The 2011 Frost Place programs have been announced, and I hope you'll visit the website and take a look at what's going on in Robert Frost's barn this summer. As all you regulars know, I am associate director of the Conference on Poetry and Teaching; and in response to participant request, director Baron Wormser and I have spent this off-season tweaking the conference schedule. Basically, and yes, flatteringly, the teachers asked for more of us, so instead of having three visiting poets, we will now have two: Teresa Carson and Martha Carlson-Bradley. This change means that, on the last full day, Baron and I can return to the folding chairs at the front of the room and focus the day's session on ways to evaluate student poems and run a classroom writing workshop.

Already I have learned that several previous participants are planning to return this year. That's wonderful; and if you, too, are a previous participant, I hope you will consider attending again. Your presence and experience are enormously valuable to your colleagues. Moreover, each year's visiting poets offer new and individual approaches to poetry and the teaching process, and our workshop and evaluation component is evolving into a major element of the conference, which it had not been in the past.

If you have never attended and have questions, please do contact me, either here or through the Frost Place site. I'm sure many past participants would also be glad to get in touch with you and share their thoughts.