Bill Holm Witness Poetry

Bill Holm was a frequent participant at Writers Rising Up’s workshops. He often read and lectured with fellow Minnesota author Carol Bly at Writers Rising Up’s events held at the Minnesota Landscape Abroretum. Carol and Bill would listen intently to each other. Bill overflowed with stories and memories,  wisdom and experiences in the retelling of every day life.  Recollections  filled with humor, pathos and the realities of misfits and loosers,  Holm still tells us through his writing how Holidays measure the passing of our lives from birth to death.  Garrison Keillor called Bill, “the tallest radical humorist in the Midwest.”

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Carol Bly Post Card Fiction

Carol Bly's "Letters From the Country" was the inspiration for Writers Rising Up's new post card fiction submission opportunity in her honor. Often referred to as the "Lioness of Letters," Bly exemplified the moral certitude and sheer bravery necessary to  tackle issues we still find ourselves addressing today, including abuse, misogony, and hypocricy. Now the small town or city existence is practically irrelevant, because our reach extends to communities on Facebook, Instagram posts or Tweets. We are surrounded by exchanges, snippets of  opinion, criticism in a daily dose of intellectual discourse. 

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Bug City:Make a Bug

In 2016 Bug City: Make a Bug poetry submission will be a lot more fun for kids. Poems will again focus on the species at the Elizabeth Fries Ellet Interpretive Trail at the Richard T. Anderson Conservation Area. Poems must be in the shape of a bug. Examples of Shaped Poems can be found here at Pinterest. Shaped poems can also contain words that are written side-ways or in circles. As long as the poem is easy to read, printed or typed it’s acceptable.

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Digging to the Roots 2016 Poetry Anthology

Grasshoppers, and this one's a younger version of a Melanoplus bicittatus, or two striped grasshopper, live in moist meadowy areas: meadows, prairies, crop fields, road sides, vacant lots, ditches, streams, and vegetable gardens, etc. What's remarkable about this species is their destructive bent.  They are referred to as a pest species. Grasshoppers, like the Melanopulus bicittatus, contributed to crop blights in the late 1920s and 30s which resulted in massive crop damage. Find out more about the submission process for the 2016 Digging to the Roots Poetry Anthology Calendar, see  images, and read the guidelines at Writers Rising Up's Events and Contests Link.

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Prairie Poetry Prize: Prairie Sampler

To Walt Whitman America was a place where grass was “hopeful green stuff.”Prairies left a lasting impression on writers who visited the Great Plains in the 19th century, often describing them in terms of vast waves of wind swept blades surrounded by boundless sky. On his first trip west Whitman wrote in Specimen Days, #179 Prairies, “…stretching out on its own unbounded scale, unconfined, which there is in these prairies, combining the real and ideal, and beautiful as dreams.” Three of Whitman’s poems on prairie grass: “The Prairie-Grass Dividing,” “The Prairie States,” and “A Prairie Sunset.”

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Wilderness in the City 2016-17

Join us for Wilderness in the City Excursions at the Elizabeth Fries Ellet Interpretive Trail at the Richard T. Anderson Conservation Area in 2016-17 from 10am to 12pm. Due to the construction on Hwy 101 and Flying Cloud Drive, all excursions will begin at the culmination of construction in 2016-17. More details on construction will be on our Facbook page. In 2016-17 Writers Rising Up will partner with the city of Eden Prairie on excursions to include an entomologist, the Minnesota Zoo Mobile, Native American Herbalists and more. The suggested events are listed at the read more link. Sign up at Sign-up Genuis to weigh in on the events you would be interested in.

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Wilderness in the City 2014

What's happening at the EFEIT/RTA this season?  Don't miss the final event planned for 2014.

 

Join us for the final  Wilderness in the City Fall Colors at the EFEIT October 19 at 10AM to 12Noon. Bring a camera and pad of paper to press leaves. 

Meet up at the Richard T. Anderson Conservation Area  1/6 mile past Lions Tap Restaurant on Flying Cloud Drive. This will be our final event until 2016 because of construction on Hwy 101 and Flying Cloud Drive in 2015.

In 2106 we will partner with the city of Eden Prairie on excursions including an entomologist with a look at the four and six-legged creatures who habitate in the RTA, wildcrafting with native American Indian herbalists,  a visit with the Minnesota Zoomobiles critters and more…

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Wilderness in the City: Winter Writing Tour: Mud Nests, Bee Dances and Hibernation

 

Mud Nests, Bee Dances and Hibernation: Wilderness in the City Winter Writing Tour 

Let’s Dance. Bees do it: The Honey Bee Dance is a form of communication: an actual language that’s a body dance. 

Bee dances, and there are many, provide distance and direction to other bees which are communicated with the intent of recruiting others workers in the task of gathering pollen and nectar. Rather than for the purpose of entertainment, Bee Dances relay information intended to communicate where food is.

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“Long may she wave..”

Wilderness in the City: Summer Writing Tour: Ellet’s Ramblings & Thoreau’s Notes

 

“The Minnesota River is always a bender. Long may she wave.”  A reporter aboard the Franklin Steele, 1861

 

Ellet’s journey in 1852 was arranged by a New York newspaper whose interest was in a series of articles with a sensationalist telling of the expansion of the Western Territories, its habitat, natives, settlers and the rail and river journey, getting there and back. Her trip was described as Fashionable Tourism, resulting in an expose of the new western expansion printed in newspaper and journal articles and her book, “Summer Rambles in the West,” published in 1853.

 

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Wilderness in the City: Summer 2013

 

Wilderness in the City: Summer Writing Tour: Ellet’s Ramblings & Thoreau’s Notes

What Ellet wrote in 1852, Thoreau in 1861, and what we write in Summer 2013

July 27th  Saturday 10 to 12 Noon- Bring a notebook, pen and camera…

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