The Frost Place Conference on Poetry & Teaching
June 27 – July 1, 2010

 

A unique opportunity for teachers to work closely with their peers and with a team of illustrious poets who have particular expertise and enthusiasm for sharing poetry with young people, featuring director Baron Wormser and associate director Dawn Potter with poets Sharon Bryan, Lesléa Newman and Neil Shepard (see below for faculty biographies).

Tuition for 2010 will be $625 with on-site meals available for $97. For an additional $435 (plus $25 administrative fee), this conference can be taken as a graduate-level course, earning three  credits through Plymouth State University.

Each summer, The Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching brings together hard-working classroom teachers and highly skilled poet/teachers to share their experiences of how poetry is most effectively presented in the classroom — not as a fossilized system of literary tropes, but as a living art.

Conference director Baron Wormser is the author of seven acclaimed collections of poetry and co-author of two influential books on teaching poetry.

The associate director for the 2010 Conference on Poetry and Teaching will be poet and musician Dawn Potter.

Over the course of four and one-half days, faculty poets will present specific techniques for teaching poetry including sample exercises and prompts that teachers will be invited to try out and then discuss. Each day will offer sessions devoted to the participants’ sharing of their own teaching ideas – a popular element in prior conferences. In addition, participants will write poetry every afternoon under the guidance of Dawn Potter. On the first day of the conference Baron Wormser and Dawn Potter will go over the fundamentals of a poetry-based classroom. The final morning session will give everyone an opportunity to discuss what has been learned and ways to implement new approaches. On Wednesday night after the guest poet reading, participants will have a chance to read their poems in Robert Frost’s historic barn. On the final, full afternoon there will be a poetry workshop in which poems written that week are critiqued.

Faculty poets and participants will have the chance to read their poems in Robert Frost’s historic Henry Holt barn, now a rustic auditorium/classroom.

“Poets talk about how poems work. Students and teachers can do that, too. That’s why we bring poets and teachers together at The Frost Place – so the teachers can hear how poets look at their poems.”

Baron Wormser, poet and conference director

Application Process and Fees

Applications
Conference applications are reviewed as they are received. Space is limited to ensure opportunities for teachers to interact with the poets most effectively. To apply, send the attached application form, the application fee (check made out to The Frost Place in the amount of $25), and a brief letter describing your current teaching position, background, and interest in poetry and teaching to:

Baron Wormser
Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching
834 Thistle Hill Road
Marshfield, VT 05658.

Tuition
-->Tuition will be $625 plus $97 for five lunches and two dinners (optional but recommended).

Financial Aid
Public school teachers are urged to inquire if their principals have Title 5 or Rural Education Program funds for professional development to disburse, which teachers have found can partially or fully cover tuition expenses for this conference. Past participants have also been awarded assistance from local Rotary Clubs and other local service organizations. Please let us know if you are seeking financial aid; we have some aid available through scholarships sponsored by the family and friends of longtime teacher Murray Alboher, by New Hampshire jeweler Designer Gold, by the family and friends of Anne L. Fitzpatrick. Applicants must first be accepted into the program, then apply for financial aid by sending an email letter to the attention of Deming Holleran at . Applications for assistance must be postmarked by May 15, 2010.

Graduate Credits
Conference participants earn three graduate-level credits through Plymouth State University in New Hampshire for an additional $435 (plus $25 admininistrative fee). The syllabus for this option is posted HERE. Contact-hour certification is provided for all who attend.

Accommodations
Reasonably priced lodging can be found close to the conference site. See suggestions here.

FACULTY

Baron Wormser is the author/co-author of twelve books, most recently the paperback edition of The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet’s Memoir of Living Off the Grid, Scattered Chapters: New and Selected Poems, and a work of fiction entitled The Poetry Life: Ten Stories. He is a former poet laureate of Maine who teaches in the Stonecoast MFA Program and the Fairfield University MFA Program and works widely in schools. Wormser has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

Dawn Potter is a poet and musician who has worked extensively with K-12 students and their teachers, both as guest artist and staff music teacher. Within the past year she has released two new books: How the Crimes Happened, which is her second poetry collection; and Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton, her memoir about copying out all of Paradise Lost word for word while living in the Maine woods. Currently she is working on a book-length narrative poem as well as a series of essays about rereading favorite novels, portions of which appear in the Sewanee Review, Threepenny Review, and Liverpool University's The Reader.

Lesléa Newman is the author of 57 books for adults and children including the poetry collections, Still Life with Buddy, Nobody’s Mother and Signs of Love. Her literary awards include poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation. She recently served as Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts.

Neil Shepard has published three books of poetry: Scavenging the Country for a Heartbeat; I’m Here Because I Lost My Way; and This Far from the Source. His poems have appeared in literary magazines such as, Ploughshares, Paris Review, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Triquarterly, as well as online at Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. He founded the Writers Program at the Vermont Studio Center and directed it for eight years. He now teaches in the low-residency MFA Writing Program at Wilkes University (PA), as well as in the BFA Writing Program at Johnson State College (VT) where he edits the Green Mountains Review.

Sharon Bryan is the author of four collections of poetry: Salt Air and Objects of Affection from Wesleyan University Press, Flying Blind from Sarabande Books, and Sharp Stars from BOA in 2009. She is also the editor of Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition, published by Norton, and co-editor (with William Olsen) of Planet on the Table: Poets on the Reading Life, published by Sarabande. She has taught at universities around the country, most recently as Visiting Professor of Poetry at the University of Connecticut and has received two NEA Fellowships in Poetry and an Artist Trust grant from the Washington State Arts Council

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P.O. Box 74 , Ridge Road, Franconia, NH 03580
Telephone: (603) 823–5510

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