The Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching: It Changes Lives

Dear teachers and poetry lovers and poetry questioners--

Are you looking for summer enrichment possibilities? Do you want to visit one of the most beautiful hillsides in all of New England? Do you want to spend a week developing close, collegial connections with poets, teachers, and readers from around the United States? Do you want to stand on the dais in Robert Frost's New Hampshire barn and share your own writing with the most supportive audience on earth? Do you want to sit on Frost's front porch and watch the sun set over Lafayette Mountain?

One teacher calls the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching "the best professional development class [she's] ever taken." Many participants return year after year to reexperience the conference's rare atmosphere of inspiration, sympathy, and common sense.

Our visiting faculty regularly includes some of the best-known poet-teachers in the nation. This year we are honored to have the amazing Terry Blackhawk and Jeff Kass, two Michigan teachers who have changed the face of poetry education in Detroit and Ann Arbor--even as they struggle against a very hostile political climate. Director emeritus Baron Wormser is offering a special day-and-a-half workshop devoted entirely to participants' own writing, and new associate director Teresa Carson will share her wealth of experience in poetry, drama, and publishing as well as her skills at teaching writing in the workplace.

Please consider applying to this year's conference. And if you cannot attend yourself, please spread the word among your friends and acquaintances. The Frost Place runs on a shoe string: we are always in danger of slipping into oblivion. But believe me: the conference has changed my life, and the lives of many others. Our goal is to keep poetry alive in our own hearts and, especially, in the hearts of the young people who come after us. I hope to see you in Franconia this summer.