February 14 2026
Dear All,
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Last week, on February 8, we celebrated Elizabeth Bishop’s birthday with a reading of her poems, a huge carrot cake and copious cocktails that I think she would have liked. We have ‘Elizabeth Bishop week’ in Key West now, to balance all the events and attention given to the male writers who spent time here – Hemingway, Dos Passos, Tennessee Williams, Robert Frost – who all have weeks, or festivals, or buildings named after them. Until recently, Elizabeth Bishop’s house on White Street was only identifiable by a small plaque on the gate that said “Should we have stayed at home – wherever that may be?” A sentiment that many travelers may have had, arriving in strange and uncomfortable destinations. I sometimes wish that tourists would realize it might be a good idea…
These days, since the KW Literary Seminar managed to buy the house a couple of years ago, and it has been restored to a recognizable version of the poet’s house in the 1940’s, albeit with modern conveniences and a beautifully landscaped back yard, it looks very different from the ramshackle place I walked past for 25 years or more. After worrying about what would become of the house, everyone in the literary community here is thrilled that it’s now open, restored to its former elegance, and usable for events.
I’m delighted to have been asked to lead a poetry workshop there on the weekend of February 20-22 – the first workshop to be held in the house, although there have been readings there, and during the Seminar in January it hosted a great party on the last night, on a fine tropical evening. It’s to be a time and place to write new poems – a ‘generative’ workshop on the lines of the ones I attended, here and at Omega in upstate New York, with Sharon Olds, 20 or so years ago. Sharon opened the gates for me into a new sort of poetry, one of exuberance, freedom and as she said “going over the page,” i.e. writing at length if you want to. (I’d been living in Scotland, where we thought at the time that poems should be as concise as possible.) Many of the poems I subsequently published were born in these workshops. The week-long get-together in Omega in 1998 was especially enthralling, as we gathered day after day to hear each other’s new first drafts, ran off to work on them, and enjoyed Sharon’s unlimited enthusiasm.
I’m not Sharon Olds, of course – but I learned from her a way of conjuring poems out of the backs of our minds and the crannies of our experience, and recognizing that anything and everything can be poetry. I’m looking forward now to a weekend of new poems, of pushing back boundaries and listening well to each other as we do so.
Poetry matters – I heard it over and over at the reading we did on February 8, hearing Bishop’s voice. I reread from time to time the letter she and Robert Lowell exchanged, noticing their care for each other’s work as well as their long friendship. Poetry knits the world together where it has been torn apart – and it’s always the voice of freedom where un-freedom encroaches.
Our retreat in Arles in May is also forming beautifully, and we still have a couple of spaces. It’s not too late to sign up at comingtooursensesretreat.com
Affectionately, Ros