Lost Horse Press & Sandpoint Literary Collective are hosting “Spring into Writing: A Fiction & Poetry Workshop.”

The workshop, which features Spokane writer and creative writing professor, Polly Buckingham, takes place on Saturday, March 14, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the Sandpoint Presbyterian Church, 417 Fourth. There is a $25 workshop fee. You must register and pre-pay to attend, no exceptions. To register, contact losthorsepress@mindspring.com or 208-255-4410.

Buckingham’s books include “The Expense of a View”, which received the Katherine Anne Porter Prize; and “A Year of Silence”, which received the Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award. She is also a recipient of a Washington State Artists Trust Fellowship.

Her work appears in The Gettysburg Review, The Threepenny Review, The Poetry Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Sugar House Review, North American Review, The Moth, Hanging Loose, and elsewhere. Polly is the founding editor of StringTown magazine and press. She teaches creative writing at Eastern Washington University and is the editor of Willow Springs magazine.

The event features several workshops: “The Surprise Of Poetry: Concentration & Abandonment” and “Re-envisioning Fiction: Drafts Refocused, Reimagined”

The “Surprise of Poetry” workshop is intended to bring participants into that space where everything in language is up for grabs, into a greater state of uncertainty and unknowing. Garcia Lorca writes in his essay “Theory and Function of the Duende,” “Very often intellect is poetry’s enemy because it is too much given to imitation, because it lifts the poet to a throne of sharp edges and makes him oblivious of the fact that he may suddenly be devoured by ants, or a great arsenic lobster may fall on his head.” We will work on reaching a state of deep concentration and abandonment, that space from which real surprises begin and with them the energy of poetry.

In the “Re-Envisioning Fiction” workshop, participants are asked what happens after that first inspired draft of a story? The workshop will give writers ideas for refocusing, restructuring and further developing their drafts. Participants will run through a series of exercises that ask them to think about their drafts in ways that might not yet have considered.

For example, what happens when you think about your story as a dream narrative or consider major world events that might be happening at the same time as your story? The workshop will work on a series of writing prompts that allow students to flesh out scenes that might feel flat or dialogue that feels dull. If you have a draft, bring it along. For those who don’t have drafts, we will begin with a generative writing exercise.