Raven & Wren Press

The Raven & Wren Zoom Room was booming with a community of poets gathering to celebrate the launch of the book HOW TO BEGIN, Poems, prompts, tips and writing exercises from the Fresh Ink Poetry Collective to improve your poetry practice—or start a group of your own, edited by Robin Michel. It was exciting to see so many poets filling the screen with windows into their worlds—all connected to one another through technology and our shared love of language. Everyone in attendance was able to complete three prompts from the book: Free Write (using “I remember…”), Making Lists (with Kimberly Satterfield reading her list poem “Leaving My Parents House” as an example, and an ekphrastic poem based on Edward Hopper’s painting “Nighthawks.”

Bravo to the brave guest-poets who shared their responses with us, and an extra special thank you to the accomplished poets who reviewed the manuscript, Chun Yu, author of Little Green, a Memoir of Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution and Shara McCallum, author of five collections, including Madwoman and the forthcoming No Ruined Stone.

We ended the evening by asking everyone to do a choral reading of Berkeley poet and former Fresh Ink member Adam David Miller’s poem “Keep Sending Love Out”—our way of saying goodbye to this marvelous poet and mentor who died earlier this month, and always a reminder of the work as poets we must do. Thank you again for coming.

…and let’s continue our word play. by sharing your response to the take home prompt: Penny Serenade. Take a penny and write a 10-penny poem (or 10-line poem) that has some relation to the date. If you can’t think of anything, make it up. Please feel free to leave your 10-penny poem in the “Leave a Reply” field if you would like to share with others.

Join Raven & Wren Press and Fresh Ink Poets Miriam D. Aroner, Rita Flores Bogaert, Chantal Guillemin, Madeline Lacques-Aranda, Ellen Levin, Wulf Losee, Jeanne Lupton, Robin Michel, Barbara Minton , Kimberly Satterfield, David White and Carolyn Yale to celebrate the launch of HOW TO BEGIN: Poems, Prompts, Tips and Writing Exercises by the Fresh Ink Poetry Collective to improve your poetry practice—or start a group of your own.

A book on craft, HOW TO BEGIN includes more than sixty writing exercises or prompts, illustrative poems, online poetry resources, recommended reading, and practical guidance on how to form and sustain a poetry group of one’s own. Hear Fresh Ink poets read their work, and sample a few of the book’s writing exercises and prompts and do some generative writing of your own in this mini-workshop book launch.

Praise for HOW TO BEGIN:

“HOW TO BEGIN is an incisive guide to poetry, blending instruction with inspiration. Drawing upon the Fresh Ink Poetry Collective’s decades of knowledge and experience, the book is a feast of prompts, explication of a wide array of traditional forms, glossary of poetic terms, practical tips on how to start a writing group, and poems as examples—including the anthology of terrific poems written by members of the collective across the years. HOW TO BEGIN is a testament to the belief in poetry as practice, nurtured by dailiness and sustained by being in a community of others engaged in the art.” —Shara McCallum, author of No Ruined Stone and Madwoman

Whether you write alone or in a group, whether you are young or old, whether you are new or seasoned as a poet, HOW TO BEGIN will help to bring out the poetry in you and to the world.” —Chun Yu, author of the poetry memoir, Little Green, a Memoir of Growing Up During the Chinese; and co-founder, “Two Languages/One Community”

Register here to receive a Zoom link to the event closer to the date.