In this workshop we will examine new techniques for naming the world around us in artful and convincing ways, as well as allowing the unexpected into our poems. In particular we’ll be asking how allowing the poem to become a vessel for conversing with the natural and nonhuman world can open new doors in poetry. Come ready to read, write, discuss poems and also to share.
Tess Taylor is a poet, playwright and critic. Her work deals with place, ecology, memory and cultural reckoning. She has five poetry collections: The Misremembered World; The Forage House; Rift Zone, one of the Boston Globe’s best books of 2020, and Work & Days, one of the NY Times best poetry books of 2016. Her anthology Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands that Tend Them gathers contemporary gardening poems for an era of climate crisis. Her collage poem Last West: Roadsongs for Dorothea Lange, was adapted for stage in 2025 and premiered at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art. Taylor’s writing appears in Harpers Magazine, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Times Literary Supplement, CNN, and The New York Times. She has taught widely, from UC Berkeley to Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she served as US Distinguished Fulbright. Her next book, Come Bite, is out from Milkweed Press in 2027. She lives just outside Berkeley, California.
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Sierra Poetry Festival is a project of Nevada County Arts & Culture. This year’s main stage event will take place on April 18, 2026, at The Center for the Arts, in Grass Valley, CA, attended by some of our most exciting local, national, and international poets and performers. PLUS, more than a month of pop-up poetry events, free and open to the public.