To write a nature a poem is to grieve nature. We already have poems that capture the beauty of nature and how it once was. The importance of capturing nature today is to see it as it is and how it might one day be. Naturally, we must move away from the traditional pastoral that romanticizes nature to some perversion of it as only we can experience, feel, and understand. In this workshop, we will explore the contemporary pastoral from contemporary writers to see how the past and the present blend so well that it captures, possibly, a bleakness moving forward into some stark future only we can imagine. At the end of the workshop, we will meditate on our own relationship with nature as we’ve moved through time. We will sit and write from an imagined future that pulls from our current experiences. Then, we’ll share our work. We’ll end the workshop with some time for questions.

TYLER MICHAEL JACOBS is the author of “Building Brownville” (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022). His words have appeared in Variant Literature, Plainsongs, Pidgeonholes, Sierra Nevada Review, Thin Air Magazine, White Wall Review, Funicular Magazine, and elsewhere. His poems have also been featured on Nebraska Public Media’s Friday LIVE! He is a second-year poetry MFA candidate at Bowling Green State University where he serves as an assistant editor and Blog Co-Editor for Mid-American Review.

Registration is required via the Nebraska Poetry Society website. Free with annual membership; nominal fee for non-members. Students, minors and others for whom the registration fee is prohibitive may request a free membership.