News Release

Casa Grande Ruins Celebrates National Poetry Month on April 22nd

Date: February 18, 2020
Contact: Dave Carney, 520-723-3172

COOLIDGE, AZ – In celebration of National Poetry Month, Casa Grande Ruins will host a poetry workshop and open mic on April 22nd, 2020 featuring poet Jodie Hollander. The workshop is from 9:00 am – 12:00 pm and will focus on the significance of place in poetry. No experience necessary. A journal and writing utensil will be provided to participants. Reservations are limited and available on a first come/first served basis. Email [e-mail] for more information. Later that evening we invite the public to join us from 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm for an open mic. You do not have to participate in the workshop to attend the open mic. These events take place during National Park Week and on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.  

About the workshop: Place may be defined as a geographical location, an internal state, or perhaps a poetic meeting of the two. Using the extraordinary beauty of Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, this workshop will guide participants in crafting an original poem that responds to their surroundings. In addition, the class will center around how to structure and develop poems and the creative process that is involved. It will also look at meter and line breaks and consider how sound works as a gateway to the senses and how musicality creates its own kind of meaning within a poem.

About the Instructor: Jodie Hollander was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England, and her work has been published in journals such as The Poetry Review, The Yale Review, PN Review, The Dark Horse, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The New Criterion, Australia’s Best Poems of 2011, and Australia’s Best Poems of 2015. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, is published with Liverpool University Press in the UK and Oxford University Press in the US. Hollander is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship in South Africa, a Hawthornden Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant in Italy, and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. She currently lives in Colorado.

These events are sponsored by Western National Parks Association, a nonprofit education partner of the National Park Service. Visitors’ tax-free purchases in WNPA bookstores help WNPA provide direct support to 71 NPS units across the American West. More information can be found at www.wnpa.org.

Casa Grande Ruins National Monument is located at 1100 W Ruins Drive, Coolidge AZ, 85128. There is no fee for the workshop or open mic, and entrance to Casa Grande Ruins National Monument is free. Casa Grande Ruins National Monument protects the multi-story Great House and the ruins of other ancient structures built by the people of the Sonoran Desert over 800 years ago. The monument is open daily from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, May through September, and from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, October through April, except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Independence Day holidays.  Directions and additional information are available on the monument’s website, http://www.nps.gov/cagr. You may call [phone], or follow us on Facebook by searching for Casa Grande Ruins National Monument.
 

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