Are You a Practicing Poet Interested in Taking a Top Rated Poetry Writing Class?

Recently you may have heard me mention a new poetry writing class offered at John C. Campbell Folk School. I cannot emphasize more that this is the class you want to take. The instructor is Eric Nelson, a prolific poet with poems published in literary magazines across America. The focus on his class is how to write poems and how to get them published in literary magazines.

ANNOUNCING A POETRY WRITING CLASS

taught by writing Instructor Eric Nelson

JUNE 13 -19, 2010

From Journaling to Publishing in Journals

(Class Description)

Focus on the process of writing and publishing poetry,

beginning with journal prompts and moving through a

series of revisions with attention to concrete and abstract

language, imagery, metaphor, music, and other tools of the

poet. Create four or five finished poems ready to submit to

literary journals and gain valuable "do's and don'ts" for

submitting poetry manuscripts to editors and publishers.

All levels welcome.

Eric Nelson has published four collections of poetry including Terrestrials which won the 2004 X.J. Kennedy Award. He has taught introductory and advanced poetry workshops at Georgia Southern University for over 20 years. Eric's poems appear frequently in journals, anthologies, and online.

Pre Register 1 800 FOLK SCH

Full Time residents of the counties listed below are eligible for a 50% discount if space is available: Cherokee, Clay, Macon, Swain, Graham in North Carolina. Union, Towns, and Fannin in Georgia. Polk County in Tennessee.

Two poems by Eric Nelson

SMALL UGLY GOD

To the untended water-garden

By our back steps a frog has come.

For a time we knew it only by a splash

When we opened the door, splash

And tremble of the horse tails and umbrella grass.

Then, sometimes, if we kept still we’d spot

Between the green mesh its dark, volcanic back

Jutting from the water and its eyes – black holes

Drawing us in, sizing us up – before it slid

Beneath the surface not breaking the surface.

Rarely, rarely now it will freeze on the water’s edge

And let us watch as long as we remain well

Within ourselves – unlike ourselves – barely

Breathing before the small ugly god overlooking

The world it brought our senses to.

by Eric Nelson

First published in The Oxford American

(Summer 2009)

A FIELD OF TREES

At the out-of-business Christmas tree farm,

The unchosen have grown

So large they aren’t Christmas trees

Anymore.

Like former child stars

They have at last

Become themselves. Starless

They grew into their names – pine, spruce, fir –

Spreading upward and out, filling

The gaps where the others once were,

The ones with one life,

Briefly lit.

by Eric Nelson

First published in Batteau

and reprinted in the chapbook

The Twins, Split Oak Press 2009