A Field of Violets: Plant Poetics
Workshop: May 5, 2022
with Liz Migliorelli and Holly Wren Spaulding
Together, we will explore plants as muses, the subtle poetry of flower essences, and a few of our favorite ways to poetically collaborate with the green beings who share this world with us.
This workshop has two parts. We’ll gather in a Live Zoom workshop to spark a poetic practice with plants, one that inspires throughout the seasons. Then, use the writing exercises, rituals, flower essence, and recommended readings to hone a personal practice. All materials will be made available to you in the course portal and via mail.
A Calling
Coming upon a flower, a violet for example, one observes life, persistence, color, beauty, evolution: poetry. It is complete, a marvel. Nothing is required of us. We could simply see it and keep walking. But a poet, an artist, often can’t help herself. He wants to engage. They want to make things. We have these moments and something stirs within. Inspiration. A calling. The emergence of relationship.
Let us encourage these affinities. Let us foster our kinship with the plant realm. Let the green ones, with the tender stems and delicate stamens, touch us, and teach us, and speak to us. Let us listen. Let poems emerge from our encounters. This course is taught by award winning author and artist Holly Wren Spaulding, and herbalist and artist Liz Migliorelli, of Sister Spinster.
Cultivate Connection
We welcome poets and secret poets and writers who want to cultivate a deeper connection to the flower realm through reading, creative writing, trance work, and energetic attunement. Plant people are of course also welcome (we’ll make the writing accessible and enjoyable for all.)
You will receive two care-packages from us containing elements to support a solo encounter with plant poetics. You will also receive an invitation to join us for an interactive workshop on Zoom where we will guide you through some of our favorite poetic practices that we use when communing with violets and other plants.
The workshop replay, reading packet, and suggestions for further research will be housed in an online portal for you to enjoy.
You can expect to leave this experience with new practices, creative writing, and an expanded sense of what is possible in your relationship with plants and poetry.
Workshop Details
A Field of Violets includes an asynchronous element, hosted in Padlet, alongside our Live gathering. Access links and Zoom details will be sent via email in late April. Save this date for our Zoom gathering:
Thursday, May 5, 2022
2:00-4:00 PM Eastern Time Zone (New York Time)
Closed Captions and a replay will be provided. You will also receive a book, flower essence, and rituals to practice with on your own time. We will mail these items to the postal address you provide at check-out at some point in April.
This is a small-group offering. Space is limited.
Holly Wren Spaulding is a poet, artist, flower lady, and author of Familiars (Alice Greene & Co., 2020), which Anne Marie Oomen described this way: “In these brushstroke poems, Holly speaks with the fine-tuned force exhibited by the masters of concision. By touching the essential with such delicate linguistic energy, an entire world balances on her pages: vital and tender and alive. Her stanzas illuminate the white-spaced world of the page with hawk-crested beauty, with acorn, beech, heron, newt.” More about Holly.
Liz Migliorelli is a herbalist, animist and secret poet. She has a clinical herbal practice, tends a medicinal garden and crafts flower essences under the name Sister Spinster. She really loves flowers. Liz teaches classes on plant medicine, ancestral remembrance, folk magic, hearth culture and storytelling. More about Liz.
“I’m always pleased with what comes out of these commitments to my poetry. It’s like alchemy. ”