Poetry workshop brings seniors out of their shells

PALMER — They were stone cold sober and sitting less than a stone’s throw away, but they still rocked the room during the Stone Bird Poetry Workshop at the Palmer Senior Center Wednesday.

In a little more than an hour, 10 residents gathered in the small conference room and exposed a tiny chunk of their souls through their carefully crafted creations.

Facilitated by Palmer Arts Council volunteer and published writer Katie Eberhart, the free workshop was the second of three, 90-minute sessions at the center on Chugach Street designed to help local seniors find their inner poets in celebration of April as National Poetry Month.

“I used to write poetry a long, long time ago and it’d been 10 years since I last tried to write anything,” Ruth Lee Moore, a former carpenter, explained when asked why she took Eberhart’s class. “I never even liked poetry until I took a class at UAA back in 1984 and the teacher told me I was pretty good at it. I had been in a bad car accident and couldn’t work anymore, so I went back to school instead.”

When Eberhart asked the class to write about stones in the spirit of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall,” Charles Simic’s “Stone” and Lia Purpura’s “Stone Birds,” Moore found the perfect inspiration from her 8-year-old granddaughter.

“My granddaughter and I went day camping in the Valley and she was having fun painting rocks and making them into animals and whatnot,” she said. “So I wrote about that and she was so happy when her mother read the poem to her.”

Afflicted with dyslexia since childhood, Moore had a fellow senior who used to teach English read “Painting Stones” for her during Wednesday’s workshop. The four-stanza poem is set on the bank of the Matanuska River, where flat, round stones of gray encircled their camp:

Crayons and poster paint at the ready,

Brushes are in her hand.

“This rock looks like a bird,” she said.

“And this is an old man.”

I struggle with eyes that do not see

The myth that is surely there.

I turn the stone this way and that

To get a different view.

“Can’t you see its beak Gram-ma?

It is looking right at you.”

A few quick strokes with brush and paint

Then it is very clear.

Stone Birds do exist,

On the banks of the Matanuska.

Applause erupted and Eberhart praised the way she made it intergenerational and brought in local geology.

Moore said the class has sparked a renewed sense of creativity in her that she hopes she can carry with her into the future.

“I never, ever, ever expected to be doing anything like that. I really didn’t,” she said. “Several years back after I’d had a heart attack, I sat down and wrote some poems while I was recovering, but I had to memorize them because I was so horrible at reading. Now I feel like I can do this without worrying about what people think.”

The topic of stones is something workshop attendee Dave Mathews is quite comfortable with as a retired geophysicist.

Attending the class with his wife Betty, Mathews told the group he was intrigued by the notion of writing a poem in five minutes — as Eberhart had suggested they do if they find their lives are too hectic.

“I took that as a challenge and allowed myself only five minutes and I did it in only four-and-a-half, then went back and changed two words, so it took five in the end,” he said as the room erupted.

Mathews also shared a second poem with the group he’d written to an old fishing buddy a couple of years ago to discourage him from coming to Alaska.

Beginning with lines about how rough the drive is from the Lower 48, he pointed to the state’s cold weather and wildlife to try to fend him off:

Mosquitoes are the size of crows

And only leave when the wind blows.

Last week I was chased by a bear

And politicians are everywhere.

I guess that covers all the good things;

Guess we’ll have to see what the winter brings.

Living here is mighty rough

And the fishing holes are crowded enough.

Eberhart loved his hyperbole and humor. She asked him if he’d ever tried to get any of his poems published.

Mathews said he’d only written poems for the senior center’s annual fund-raiser, but might try more after the workshop is over next Wednesday.

His wife, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, had started a poem about being grateful for her health after learning a friend had brain cancer.

“I guess it was just too hard to finish,” she said, getting choked up over the phone later that afternoon. “It was too emotional. But I’ll try again for the next class. I have a box of rocks under my desk, so maybe if I just keep kicking them I’ll get some inspiration.”

Eberhart, who mostly produces “creative non-fiction,” said she’s been pleased with the attendance and talent at the workshops and hopes it encourages participants to continue playing with verse in their lives after the classes are over.

“It seems like writing about stones would be limiting,” she said, “but I think it actually causes us to stretch our thinking and imagination more than we otherwise would.”

The workshop runs from 1 to 2:30 p.m. in the basement of the Palmer Senior Center. For other poetry-related activities happening this month, visit the Palmer Arts Council website at thepalmerartscouncil.org.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.