Brookings, SD. Earlier this month a group of area poets gathered at the downtown Cottonwood Coffee shop for the first meeting of the Brookings Poetry Roundtable. Five poets brought poems to share, and we spent an hour taking turns reading our poem and gathering feedback from the group. It was an enjoyable time of coffee […]

Do you belong to a writing group? Recently, a judge for a regional poetry contest told me he was surprised at how few entrants belonged to one. “They are such a help,” he said, “and it’s obvious who doesn’t have the benefit of good critiques.” Ouch! Who knew? I flew solo for years. My first […]

Probably everyone who wants to be any kind of writer has already read Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg’s much cited book about writing. I’m a bit slow to the table here, though I’ve known of the book for quite a while, and I want to encourage others who might have put off reading it to DO […]