"Writers in the Park" series begins

The Grand Teton Association invites you to join its Writers in the Park series every second Saturday of the month, June through September. Writers both serious and casual, working in all areas of interest, are welcome. The workshops are free.

On Saturday, June 9, Wyoming's past Poet Laureate, David Romtvedt, will be conducting the writing workshop in Grand Teton National Park.

David says, "My workshop and talk will focus on really old Chinese poetry. The poetry of the moongazing half-mad half-Buddhist half-Taoist country scholars. These were writers who on full moon nights went out in small boats and chanted poems to the moon. Sometimes they drank too much wine and fell out of their boats. Our workshop will not require boats much less falling out of them. But we'll talk about some of those old poems and the way they integrated the life of the individual with the natural world in which the individual lives.

"I'm a writer and musician. My most recent book is one I edited on the lives of Basque immigrants to northern Wyoming. It's called Buffalotarrak: an Anthology of the Basques of Buffalo, Wyoming. It appeared in 2011 from the University of Nevada Center for Basque Studies. My most recent book of poetry is Some Church from Milkweed Editions. I served as poet laureate of Wyoming from 2003 to 2011. With the band The Fireants I play dance music of the Americas."

We will meet at 9:00am at the flagpole at the Craig Thomas Visitor's Center (formerly the Moose Visitor's Center). From there we will go to a good place to write and talk together. Bring paper and pen, appropriate outdoor clothing for variable weather conditions and perhaps water and something to sit on. The workshop ends at noon.