About

Poetry and Extraordinary Language: 

Poetic Devices for Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing

Baseball, tennis, figure skating and other sports are often described as poetry in motion. What is poetic? This month's Roundtable will be a craft talk by three poets who will address specific aspects of poetry that translate into literary craft across genres. Expect to hear each poet talk briefly and participate in a panel Q&A. We will end the evening with some writing prompts so hopefully everyone can leave with a seedling of writing.

Michele Bombardier is a long time Bainbridge resident and has published over twenty poems in journals such as Bellevue Literary Review, Fourth River, Floating Bridge, Sukoon and others. She is completing her MFA in poetry from Pacific University. She works as a speech-language pathologist with persons with autism, apraxia, stroke and brain injury. Michele will talk about the poetic devises of image and gesture in the works of short story writers who are also poets.

Susan Landgraf’s poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Comstock Review, and Nimrod, among others, some 400 poems and prose in 150 publications. Her chapbook Other Voices was published by Finishing Line Press. A former journalist, she taught at Highline College for 27 years and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She will talk about poetic devices E. B. White used in a commentary on the first moon landing in 1969 in The New Yorker.

Colleen Rain has lived on the islands of Bainbridge, Britain and Japan since she moved to the PNW in 1973. A UW grad, now in her final year of an MFA at the Rainier Writing Workshop, she also studied Welsh and the poet Dylan Thomas at the University of Aberyswyth, Wales.  Her publications include Asia Luxe, The Kanazawa Convention Times, Ishikawa Now!, The Japan Times and a regular feature for the International Herald Tribune on arts and culture.  She taught for BHS as a writing tutor, was head of studies at Kanazawa Academy of Language, Junior College and adjunct at Hokuriku University.  Her talk is on the use of white space and compression in developing the contemporary non-fiction forms of memoir and lyric essay. 

We hope you will join us for what is sure to be a lively evening! Let us know you're coming by registering here.