May 2011 flashback

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My Jack Straw Productions podcast!

The recording is from my May 2011 Jack Straw Writing Fellows reading in the Jack Straw studios. Being a fellow for 2011 was a fantastic experience that introduced me to warm, generous people and talented writers. I was privileged to meet my fellow "fellows" and the directors and staff at Jack Straw. I continue to benefit from these attachments!

The readings by the 2012 fellows are going on right now and I would urge you to attend! Here's the schedule.

Hey Writers--Here are some great upcoming opportunities to work with poet Elizabeth Austen!

Ready to try something new? Elizabeth Austen is teaching a couple of poetry writing workshops in February:


Poems from Poems: Call and Response

“Good poems are the best teachers. Perhaps they are the only teachers,” writes Mary Oliver in A Poetry Handbook. This workshop explores ways to let others’ poems not only teach you, but lead to new poems of your own. We’ll experiment with po-jacking, sonic translations, echo translations and other ways to use one poem as a jumping off point for another. Come prepared to write and stretch your craft – participants will leave the workshop with fresh drafts of new poems.

February 4, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Richard Hugo House $96/$86.40 for Hugo House members. Registration is open online or via phone at (206) 322-7030. Here is a link to the class description and registration.

Elizabeth will also teach a shorter, free version of the class on February 26, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Lopez Island Library.

Contact Elizabeth at eaustenpoetry@gmail.com for more information. More information is available on her website as well!

Everything is Illuminated

 We had a beautiful day to explore the Cite (the medieval town) of Carcassonne. I hadn't visited the cathedral inside the Cite in the fall, so I appreciated having a tour led by Maria with the class this time.

We have been so fortunate with the weather during our stay in France. The air is dry, warm and fragrant (in a good way). I might even say we've been blessed.

The Saint with a Book

In the village of books, Montolieu, Can you imagine--a village of books!

Montolieu village du livre,bouquinistes, librairie,livres d ...

French sentences return to France!

Today during our hike to Cubservies, I thought it would be fun to stop and write a short impression here in this place, having these experiences.


When I was in France last fall I wrote a series of what I called "french sentences," which were merely a riff on Allen Ginsberg's American sentences--a seventeen syllable sentence with the qualities of a haiku. I was writing about what it felt like to be in this part of France.


But this time around seventeen syllables felt way too short---and I set the parameters at 17 words, still with a concentration toward the qualities of a haiku.

Here's the one from yesterday:

L'eglise Saint-Sernin


We find the chapel after hiking steep miles, old stories pieced into walls, layer upon rocky layer.

Lucky Me!

 I'm back at La Muse in beautiful Labastide Esparbairenque, France with photography professor Alex Emmons and our class of eight students enrolled in "Creative Writing and Digital Photography in Medieval France."

Today was our first chance to get out into the sunshine and explore the area. Suzanne Blons and Brandy Dohrman (right) relax on the overlook before our extraordinarily long hike.

KaNoPoMo!!!

Well,though the novelists have grabbed November (National Novel Writing Month--NaNoWriMo) as their own, in the spirit of prolificacy, I am taking on November as KaNoPoMo (Kathy's November Poetry Month).

In April I wrote a poem every day for NaPoWri Mo; and I had 30 poem drafts as a result. I had as added incentive an agrreement I made online with the cool website ReadWritePoem to post a link to each new poem draft. About six of those new poems have been published already in journals, like Sweet and Pif. Some of those poems have ended up in my second full-length collection, Summer, Posthumous.

I was telling a poet friend the other day that the process of writing a poem every day took away the pressure that I would have "writer's block" or that my best poems were behind me. I kept surprising myself with my new poems--and it delighted me to have some much new material to revise, explore, work on. The experience of writing daily, in the middle of a very busy quarter, also showed me that there is no end in an artist's life---the intimate world of writing a poem is there for me as long as I am alive and as long as I am willing toenter it.

While I won't be posting new poem drafts in their entirety, I will post related material and some fragments/ideas.

I have 15 drafts for November so far--I hope you will keep checking in!

I'm also knitting lots of stripey birds in November (I'm on sabbatical)!!

Call for Artistes!