Writing Classes & Workshops 

Join us for a welcoming, in-person gathering for people who want to read, reflect, and write in community.

     We will begin with a poem and a short fiction or nonfiction selection, followed by conversation about what the writing is doing and how it works on the page.     

     Together, we’ll explore craft elements such as imagery, diction, metaphor, structure, and line or sentence movement in a way that is inviting and accessible to all.
     Participants will spend time writing from guided prompts designed to spark ideas and help the words flow. At the end, those who wish may share what they wrote or reflect on the writing experience.

     This is not a formal workshop or critique group, but an inspiring, low-pressure space to enjoy good writing and create some of your own.

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CHARLENE PIERCE is a poet, teaching artist, and founder and President of the Nebraska Poetry Society.

     A Pushcart Prize nominee and Best of the Net finalist, her work appears in Poetry Foundation, TriQuarterly, Whale Road Review, The Good Life Review, and 805 Lit + Art , and has been anthologized in Until There Are No Words Left and Misbehaving Nebraskans.

     The Poetry Foundation selected her to teach a poetry workshop, publish a craft essay, and give a public reading for the Forms & Features Series.

     She holds an MFA from Pacific University, where she was a Merit Scholar, and is passionate about helping poets deepen their craft while supporting their creative and professional development.

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No registration necessary. Bring your favorite writing tools and join us. Free parking is available in the east-side parking lot. Vis Major Brewing has food, mocktails and cocktails for purchase.

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FREE and open to the public

Documentary poetry or docupoetry (as it is called) has no specific definition other than it is poetic writing that draws from the real world or from documents of real witnesses to a series of events. It is a case study of people, events, and places. There is always some research involved—especially if the testimony of witnesses is to be incorporated into the poetry.

     The work includes both the perspectives of witnesses and of that of the writer. It is an attempt to give voice to the marginalized and oppressed.

     We will look closely at specific works by three poets, Patricia Smith (Blood Dazzler), CD Wright (One Big Self),and  Layli Long Soldier (Whereas). If there is time, we shall consider Muriel Rukeyser’s Book of the Dead as this text is often quoted when the topic of docupoetics arises. 

     We will consider which issues/events each of these poets chose to write about and the style of writing they adopted to do so. For example, Patricia Smith makes excellent use of the persona poem structure as she retells stories of nursing home residents who became victims of Hurricane Katrina.

     After reading and discussing poems from these collections, participants will do some free writing on an event or series of events they feel called to bear witness to.

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JOANNE GODLEY is a thrice-nominated Pushcart and Best-of-Net poet, writer, and recent MFA graduate from Pacific University. She is a retired physician and public health specialist, and lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

     Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Decolonial Passage, The Kenyon Review Online, among others. She is an Anaphora Arts Fellow in poetry and fiction.

     How the Black Panthers Fell From the Sky, is a memoir-in-verse and Godley’s first poetry collection. It won the Naomi Long Madgett award for 2025 and has just been published by Broadside Lotus Press. 

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

What is the role of poetry in an environmental crisis? Can a poetics of ecstasy, through decentering the self, move us toward the care and action our current moment requires? 

     In this educational and generative session, we’ll look at several poems that reimagine the space between ecstasy, environmentalism, and ethics and discuss the limits and possibilities of language within each.

     Poets studied may include Mary Oliver, Jake Skeets, Brenda Hillman, CA Conrad, MaKshya Tolbert, and Daniela Naomi Molnar.

     After studying how ecopoets resist the logic of violence, you’ll respond with your own writing. Together, we’ll explore how responsibility to each other can be a kind of ecstasy that removes us from our illusions of control and moral purity, creating space for desire and grief to exist alongside.

     All levels welcome.

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H.G. DIERDORFF is a poet from the scablands and pine savannas of eastern Washington, the ancestral, unceded land of the interior Salish people.

     She is the author of Rain, Wind, Thunder, Fire, Daughter, which was published by the University of Nevada Press in 2024 and is a finalist for the 2026 Oregon Book Award.

     Their work has been awarded a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and appeared in journals such as Cut Bank, The Shore, Arkansas International, and Willow Springs.

     You can currently find them in Portland, where they teach writing at Clackamas Community College and poetry through Literary Arts.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

In this workshop, we'll read and write epistolary poems, which are a lesson in opposites: public/private, individual/collective; they also create closeness and intimacy yet cross great distances: geographical, chronological, emotional, and more.

     This tension is one of the gifts of poetry, its ability to allow conflicting ideas to coexist, especially when subject matter is vulnerable or difficult.

     The epistolary poem helps us document experience, preserve memory, and illuminate the cultural and historical forces that shape our lives.

     In this workshop, we’ll explore the opposing forces of the epistolary poem, write our own epistolary poems, and expand our ideas of what poems can do. 

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LISA LOW is the author of Replica (University of Wisconsin Press, 2026) and the chapbook Crown for the Girl Inside (YesYes Books, 2023).

     She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, and her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere.

     Originally from Maryland, she lives in Chicago.

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After you register, you will receive an "admission ticket" with the zoom link information on it.

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$40 or FREE to Members

Annual Membership $40

Spend a morning exploring nature at Schramm Park and see where it takes your writing.

     As part of our Poetry in the Parks series and our partnership with Locus Poetica, we're heading outdoors to gain inspiration for our writing.

     We’ll begin with a guided hike led by an Outdoor Education Specialist, who will introduce us to the plants, animals, ecosystems, and other natural features of Schramm Park. Prefer not to hike? No problem. Participants are welcome to remain at the Education Center and explore the exhibits and surroundings at their own pace.

     Afterward, we’ll return indoors and spend time writing together, using what we’ve seen, heard, learned, and noticed as material for new poems. You don’t need to arrive with a poem—or even an idea. Just bring your curiosity and something to write with.

    This event is part of our partnership with Locus Poetica, a digital poetry archive created and maintained by Poetry in the Parks. Together, we’re helping build a collection of poems inspired by Nebraska parks and public spaces. Maybe you’ll be inspired enough to submit your work for consideration!​

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Rain or shine! This event will go on regardless of the weather. If conditions keep us from hiking outdoors, we’ll enjoy the Schramm Education Center and find plenty of inspiration inside.

 

The fee covers admission to the Schramm Education Center and the guided educational program. Writers of all experience levels and genres are welcome. 

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$10 per person

Scholarships are available