The Word Barn serves as a home and cultivation point for a variety of arts and community gatherings.
Below are a few of the current offerings you can find in this space.
Time to Write (AT HOME)
Thursday Evenings, 6:30-8pm
April 2, 9, 16, 23, & 30
Take advantage of this time to hone your creative writing skills, exchange ideas with other writers, and be inspired.
For the entirety of New Hampshire’s Stay-at-Home order, The Word Barn is going online to host a weekly get-together for writers.
This will be an ongoing writing workshop on ZOOM led by co-owner of The Word Barn and host of The Silo Series, Sarah Anderson (and occasional guest writers).
Jump in for just one session, or sign up for all five at a discount.
Join and exchange work with writers; give and receive feedback; use a writing prompt to get your creative juices flowing and more.
Registration required (via dates below). Space is limited.
$20/session
$75 for all five
April 2 | April 9 | April 16 | April 23 | April 30
Find the discounted “All Five Sessions” ticket on any of the above date links.
The Word is Flowers (and Mimosas)
April 11, 10am
On April 11, we’ll host Alice’s Table who will be offering a special Easter Floral Design Event.
You create a beautiful arrangement of Lemon Leaf, Hydrangeas, Roses, Spray Roses, Snapdragons & Tulips – perfect to take home for your Easter holiday!
Learn some tips and tricks of floral design, sip on a complimentary Mimosa, and have some laughs – what better way to start your Easter Weekend.
Space is limited. Pre-registration required. Sign up here.
Ongoing Bi-Weekly Studio Painting Classes
Christopher Volpe
Evening oil painting group classes, suitable for beginners and adventurous painters alike.
Demos, instruction, refreshments, and fertile ground for skill-building and self expression.
All you need to bring is a basic painting kit (paints, brushes, mineral spirits, canvas and easel), your favorite bottle of wine (if so inclined), and your sense of adventure, as each week a new game plan is tried out for the painting du jour.
Christopher Volpe is an oil painter creating moody, poetic landscapes in an expressive, tonalist style. Though rooted in landscape, his atmospheric paintings combine the traditional and the contemporary to express intangible feelings and ideas. Largely self-taught, Volpe has quickly established himself as an artist with uncommon vision and truly evocative style.
Learn more about Christopher Volpe’s workshops, about Christopher Volpe, or visit his website.
PAST WORKSHOPS:
Poetry Workshop: Kiss Me, We’re Dying: Exploring a Poetics of Intimacy & Aversion, in three parts.
October 12
Join us for this all-day poetry workshop
(10am – 5pm, with a 45-min. lunch break and a short afternoon break)
with Poet Jen Steinorth!
Part 1. The political begins in intimacy. Forrest Gander, Be With.
In the first part of this class we will examine the integration of the intimate with the repellent examining poems that draw us into congress with another, while simultaneously affronting us with what causes us to avert our eyes. We will observe such dynamic polarity and its effects in the work of Solmaz Sharif, Jan Beatty, Frank Bidart, Sylvia Plath & others unpacking the postures and techniques by which engagement with the abhorrent calls us into deeper congress with ourselves and others. The session will close with several writing exercises designed to help us penetrate boundaries and enter hot uncomfortable material.
Part 2. Much has been declared about the musicality of poetry. Not so much about the physicality. C.D. Wright, Cooling Time.
In part 2, we will examine poems whose visual organization is architectural, who depend on open spacea virtual sky, field, stage across which to leap– who attend the movement of the eye across the page, screen, landscape of the poem, and through careful orchestration between word and word and open space, create dwellings whose empty corridors, as well as the articulate furniture, mean to be inhabited, haunted. This session will close with writing exercises designed to explore visual structure and use of space. Participants may wish to bring with them some unrealized drafts to play with, though text generated in the first part of the workshop can also be used for these exercises.
Part 3. Much has been written about Erasure poetry in the last decade, particularly in the Trump-era. But what is the point of constraining oneself to someone elses words? What can be achieved through Erasure that cannot be achieved in conventional generation? Is an erasure a dialogue more complex than that between reader and writer, and if so, how? In this part we will examine some excerpts of book length erasures. Participants may wish to bring a non-literary text (reference book, government document, manual) with which to play.
SPACE IS LIMITED.
Fragments of a Great Mystery: A Writing Workshop with Mercy Carbonell & Sarah Anderson
July 8, 15, 22, 29
This Summer Writing Workshop, led by Sarah Anderson & Mercy Carbonell, provides a chance to explore the translational and horological power of writing from saved artifacts, preserved objects, the inherited stuff of our lives. Through Poetry, Lyric Reflection, Flash Fiction and the interweaving of Photography, we will unravel what the poet, Philip Levine, called “the fragments of a great mystery.” We will generate writing through prompts of our collected matter through time: a grandmother’s silver thimble; a father’s leather baseball mitt; a scarf worn during the Allied Invasion in Africa; a daughter’s watercolor painting of a dragon in second grade; a friend’s tiny box of glitter. We may offer short readings such as Meg Day, Carolyn Forsche, Erica Plouffe-Lazure, Robert Hass. This workshop is designed for those who “hold everything dear” (John Berger) and want to capture in language the memory, imagination, story, essence of the tactile, physical and tangible. Each Monday evening, we will have the opportunity to experiment with new forms of writing as well as provide each other with feedback. The Workshop Series will culminate in an optional Word Barn reading.
6-8:30 pm
SPACE IS LIMITED.
A Poetry Workshop with Lee Ann Dalton & Matt W. Miller
July 9, 16, 23, 30
This summer writing workshop, led by Matt Miller and Lee Ann Dalton, we will look closely at line, sentence, language, metaphor and image in an attempt to revise and reshape our poems into stronger versions of themselves. Whether you are working in strict poetic form or testing the boundaries of what a poem can be, our goal will be to work collaboratively and be supportive while at the same time honoring the voice and vision of the individual. Looking at our poems in progress, we will offer suggestions for revisions and use our discussions to perhaps generate new work. As well, we will look at outside poems for models of craft and sources of inspiration. And along the way we will be sure to have a good time.
6-8:30 pm
SPACE IS LIMITED.
Fermentation Workshop
April 7
10am – Noon – SOLD OUT
Come ferment with us!
$30 per person
Reserve a Spot