Mountain Writers Series

Writing Workshops Fall 2020

• John Brehm - The Art of Losing: A Poetry Workshop viz Zoom
• Gary Miranda - Following a River: Writing & Conference via FaceTime or Zoom

John Brehm

The Art of Losing: A Poetry Workshop via Zoom

Whether it’s the death of a parent, a spouse, a friend, a pet, or a relationship, we are faced with loss again and again in our lives. And now with the pandemic and the climate crisis bearing down on us, we are increasingly aware of just how vulnerable we are as individuals, as a country, and as a species. In this six-week online poetry workshop, we’ll explore the art of losing, how we can work with loss in the healing space of a poem to find comfort and consolation, perhaps even redemption and a renewed sense of aliveness in the aftermath of grief. We’ll read and discuss poems by W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, Jack Gilbert, Seamus Heaney, Lucille Clifton, Billy Collins, Amy Gerstler, Claudia Emerson, and many others. Some portion of every session will be devoted to the poems you’ll write in response to our readings and weekly prompts. Our text will be The Art of Losing: Poems of Grief and Healing, edited by Kevin Young.

• Meets: Fridays, 10:30 AM - 1:00 PM PST, September 18 - October 22
• Cost:  $300 (Six three-hour sessions)
• Enrollment:  Minimum 5, Maximum 12.
• Location: ZOOM -

John Brehm is the author of three books of poetry: Sea of Faith, Help Is on the Way, and No Day at the Beach, all from the University of Wisconsin Press. He is the editor of The Poetry of Impermanence, Mindfulness, and Joy and the associate editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Plume, Gulf Coast, New Ohio Review, The Writer's Almanac, Best American Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. He lives in Portland.

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Gary Miranda

Following a River: Writing & Conference via Facetime or Zoom

                         Freedom is not following a river.
                         Freedom is following a river
                         though, if you want to.

                                             -- William Stafford

These tutoring sessions are intended to help serious poets improve their poems and writing skills through consultation and revision. While individual poems will receive careful attention and thorough feedback, the emphasis will be on finding the poet's overall strengths and weaknesses in an effort to maximize the former and minimize the latter. Gary Miranda likes to think of this in terms of a river: "Some poets need more current, others need more banks." "Banks," he notes, "are a lot easier to learn." 

Students will submit their poems to Mr. Miranda in the week preceding their appointment. Hence, the fee includes tutor preparation to read and annotate the poems, and the individual conference session (an hour) to discuss and suggest directions. These one-on-one writing & conference sessions will be held by appointment, via Facetime or Zoom.

• Meets: Facetime or Zoom Sessions by Appointment
• Cost:  $385 for 4 individual sessions or $100 per session
• Enrollment: Individual writing-and-conference sessions

Register securely online through Paypal at www.mountainwriters.org or send check payable Mountain Writers to 2804 SE 27th, #2, Portland, OR 97202.

Online registration: fill in amount on PayPal website, indicating in "Add special instructions . . . " your enrollment preference: instructor, number of sessions, etc.

Gary Miranda has taught writing and literature at various colleges and universities, including three years as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Athens in Greece and, as writer-in-residence at Reed College in Portland. His poems have been published in numerous magazines and journals, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere, and widely anthologized. He has published four collections, one of which, Listeners at the Breathing Place, won the Princeton Contemporary Poetry competition and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He has also published a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies. His awards include an NEA Fellowship, nine awards from the Poetry Society of America, and an invitation by The Atlantic Monthly to serve as poet-in-residence at the Robert Frost Place in New Hampshire. His poems have been taped for Harvard University’s Lamont Poetry Collection and the Library of Congress Poetry Archive. He lives in Portland.

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