Description
Back in July, the tomatoes and corn the farmers offered were cheery, Crayola-bright. October is scary: it holds out every child’s most despised vegetable in its wrinkled claw.
– Katrina Vandenberg, “On Cold-Weather Vegetables”
As we transition from high summer to deep winter, it’s the perfect time to take stock of your creative practice. What materials have you gathered over the past year? What projects or ideas do you still want to explore before 2025?
This November, Freeflow is offering a two-hour intensive designed to inspire a season of winter creativity. Using poetry as a starting place, we will explore writing that invites the reader to hold the present and the past at the same time as we leave the hectic, long days of summer behind and enter the relief of slower, more contemplative days.
In this intensive, poetry is the place we leap from. Forget the metaphors you memorized in high school English classes. In the liminal space between lines and stanzas, poetry offers a unique path to curiosity for creatives in any genre or discipline. As Vandenberg writes in her essay above, “We appreciate their complexity. We find them very good.” What complexity do you want to uncover in this cold-weather season?
You will leave the class equipped with new material, resources, and the momentum of gathering in community with creatives seeking inspiration.
MEET YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Jolene Brink is a writer and visual artist from northern Minnesota. Her writing has appeared in Orion, The New England Review, Poetry Northwest, The Carolina Quarterly, and Southern Humanities Review. A graduate of the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University with a BA in English, she worked in book publishing and as a communications specialist at the University of Minnesota before earning her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. In Montana, she served as the chair of the Historic Preservation Board in Missoula, MT, and worked for the tech-start up Submittable. In 2014, her poetry chapbook, Peregrine, received the Merriam-Frontier Award. In 2023, she started the Friends of the Waterfront, a community group leading a community-led plan to turn over 40 acres of industrial brownfield next to Lake Superior in Two Harbors, MN into a safe and accessible public space. She’s currently writing a book about climate migration & multi-generational memory, and works part-time at the local lumberyard. You can see examples of her professional and creative work at JoleneBrink.com.
IS THIS INTENSIVE A GOOD FIT FOR YOU?
Established and emerging writers and creatives of all genres, including self-proclaimed non-poets, are encouraged to join. Emphasis will be placed on generating new material and inspiring systems and ideas for establishing or reimagining your creative practice this winter.
HOW TO CLAIM YOUR SPACE
This Sprint session costs $75. Registration closes at 5 pm MST on November 15.
To claim your space, please register by entering your information above. Once we receive your registration, we’ll be in touch with a welcome note and some next steps.
