This weekend I went to the 14th Annual South Coast Writers Conference in Gold Beach, Oregon. It was the third time I had attended the conference since I moved to nearby Port Orford four years ago. And it turned out to be the best one, as far as I was concerned, despite my initial lack of excitement at the workshops being offered.
What made the difference was discovering Floyd Skloot!
As a journalist/essayist/non-fiction writer, I am always off-put by the emphasis that seems to be placed on fiction, science fiction, poetry, humor, and children’s books in the conference. So initially I had a hard time finding three workshops I had enthusiasm for, much less four, when I registered weeks ahead of the event.
In what would turn out to be a fortuitous choice, I chose two workshops by a writer I had never heard of, Skloot – “Working with Fragments of Memory” and “Formal and Free: cultivating flexibility in the approach to poetry ” – and “Writing in Nature” by Robin Cody, both Oregon writers. I didn’t even choose a workshop for the fourth session, and none of the all-day intensive Friday workshops interested me enough for me to justify the time and money involved.
About three weeks before the conference, I went on line at the conference website to see if there was any updated information. I found a recommended reading list of books for each presenter and decided I’d read some of Floyd Skloot’s books, seeing as I would have two workshops with him. I found four memoirs and a book of poetry at the library and checked them all out. It was in reading these books that I found out who Skloot is, that he has been widely published and received many awards and much critical acclaim, and that I began my addiction to Floyd Skloot’s writing. And I became very excited about going to a conference where I would be able to meet and listen to him in person.
On December 7th, 1988, Skloot, who had at that point written novels and poetry, contracted a brain virus that left him with almost no memory and with significant physical impairments. His memoirs (The Night Side: Chronic fatigue syndrome and the illness experience, In the Shadow of Memory, A World of Light, and The Wink of the Zenith: The Shaping of a Writer's Life) chronicle his now 20-year journey of learning to compensate for the damage done, to live with his limitations, and to amazingly successfully re-invent his life. He has painstakingly reconstructed the first 41 years of his life and turned it into a series of fascinating essays that are not only auto-biographical, but examine the concept of memory, the idea of family, the issue of self-identity, and most of all, how to live life to its fullest no matter what may befall one.
His poetry takes much of its inspiration from his experiences in life and is some of the most accessible yet critically acclaimed poetry I have ever read. Too often, critically acclaimed poetry is a labyrinth of inaccessibility for even a college graduate to make real sense of or to care about what’s being said. But Skloot’s poetry is full of feeling, as well as superb technique. I, who hadn’t read poetry in the more than forty years since I graduated from college (despite writing an occasional poem in response to an event in my life that I felt a need to record in some manner), found myself gobbling up poem after poem from The End of Dreams.
By the time I had finished three of the four memoirs – I am just now finishing the last – and read The End of Dreams, I felt I knew Floyd Skloot, though I had never met him. So it was no surprise when, at the Friday night author reading, I recognized him immediately as he walked by and set up a table of his books for sale just a few feet from me.
One would never know think that Skloot is anything other than normal, unless he tells you about his affliction. He is articulate, intelligent, and funny. His reading of three of his poems was one of the best of the evening, full of finesse and feeling. I found the next day in the two workshops I took from him that he is an excellent teacher as well. By the time the conference was over, I had purchased all four memoirs and The End of Dreams, plus his latest volumes of poetry, The Snow’s Music and Floyd Skloot: Selected Poems: 1970-2005, and the older Approximately Paradise.
Cody’s workshop was not about nature writing per se, but how to use nature in writing. He led the class through a number of exercises that used a place in nature as a starting point for the writing. Cody is also a very good teacher. Like Skloot, he resides in Oregon, although Cody is a native. His book Voyage of a Summer Sun - Canoeing the Columbia River, relating his experiences canoeing the length of the Columbia River solo, won the 1996 Oregon Book Award and is well worth reading.
I was having an excellent time at the conference, and although I had planned to leave early to be elsewhere, I decided to stay for the fourth and final workshop, choosing to attend Lori Ries’ “Come Play with Me,” on writing children’s picture books. I was feeling adventurous and figured I’d find out about an area of writing I had never even considered. Ries’s presentation was well-organized and thorough, and I left feeling as if I could write a children’s picture book. (Most publishing companies provide the illustrator, which lets me off the hook!)
It was amazing to see so many talented writers from Oregon and especially so many who had received awards and other recognition for their work. I felt particularly fortunate to have attended this conference. Wannabee is not sure she will still be residing close enough to attend next year’s conference, but if she is, she surely will.
See my category “Writer’s Conferences” in the left margin for a link to my posting on the 2008 conference. Also see my link to the South Coast Writers Conference website under “Helpful Links” for more information. The 15th Annual SCWC will be held February 12-13, 2010.
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