Eldridge Moores

Internationally known geologist
Eldridge Moores to lead
Poetic Spirit Conference field trip

Faculty includes: Julia Connor, William O'Daly and Sydney Smith

Noted geologist Eldridge Moores will lead the "Poetic Spirit" geology field trip and give the keynote talk at this year’s event, scheduled for June 17-19 in Cedarville, California.

In addition to Moores the Poetic Spirit staff includes Sacramento Poet Laureate Emeritus Julia Connor, noted Pablo Neruda translator and poet William O’Daly and ecologist Sydney Smith.

The Poetic Spirit Conference was created in response to poets’ and writers’ desire to inform their work through field study, workshops, readings and reflection.

“This event is a time for environmental, ecological, historical education and experience,” said co-founder Barbara March, “and will include field workshops, journal writing, or note-taking, based on a gathering of information and an enhanced awareness of the natural world.”

The three-day event in Cedarville—located in Modoc County’s Surprise Valley—includes readings and discussion by both staff and participants.

Moores, a tectonicist/structural geologist, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Geology at UC Davis is an advocate of public awareness of geology. He was prominently featured in New Yorker writer John McPhee's best-selling book "Assembling California" (1993), and is a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of numerous international geologic societies and associations including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Geological Society of America.

Poetic Spirit complements the Surprise Valley Writers’ Conference which is held each September. For more information and to register, please scroll down or call 530/ 279-2099. Also see www.modocforum.org.

 “Poetic Spirit”

June 17-19, 2011

Schedule

June 16 -- Thursday
6 - 8 p.m.
Arrivals and reception at Modoc Forum Headquarters
28100 County Road One (March residence, 530/ 279-2099)
1/2 mile south of downtown Cedarville left hand side (east)

Evening reading by Julia Connor and William O’Daly on the subject of poetry of place


June 17 -- Friday Field Trip with Eldridge Moores
(We will assign writers to Field Workshops prior to departure)

9 a.m. - Meet at Senior Center on Main St., Cedarville

9:15 a.m. -- Orientation on field trip, day’s schedule of events and assignments to workshops, i.e. either Bill or Julia.

9:30 a.m. -- Car pool departure for field trip site

10 a.m. -- Geology/ ecology field trip

12:30 p.m. -- Lunch provided

1:30 p.m. -- Workshops in the field conducted by Julia and Bill

1:30 p.m. -- Field trip continues for non-writers in attendance

3 p.m. -- Return to Cedarville

6:30 p.m. -- Dinner - Senior Center

7:00 p.m. --Keynote talk by Eldridge Moores

June 18 -- Saturday
9:30 to 11:30  a.m. - Meet at Senior Center on Main St., Cedarville
    Writers workshop with their staff person from the afternoon before.

11:30 - 1:30  -- Lunch on your own

1:30 to 3:30 p.m. -- Writers switch and workshop with alternate staff person.

Workshop locations:
William O'Daly Workshop - Senior Center
Julia Connor Workshop - Modoc Forum Headquarters

4:00 - Eldridge Moores booksigning at Floating Island Books, Cedarville

5:00 - 6:30 p.m. Dinner Prep - Senior Center
Please pitch in where you're most comfortable; slicing, dicing, setting tables, giving orders, taking orders. The object here is not necessarily gourmet cooking but a time for sharing and fun.

6:30 p.m. Dinner - Senior Center
Participant readings and open discussion.

June 19 -- Sunday
9 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. - Senior Center
Group discussion moderated by Ray March

11:30 a.m. - Farewell and departure

Fee - $325
Field trip, dinners only - $175

Questions? Call Barbara March - 530/ 279-2099

Yes, I’d like to register for the Poetic Spirit Conference.

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Make check payable to Modoc Forum

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Send your registration form to:

Modoc Forum
PO Box 126
Cedarville, CA 96104

Questions? Call 530/ 279-2099

A partial listing of available accommodations:

Surprise Valley

• Sunrise Motel and Bush House
  http://www.hdo.net/~sunrise/
  (530) 279-2161
  
• Surprise Valley Hot Springs
  www.svhotsprings.com
  (530) 279-2040
• JNR Hotel
  www.jnrhotel.com
  (530) 279-2423
• Cockrell’s High Desert Lodging
  www.highdesertlodging.com
  (530) 279-2209 or (888) 279-2209
• The Bunkhouse
  www.surprisevalleybunkhouse.com
  Steve and Lisa Levy, Proprietors
  Rustic Lodging in Beautiful Surprise Valley
  Located at the corner of County Roads 29 and 29A
  (530) 279-2270 (Cedarville)
  (530) 795-2021 (Winters)
• Fandango Guest Ranch
  www.fandangoguestranch.com
  Bob Altieri, Owner
  P.O. Box 2
  Cedarville, CA 96104
  (530) 640-1603
• Winje’s Farm Cottage
  (530) 279-6373 or (877) 813-8632
• Modoc District Fairgrounds RV Park
  (530) 279-2315
• Alturas Hacienda Motel
  (530) 233-3459
• Essex Motel
  www.essexmotel.com
  (530) 233-2821
• Rim Rock Motel
  www.rimrockmotelalturas.com
  (530) 233-5455
• Best Western Trailside Inn
  (530) 233-4111
  1/ 800-Western
• Super 8 Motel
  (530) 233-3545

Surprise Valley     4 A.M.

the ignimbrite above where I have slept

stands      silent     sentinel
     exposed       
            withstands
   
so do we align to our tectonics
    book / pen  --  basin / range
the signatures of what creates
    stretching out our crust
to break free what lay      below
    to lift its narrative    
competent       improvisational
           (the chaos of deep time all around)
to full promise --
    a matrix of script and scrabble
   
    matrix: n. 1. surrounding substance within which
    something originates, develops, is contained
    Archaic: womb,  fr. mater, mother

she who gathers a geology of imagination
deposits as she goes       what’s laid between
strata
        sediment & word
                                   
                             

                                           Julia Connor© 2010
                                           Modoc Forum, Poetic Spirit
              

Ignimbrite School of Poets - Class Photo - June 13, 2010

Goddess Ignimbrite Speaks Through the Oracle

You tip-toe talkers, how dare you
compare me! I am gaseous,
hot, scalding, or so I was.
I am the majestic one.

Igneous fabric flows
from my
pencil box waist,
acre on square acre of sediment and ash,
iron-on symbols of power,
fracture — motion — fault,
now compared by poets to a thought?

Eons, literal eons of exhaustion

shaped
and formed me, I, by myself,

-without
benefit of polite critique.

Specks, seekers of truth,
you wave and probe my desert lace
like ticks, craving a belly
tight with words.

I defy you, ascend beyond
literal ash and pumice.

Go ahead, slide down

pleats of pain.
Embed yourselves
on a remnant flash of my fire.

I am goddess ignimbrite—

the ultimate revisionist,

formed by explosive creation.

-- Barbara March

More Poetic Spirits - Deanna, Julia, Bill

Poetic Spirit - June 10 -13, 2010

Extra Credit Homework

There are two remarkable lectures, one by Julia Connor and the other by William O'Daly, which were presented at the '09 Surprise Valley Writers' Conference that all poets will find enlightening. The lectures can be found at www.modocforum.org on the Surprise Valley Writers' Conference page. Both these lectures will help you prepare for "Poetic Spirit" next month.

Poetic Spirit Suggested Reading

William O’Daly

"Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poetry" by John Felstiner, Yale University Press;

"News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness," an anthology edited by Robert Bly, Sierra Club Books;

"The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of
Man and Nature," by Loren Eiseley, Vintage Books;

 "The Night Country," by Loren Eiseley, with introduction by Gale E. Christianson, Bison Books (or original edition, from Sierra Club Books in hardcover, is great).

This is a suggested, not a required, list, and with only a few books. I include an anthology, and two books by Loren Eiseley, who was a wonderful poet with three or four books of poems, as well as a world-class naturalist (anthropologist/archaeologist), and a beautiful writer of prose. These books are prose, and on a personal note "The Immense Journey," which I read at age 18, went a long way toward making me a poet, and fit nicely with my sensibility as always having been, without at first realizing I was, a poet of place. "The Night Country" is incredible, a journey through the imagination, beginning in boyhood, in a boyhood that is not available to our children anymore, and what it is like to be truly attentive and use the imagination truly to SEE. I reread much of Eiseley's poetry about 3-4 years ago, and enjoyed it all the more. No postmodernist, this fella.


Julia Connor

First, I concur with Bill's list. Especially "News of the Universe." I would add anything by Snyder, but especially "Mountains and Rivers Without End" And, for those linguistically experimental, the recent work of Brenda Hillman, especially her new book "Cascade." This is interesting (postmodern) work, but it is not first-person centered. Also, there is a small pocket-size anthology of poems about the land put out by the Sierra Club a few years ago, but I gave mine to a friend and can't remember the name of it.

Sydney Smith

Some recommended reading includes:
“A Field Guide to Pacific States Wildflowers: Washington, Oregon, California and adjacent areas (Peterson Field Guide),” Niehaus & Ripper. This is a good pictorial guide to area wildflowers. One can often get to genus with this guide, species as well.

“Terrestrial Vegetation of California,” Special Publication/California Native Plant Society, No 9,(hardcover), Jack Major, author, editor, Michael G. Barbour author, editor. Especially first chapter, by Jack Major, which is an overview of California vegetation with emphasis on climate.

“Fire in California's Ecosystems,” (hardcover), Neil G. Sugihara, editor, Jan W. van Wagtendonk editor, Kevin E. Shaffer editor, JoAnn Fites-Kaufman, editor, Andrea E. Thode editor; chapters on NE California; other areas that might be of interest to participants.


A note from Barbara and Ray
We think Gary Snyder’s "Mountains and Rivers Without End" is particularly apropos. The last poem, Finding the Space in the Heart, takes in Vya, Nevada, which is not far from where we will be going for our first geology tour with Gail Mahood and Sydney Smith. A side note to “Mountain and Rivers Without End:” This work was the inspiration behind the Common Ground Symposium we held two years ago here in Surprise Valley and Gary was our keynote speaker. Also, Gail has produced a informative guide to Surprise Valley geology which we will have for everyone when they arrive.

Insights from the Poetic Spirit Staff

“There is nothing quite like the chemistry of a group of poets stirring things up in the heat of discussion and creation. This June's ‘Poetic Spirit’ event promises to be one such occasion...land, location, lore and a hands-on opportunity to let the alchemy of place
and the alembic of writing have their way with us. I can't wait!”

    -- Julia Connor, poet

"I am really looking forward to retreating from the clamor with others who seek to enhance understanding of these remarkable landforms and habitats. Sharing our experiences via discussions and workshops will inspire us in writing an exploration of our inner lives; of shapes, colors, and substances of the natural world; of the profane and the sacred."

    -- William O'Daly, poet

“Just as perceptive reading is a prerequisite for good writing, being a reader of the rock record is the starting point for my craft as a geologist and is my role in "The Poetic Spirit" -- to give a sense of how the geologic history of Surprise Valley is a story constructed on a foundation of rigorous observation, scaffolded by an understanding of the natural laws governing Earth processes, and given final form by imagination."

    -- Gail  Mahood, geologist