Ordinary Graces: Writing Big Poetry from Day-to-Day Smallness
You don’t need to be struck by inspiration to write a poem that expresses your soul truths. Inspiration comes when you are drinking your morning coffee or tea, when your cat climbs into your lap, when your neighbor wishes you good morning as you try to increase your heart rate on your daily walk. Kitty Yanson knows a thing or two about writing poetry. Kitty taught all things English and ran the creative writing program at Mercy High School in Baltimore. In this program, Kitty will share ways to hold common things in your heart and mind long enough for them to speak their stories to you to yield poems that bring your heart and world together. You will learn the unique power of images to carry feelings and ideas and ways to explore these images to find links to the hard-to-express. We will practice these methods together and, by the end, write individual poems that express not only who we are, but also, according to Maya Angelou, how we are who we are. Join Kitty for a delightful afternoon of creativity and community!
DATE: Thursday, March 5, 2026 (INCLEMENT WEATHER DATE - March 12, 2026)
TIME: 1:00 - 4:00 PM
COST: $50
LOCATION: Well for the Journey - 120 W. Seminary Ave, Lutherville-Timonium, MD 21093
IMPORTANT: You will receive an email from programming@wellforthejourney.org at least 24 hours in advance of the start of your program. If you are unable to find the email, please check your SPAM or JUNK email folders. This email will include details to help you prepare for your program including any pertinent handouts, location information, and the ZOOM link for online programs. Please be sure you have received and read this email a minimum of 24 hours in advance of the start of the program. Thank you!
FACILITATOR: Kitty Yanson
FACILITATOR BIO: Old family stories told about one as a child have the resonance of myth. One does not know how much is actual truth and how much to explain a forming personality or to illustrate the values of one’s family. Nevertheless, there is one about me: walking back from my grandmother’s house, the four-year-old me asked my father, “Where do thoughts go when you stop thinking them?” My fate was sealed: I became the family philosopher whether I wanted to live it out or not (which I kind of did). So I grew up studying art and stories and my own inner life and the tickings of peoples’ minds. Through it all, I’m still wondering where thoughts go when you stop thinking them. I recently retired from a 35-year career as an English teacher at Mercy High School where I taught creative writing, journalism, English, and theatre. My formal education includes a BA in English Literature from Mt. St. Agnes College and a MS in Professional Writing, Imaginative Concentration from Towson University. Prior to that I worked at the Baltimore Theatre Project and also free-lanced gardening and catering. While teaching, I found that the creativities required for teaching and for writing really come from about the same place; retirement has happily diverted the channel back into writing and my new love, painting. I have also been a member of one of Well for the Journey’s Group Spiritual Direction gatherings and previously led a program about exploring dream imagery with a Jungian lens.