Utah State University Profs Hold Writing Workshop at Jackson’s Teton Science School

Three Utah State University Department of English professors have returned from Wyoming where they met with the K-12 faculty of the Teton Science School’s Journeys School and other area teachers. Together, they focused on classroom teaching strategies, as well as improving the teachers’ own writing.

 

Christopher Cokinos, Michael Sowder and Kelli Cargile Cook conducted several activities at the two-day workshop near Jackson, Wyo.

 

Sowder, whose collection of poetry, The Empty Boat, was recently published, held a session entitled From Basho to Bison: Poetry and Writing about the Natural World. Participants learned about the elements of writing nature poetry.

 

“We examined imagery, layered meaning, persona and musical effects in a range of poems from classical Asian examples to those from the English and American traditions,” said Sowder. “We then went out into the natural world and returned with newly written poems that we shared and workshopped together, learning revision strategies.”

 

Cargile Cook presented a session titled Writing with Style, in which the participants learned how to choose words, construct sentences and weave paragraphs into elegant compositions. 

 

“The workshop helped participants identify their own writing styles and experiment with stylistic revisions,” she said.

 

Cokinos is the editor of Isoptope: A Journal of Creative Nature and Science Writing and author of Hope is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds. He focused on a particular form of literary non-fiction called the braided essay.

 

“This form blends historical or scientific research, description or exploration of place, and memoir or reflection,” said Cokinos. “We explored the challenges of the form, from organization to the use of imagery to create implied linkages among different scenes.”

 

Participants also learned about internet-based science research tools and local and obscure archives.