Day 15 (July 29): Scriptoria Begins

We arose, groggy and bleary-eyed after a poor night’s sleep, but still anticipating the first day of workshops and lectures. Breakfast (included with our hotel room) is a plentiful spread of fruits, cereals, yogurt, eggs, sausages, and pastries, as well as broiled tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms. I am not an early breakfast eater, but I am Dutch…so of course I make the most of “free” food and particularly enjoy the flaky pain au chocolate with my tea.

The workshops and lectures are held within the Gilfillan sanctuary, an impressive space.

There are close to 60 of us, divided among various writing genres: fiction, non-fiction, young adult and middle-grade fiction, poetry, and—well, I think that’s it this year. I’m in the poetry cohort, which boasts only three participants (Kristy, Patrick, and myself) and our teacher, Linda Nemec Foster—a brilliant poet who’s been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize and was the first poet laureate of Grand Rapids. She is a dear, very spirited and talkative. We will get along famously.

We are well-provisioned. Coffee, tea, and homemade goodies are always available in the narthex, and lunch upstairs is catered in daily—and is a different taste of Scottish food each day. Here is one sample:

After the two-hour poetry workshop, in which we read and critiqued our poems, we were treated to a moving reflection on the spiritual vocation of writing by Sharon Garlough Brown, author of Sensible Shoes. In the afternoon we had two further lectures, one on literary tropes and the other on metaphor. 

A fine beginning. But bed was going to feel sssooooo good.

I shouldn’t share the others’ writing without permission, but will include here one of my poems that was discussed this morning.

Bangkok in April

Heat like an elephant
squeezes life from my blood and breath.
In this garden of skyscrapers, I inhale
a broth of grey mist from April’s burning rice fields
and from rivers of cars,
a mist that flattens buildings into sticks
and sucks color from the sky.
Only the gold lift of temple roofs gleams, defiant.
The streets heave with life and noise,
with aromas of roasting pork and galangal.

Sweating, I turn from the balcony
and wrap myself in the memory
of snow falling in the north woods
and the two-note call of the chickadee
ringing like a bell through the pines.