Ohio Poetry Association Blog

We were twenty-five souls who took arms against windy snow to join the Ashland Poetry Workshop for a weekend this past November 23-24. The schedule comprised four hours of workshop with highly accomplished poets, an open reading for participants, and readings by workshop leaders. Several OPA members were there, Patricia Black, Jennifer Hambrick, Sharon Mooney, Deb Strozier, and Laura Weldon, among them. The leaders were Deborah Fleming, Steven Haven, and Sarah Wells from Ashland University and Robin Davidson of the University of Houston. For two hours Saturday morning and two the next, Steven Haven, director of the MFA program at Ashland, led six of us in workshop. He had obviously read the poems carefully, and he encouraged plenty of discussion. About the other leaders, I heard few, if any, mutters of discontent. A single hitch: one leader, who thought the Saturday workshops would continue after lunch, didn't start to entertain participants' poems until the morning sessi