Poetry & Performance with Darlene Witte

There is a wide gap between poetic words on a page and poetry read aloud. The Poetry & Performance workshop, led by Darlene L. Witte, will work to bridge that gap. On the first and third Tuesdays of each month, we’ll focus on the work of three participating poets who may each share a poem uploaded in advance as a PDF, and then presented live in the Zoom session. The group is invited to respond to the poetry and discuss the work in the session and also on the Discussion Board. Sessions will conclude with an Open Mic depending on attendance, where anyone can share a favorite poem they like or have perhaps just discovered.

On Tuesday, November 16, at 6:30 PM (EST), poet Lizzy Fox will be a featured reader.

Lizzy Fox’s poetry has appeared in The Greensboro Review, Hunger Mountain, Santa Ana River Review, and elsewhere. Her first full-length collection, "Red List Blue," was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2021. Lizzy holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is currently enrolled in the Teacher Apprenticeship Program at Champlain College to earn her Vermont teaching license for high school English.

You are encouraged to login and share your poems ahead of the workshop in the private discussion board: https://greenmountainwriters.com/discussion-topics/tuesday-11-2-poetry-performance/

Anyone who wishes to, may have their delivery recorded and shared on The Green Mountain Writers YouTube channel.

Darlene L Witte was an educator for 40 years and has published pieces in many locations over the years, ranging from poems in college collections to academic papers in a variety of journals. She grew up in Western Alberta, a little north of where movies like Legends of the Fall and Brokeback Mountain, were filmed. There, the eye can see for hundreds of miles, sometimes, in any direction. The environment is very challenging and the landscape has a great deal to do with shaping a writer. The juxtaposition of the near and the far, combined with isolation, and a climate that can be deadly provided the perfect environment for an emerging writer. Words are a natural way to explore the minute details of pattern, color and form in the field of near perception, but to orient thought in the prairie landscape the writer must lift the inner vision toward far horizons.

Moving to Vermont in 1993 to become a professor of Education at Northern Vermont University brought her to a landscape far more physically, emotionally and socially embracing than she knew. Vermont has become her new spiritual home. She blends this new, gentle, land-and-people-scape into her life-long internal vision, and she hopes you enjoy her poetry and workshop.