kurt Heinzelman
• Katherine Durham Oldmixon
• Abe Louise Young
• David Meischen

Kurt Heinzelman —
The Window Poem — January 15, 2012

Kurt Heinzelman, author of The Names They Found There, presented the first of our workshops at BookPeople here in Austin. Early in the session participants examined a number of photographs and paintings in which windows serve as framing devices. Heinzelman led a discussion of windows and how they might frame or filter a poet’s vision. The workshop concluded with experiments in the writing of window poems.

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Katherine Durham Oldmixon —
Lyrical Bees: Writing Poems Inspired by Biology — January 29, 2012

Katherine Durham Oldmixon, author of Water Signs and director of the writing program at Huston-Tillotson University, presented our second Austin workshop. Early in the session, participants wrote detailed descriptions, from memory, of the interior of an orange, a piece of kiwi fruit, or an egg—followed by an examination of the fruits sliced open and the egg broken from its shell.

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Abe Louise Young —
Birds in the Classroom — February 12, 2012

Abe Louise Young, an award-winning poet and journalist, who works to nurture writers in unconventional settings, presented our third Austin workshop. After pooling items from their pockets and purses, participants chose an evocative object from the mix and let it lead them to poetry. A second exercise invited participants to explore an instance of serendipity in their lives.

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David Meischen — with thanks to Georgia Popoff —
Tales from the Bathroom: The Curious Path to a Poem — 
February 26, 2012

Wingbeats co-editor David Meischen presented our fourth Austin workshop, adapted from an exercise by Georgia Popoff, in which participants develop memory-based poems that use the bathroom as a setting.

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Wingbeats at the Georgetown Poetry Festival

• A Wingbeats Workshop
• A Wingbeats Panel

David Meischen — with thanks to Haryette Mullen —
Emulating Walt Whitman — October 1, 2011

As part of the second annual Georgetown Poetry Festival, David Meischen presented a workshop based on Harryette Mullen’s Wingbeats exercise. Following the example of “A child said What is the grass?” participants worked on poems that channel the childlike sense of awe that pervades Whitman’s poetry.

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Wingbeats Contributors and Editors — October 1, 2011

Wingbeats editors Scott Wiggerman and David Meischen—along with contributors Nathan Brown, Cyra S. Dumitru, Anne McCrady, & Katherine Durham Oldmixon—discussed their contributions to Wingbeats and engaged in a lively discussion with poets in the audience.

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Wingbeats at the Twig

• Naomi Shihab Nye
• Wendy Barker
• Cyra S. Dumitru
• Jenny Browne

Naomi Shihab Nye —
New Combinations: Nouns and Verbs — July 24, 2011

Internationally acclaimed poet Naomi Shihab Nye presented the first in our series of Wingbeats exercises at the Twig Book Shop in San Antonio. “New Combinations: Nouns and Verbs” gave attendees hands-on experience in breaking out of the habits we so easily fall into with words.


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Wendy Barker —
A Crack in the Cup — August 7, 2011

Wendy Barker, author of Nothing Between Us: The Berkeley Years, a novel in prose poems, presented the second of our Wingbeats workshops at the Twig. During the first hour of “A Crack in the Cup,” participants followed the steps of the exercise and then wrote poems. The second hour allowed for sharing and discussion. Participant Janice Campbell offered to assemble a chapbook of poems written during this workshop.

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Cyra S. Dumitru —
The Mind’s Eye: Listening as Seeing — August 21, 2011

Cyra S. Dumitru, author of three books of poetry—What the Body Knows, Listening to Light, and remains—conducted a two-part exercise for our third workshop at the Twig. Phase I was a listening and drawing exercise designed to train the poet’s ear and eye. Phase II was a writing activity focusing on imagery.


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Jenny Browne —
Love Letter to a Stranger — September 4, 2011

Jenny Browne, author of two poetry collections—At Once and The Second Reason—conducted our final workshop in this series at the Twig. Browne was a Michener Fellow in Poetry at the University of Texas, 2004–06. She teaches creative writing at Trinity University.


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Wingbeats in Alpine

Scott Wiggerman —
Working Out  Your Writing Muscles: A One-Week Exercise Program
Writers League of Texas Summer Writing Retreat, Alpine, July 25–29, 2011

“I have attended many writing workshops in the last ten years (since I began trying to re-invent myself as a poet and writer), all the way from Ghost Ranch at Abiquiu, New Mexico, to the University of Iowa Writers Workshop . . . and I can candidly say the one this past week was the best one, the most productive, the most inspiring, I have ever attended. That’s the truth.”
— Dorothy Alexander

During his week-long workshop, Scott Wiggerman presented fifteen exercises from Wingbeats: Exercises and Practice in Poetry. Former Texas Poet Laureate Larry Thomas visited the workshop. Participants used the computer lab for “Two Sides of the Same Coil: Blending Google Sculpting and Automatism,” an exciting exercise by Bruce Covey. Early in the week, participants danced to inspire lines for their poems.

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