Current Ukiah poet laureate Roberta Werdinger leads a poetry workshop that explores and encourages responses to current events, both local and global. The workshop will start with the reading of poems from writers past and present who have responded to hard times, including the unprecedented threat of climate change. Participants will then use techniques such as meditation, collage, and freewriting to drop into the still, silent place from which poetry arises. The session concludes by returning to words to devise responses in poetry, artwork, or performance.

In addition to being Ukiah’s poet laureate, Roberta Werdinger is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award and a Zen Buddhist priest who trained for ten years at San Francisco Zen Center under her teacher, Tenshin Reb Anderson. A resident of Mendocino County since 2007, she currently is a freelance editor and publicity writer. She recently completed a memoir, The One Road.