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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 21, 2021)
2 Thursday, January 21, 2021 GO! magazine — A&E in Northeast Oregon Write. Learn. Connect. Write more. ■ ■ FEBRUARY WRITING WORKSHOPS EXPLORE AND CULTIVATE RESILIENCY ENTERPRISE — Fishtrap offers several writing workshops throughout the year designed to challenge you to learn new skills, take risks with your work, and cre- ate connections with writers from your neighborhood or around the country. The workshops cover many genres, from essays to poetry, mem- oir and fiction. There are work- shops for writers of all abilities taught by experienced writers who are skilled at teaching their craft. With the aim of reducing the spread of COVID-19, all Fishtrap Writing Workshops now are held online via Zoom. Recordings of workshops may be made available to registered students. For more details and to register, go to www.fishtrap.org/writing- workshops. Scholarships or reduced registra- tion rates may be available. Call Fishtrap at 541-426-3623 for more information. Fishtrap’s offices are located in the historic Coffin House, 400 E. Grant St., in Enterprise. The mail- ing address is P.O. Box 38, Enter- prise 97828. B ECOME A F ISHTRAPPER Fishtrapper Club members receive a 10% discount on all workshop and program registrations as well as special events. Memberships start at just $5 per month and help support all Fishtrap programs. Sign up for an automatic monthly contribution and receive some cool perks in return. In addition to the discount, Fishtrap- per Club benefits include a Fishtrap bumper sticker and journal and a regular writing prompt from Fishtrap faculty/instructor/staff. Sign up at www.fishtrap.org/be-a-fishtrapper. FEBRUARY WORKSHOPS Writing workshops planned for February are related thematically to January’s Winter Fishtrap, one of the organization’s annual “Clear Thinking” programs, which explored the role Resilience plays in our communities, our cultures, our world and our lives. RESILIENCE POEMS — READING AND WRITING Led by Kim Stafford Feb. 6-7, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Registration is $360 / $324 for Fishtrappers Limited to 12 participants This two-day virtual workshop invites you to cast your net wide through the cultures of the world to find poems that speak to resilience in the personal, cultural or natural worlds. Once each participant has a poem or two that sings for survival, we’ll convene online to read these lyrics one by one, and write in response to what we find there — in theme, story, word magic or questions we must live. The workshop will include many opportuni- ties to write and to share work in progress for supportive response from fellow writers. No experience is required as a writer, just curiosity and hunger to explore. KIM STAFFORD, now retired, was the director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College. Co-founder of Fishtrap and former Poet Lau- reate of Oregon, he is a seeker after ways to serve through poetry. He is the author of “Singer Come from Afar: Poems,” which is forthcoming in April from Red Hen Press, and lives in Portland with his wife and children. WEEKEND OUTLOOK CULTIVATING RESILIENCE — WHEN WRITING ABOUT TRAUMA Led by Justin Hocking Feb. 13, 10 a.m. to noon Registration is $60 / $55 for Fishtrappers How might a regular writing practice help us recover from trauma? What techniques can we use to regulate our own nervous systems when writing about emotionally charged material? And, when writing for a wider audience, how do we transform traumatic experiences into art, while taking care not to overwhelm our readers? To address these and other questions, this workshop will explore healing methods based on the relatively new field of Narrative Therapy and contemporary body-focused psychology. Via a series of gentle writing prompts, we’ll also experiment with sensory grounding, perspective shifting, intentional choreography of various levels of intimacy and distance and “medicine stories.” Though we’ll focus largely on narrative non- fiction, we’ll also investigate how these tech- niques can be employed across various genres, including poetry and fiction. JUSTIN HOCKING is author of the Oregon Book Award-winning memoir “The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld” as well as the chapbooks “PS: The Wolves” and “Reclamation: Essays.” He is a co-recipient of the 2017 Stewart H. Holbrook Literary Legacy award, an Oregon Literary Fel- lowship for fic- tion, and Willa- mette Writers’ Humanitarian Award for his community outreach work. His essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in Poets & Writ- ers magazine, The Columbia Journal, The Normal School, Northwest Review and elsewhere. Along with an MFA in creative writing, he holds a BA in psychology and a Certificate in Narrative Therapy Foundations from the Van- couver School of Narrative Therapy. He teaches creative nonfiction and publishing in the MFA and BFA writing programs at Portland State University. FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY High 37 Low 25 High 39 Low 19 High 34 Low 18 A snow shower Mostly sunny Cloudy
