Press Club members pause in the English Woodland Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden to collect their thoughts before composing prose at a nature writing workshop. Photo by Jessica Brown.
by Don Corrigan
You don’t have to go to David Thoreau’s Walden Pond or Joan Didion’s Tinker Creek to get some outdoor inspiration for writing prose and poetry. The Missouri Botanical Garden has some perfect spots, some quieter than others, for inspiration.
Michaella Thornton and Sean Dougherty give nature writers some instructions and encouragement before a June 10 creative writing workshop at the Missouri Botanical Garden. Photo by Jessica Brown.
Earlier this month, St. Louis Press Club members were hosted by the Missouri Botanical Garden to take a nature writing tour led by Sean Dougherty and Michaella Thornton.
Doherty is vice president for education for MoBOT and Thornton is an award-winning educator whose work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, best of the Net and Best Microfiction.
The educational tour was designed to acquaint participants with special park locations, to build nature vocabularies, and to provide background on the natural world and local landscapes.
Participants were invited to bring their electronic tablets or pens and notebooks. There was plenty of space and time allotted for some short writing exercises.
Among the park sites visited:
– The Victorian District, which includes statues and the home of Henry Shaw.
– The English Woodland Garden, with tall, leafy trees shading a hot sun.
– The Japanese Garden, with its soothing waters gurgling away.
At the Victorian District, Thornton read from Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Calendar Poetica, including this excerpt: “My writing instrument is a Sheaffler fountain pen with a #304 nib. Everything else in my life is chaos: I am, of course, sleep-deprived, and the edges of my garden start to blur and shimmer as if near a gas flame … ”
Some Inspired Prose:
After taking in the words of Calendar Poetica, accompanied by a park visitor’s music from the group Talking Heads, a participant was inspired to write the following:
“I hear David Byrne singing “Psycho Killer,” near the Victorian home of Henry Shaw. What kind of a sound system did Henry have? How many watts? As I hear the Talking Heads implore us to “run, run, run away,” I am looking for the garden statues to jump off their pedestals to beat a quick retreat. I have learned that the lawn grass cries when we cut it. I want to tell this grass outside Henry’s house to “run, run, run away.” And don’t look back until the Garden Glow begins…”
At the English Woodland Garden, Thornton read from Annie Dillard’s A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, including this excerpt: “Water striders patrol the surface film, crayfish hump along the silt bottom eating filth, frogs shout and glare … ”
In St. Charles, Missouri, there is a condo and retail development soon to be under construction near the Missouri River and Bangert Island. That development inspired this prose take:
“This is not Tinker Creek, Annie. This is Bangert Slough. A lovely wooded area, much of it fated for the developer’s bulldozer. River wetlands will be replaced by water features and retention ponds – for shoppers and condo dwellers. Stands of cottonwoods will be clear cut all the way to the Missouri, so that pricier condo units can have a river view. Oh Annie, wherefore art thou? What will become of your crayfish humping, your frogs shouting, your shiners hiding among the roots?”
Environmental Echo 