It is Saturday morning. I’m at a tall table in a kind of lounge area inside the Kendade Science Hall on the campus of Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and I am living the paradox of finding solitude in community, writing with some of my fellow alumni friends in relative silence in thisContinue reading “A Single Dispatch from Wally Camp, AKA the Walking Stick* Hereafter, Mt. Holyoke College, 2026”
Tag Archives: Warren Wilson MFA Alumni Conference
#814: Walking to Breakfast with Mark
for Mark Solomon He had written a note to a friend,inviting her to tonight’s reading on the occasion of being back after a two-year absence from this annual conferenceof alumni from the Warren WilsonMFA Program for Writers. He wrote to her about how he felt to be reunited with his fellow“Wallies.” Mark graduatedfrom the programContinue reading “#814: Walking to Breakfast with Mark”
Feeling the Love: A Post Wally Camp Dispatch
I got home from Wally Camp on Saturday with the worst lower back pain I’ve experienced in some time. I mean, up until this morning I could barely put on my own damn socks. Partly the result of sleeping in the dorm at Macalester College on a mattress that felt like it had rocks insideContinue reading “Feeling the Love: A Post Wally Camp Dispatch”
#584: Meditation Under Construction (A Wally Camp Dispatch)
In my novel, the main characteris building a playhouseand his drivewayis torn to shitfor the necessary underground infrastructure. In reality, the campus atMacalester Collegein St. Paul, Minnesotais under constructionand roads and sidewalksand large lawn swathsare torn to shit to make way for the necessary underground infrastructure. We meditated to that. Windows open so the morningbreezeContinue reading “#584: Meditation Under Construction (A Wally Camp Dispatch)”
#583: The Forgotten Watch (Three Haiku)
Did you know that the plural of haiku is haiku? You’re welcome. Arrived safely and happily yesterday at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota for the annual Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers alumni conference, otherwise known as Wally Camp. One of our intrepid emcees of our nightly readings of poetry and fiction and memoirContinue reading “#583: The Forgotten Watch (Three Haiku)”
#542: On the Note Wendell Hawken Wrote to Me, the One I’ve Been Using as a Bookmark in Her Book of Poems
The note she wrote to me almost a year ago, the one I’ve been using as a bookmark as I’m reading her poems, says: “Michael – thought I was out, but I found one.” Even though it doesn’t take me long to remember what she was trying to say, I love the ambiguity of itContinue reading “#542: On the Note Wendell Hawken Wrote to Me, the One I’ve Been Using as a Bookmark in Her Book of Poems”
Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: All Good Things. . .
Our time together had come to a close and I was alone in the dorm where we stayed at Macalester College for the annual Warren Wilson MFA Alumni Conference. It was strange, that quiet, after all that activity, after all that brilliant conversation, after the nightly readings and daily classes, the meals together three timesContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: All Good Things. . .”
Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: Countdown T-Minus a Day and Some Change
I’ve got plane tickets, I’ve got plane snacks, I’ve got a new Moleskine notebook, I’ve got the new album by GLASYS, I’ve printed and practiced my reading, I’ve chosen some poems for morning meditation, I’ve packed my copies of Monster Talk, I got a tooth crowned, I got my hair cut, I got a copyContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: Countdown T-Minus a Day and Some Change”
Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: More Songs about Buildings, Food, Flora, Courses, Lectures, Panels, Endings
This is the campus bookstore here at Dominican University. Just kidding. It is the building in which the bookstore is housed. It is an incredible building, don’t you think? Look at this beautiful thing. I don’t know what happens in this building, but I took a picture of it. And then I went upContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: More Songs about Buildings, Food, Flora, Courses, Lectures, Panels, Endings”
Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: Last Night’s Reading, Short Stay Alumni Converge, More Talk About Secret Agents, and Voices Inside Our Heads
This title pretty much says it all. I think my work is done here. Perhaps I can begin with the stuff left unfinished or uncovered by my title’s verbosity. We had a lovely little meditation experience this morning sandwiched between two readings of Stafford’s “Ask Me.” Some time when the river is ice ask me/mistakesContinue reading “Dispatches from Writer’s Camp: Last Night’s Reading, Short Stay Alumni Converge, More Talk About Secret Agents, and Voices Inside Our Heads”
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