How a Week at Hedgebrook Reconnected Me With The Writer I Was
I was struggling as a poet and writer in the world. I was having trouble balancing my writing life and my family life, and I wasn’t finding time for myself to write. For me, choosing to take a week off during a busy time of the year to go into my own cottage and focus on the act of writing was an act of faith in myself and an inner belief that this experience would help me get what I needed. Spoiler alert: it did. My time at Hedgebrook was an absolute gift. While I was at first nervous to work with such a well-known and highly-acclaimed poet, Carolyn was incredibly kind and generous. She has a glowing and sweet spirit that was both inspiring and uplifting. She always put us first and was a thoughtful listener and teacher. In the morning, several of us would meet for coffee at the Farmhouse (The Breakfast Club, we called it) to discuss our writing plans for the day or discuss poems or poets, anything that inspired. Later in the day, we’d have these amazing workshop sessions with Carolyn and after that, we’d all dine together. It was beyond magical. If there is one word that represents how I felt at the Master Class by Carolyn and everyone at Hedgebrook, that word is: nurtured.
When I now look back at the photos of myself during that time—usually in corduroys with my hair in a bun on my head and no make-up—I see how I was glowing as well. I had reconnected with that part of myself that ached to write, that woman who had kind of lost her way in a world of chores, parenting, work, and life. Hedgebrook allowed me the space and place to reconnect with that. Carolyn offered the compassion and mentoring I needed.
The other women who attended offered support and joy. And when I look back at that time, I see how life-changing it was for me as a writer. It pulled me out of the noisy world and made me settle in with myself. It reminded me how much I needed my own time to write and my own space. And for all of it, I am grateful.
Kelli Russell Agodon is a poet, writer, editor, and book cover designer from the Northwest. Since her time at Hedgebrook, she as published two books, Hourglass Museum (Finalist for the Washington State Book Awards & shortlisted for the Julie Suk Prize in Poetry for best collection of poems published by an indie press) as well as The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her other books are Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room (Winner of the Foreword Book of the Year in Poetry and Finalist for the 2010 Washington State Book Prize), Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women’s Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, O, The Oprah Magazine, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, as well as on “The Writer’s Almanac” with Garrison Keillor’s and in Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times anthology. Kelli is the Cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and is the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Retreat for Women Poets.
Source: hedgebrook.org
