What can flowers teach us about being in the world, and what can they offer our writing? In this generative workshop, we will consider how the presence of the plant world shapes our sense of place, in memory and the present. We’ll write alongside flowers currently in bloom, learning from particular plants how they may support us in expressing complex feelings and ideas. We’ll ask what inspiration flowers’ forms can bring as we map the structure of new poems and essays. We’ll read flower poems from poets and essayists including Marilyn Nelson, Ellen Meloy, Arthur Sze, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Mary Ellen Solt. And we’ll think with flowers as they do their own generative work, setting intentions for our creative practices in the seasons ahead.
If you like, please bring a folding chair or something to sit on, as we will spend a few minutes observing and writing with plants we encounter in the garden.
This workshop is hosted in partnership with lostintheletters.
Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Might Could, winner of the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, released in March 2026. She is also the author of Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St Brigid Press. Her work appears in Orion, Electric Literature, Evergreen Review, and Lit Hub, among others. The recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship in literature and the Winter Anthology Award, she has served since 2013 as the editor of Ecotone. She teaches at UNC Wilmington, and calls ungendered Appalachian square dances in what’s now called North Carolina and beyond.
Date: Saturday, May 30
Time: 10 a.m. – noon
Fee: $30 (Member $25)
Registration Deadline: May 26
Instructor: Anna Lena Phillips Bell, author