Freepik.com
Illustration of someone hiking on a page of a journal on which a hand is also writing.
Madison’s On the Yahara Writing Center isn’t trying to turn anyone into the next Henry David Thoreau. Although if that happened, that would be okay too.
Troy Hess, the center’s founder and guiding spirit, started leading small group classes on poetry, nature writing, and mindfulness almost six years ago as informal get-togethers in area coffee shops. “It grew out of the Social Innovation and Sustainability Leadership master’s degree program at Edgewood,” says Hess, who was enrolled in the program at the time. (It has since been discontinued.) Participants were to “come up with a community-bound project” as a capstone, and that project was an “incubator” for what would become On the Yahara.
There’s still no brick-and-mortar “center.” Classes take place in a variety of settings. Hess has led sessions at the Pheasant Branch Conservancy, Olbrich Gardens and the UW Arboretum, conducted book groups at the Middleton and Waunakee public libraries, and gathered poetry lovers together under the rubric of the Mary Oliver Society — celebrating the much-loved American poet, who died in 2019. And since the pandemic he has conducted many a class over Zoom.
While the pandemic put a damper on meeting face-to-face, it also opened up a whole new audience for On the Yahara, says Hess. Nature was suddenly one of the few available entertainment options. People were stuck at home with time to follow up on abandoned writing projects. Many were looking for new avenues to explore and any kind of community to explore them with.
After the stay-at-home orders hit in 2020, Hess decided to try offering his Mary Oliver class as an online option through the UW Arboretum. “We had no idea what to expect but decided we needed eight participants to run the class and we had 45 sign up,” he says. “That was a highlight for participation.”
Troy Hess in a rocky area.
Troy Hess: New avenues to explore.
On the Yahara attracts people who have long considered themselves writers, says Hess, but who ended up getting turned off by a more critical academic approach to writing or poetry. “I think they’re looking for a safe, mobile, flexible, low-pressure way of getting back into it and talking about poetry. I try to demystify what poetry is, present it as something so many people like even if secretly. And that it comes more naturally to us than we might think.”
Classes tend to be “low-key” but “we get into some really good conversations,” says Hess.
Susan Miller has taken several classes through On the Yahara, including one on eco-poetry held at the Arboretum last fall. “Hiking with a group and stopping every few minutes to read a poem was so wonderful,” Miller says. She calls Hess “a patient teacher” who has opened up for her “less rational” ways of thinking about writing and poetry.
A project Hess finds helpful is to assign people to write a poem a day. The need for speed helps writers avoid the trap of thinking that their output needs to be perfect, or that poetry needs to come from “a great inspiration.”
Other Hess classes have included “Writing Nature Memories” and “Writing Mindfulness and Eastern Poetry.” He leads a Nature Lover’s Book Group, ongoing at the Middleton Public Library on the last Tuesday of each month. The March schedule includes a class on Mary Oliver’s essays and “The Poetry of Well Being” among others; one-on-one sessions are also available.
Costs for classes usually range from $5 to $25, though some offered through sponsoring agencies, like the libraries, are free.
While he wants to keep some Zoom options open, he is looking forward to getting more classes back outside, and face-to-face.
“People are craving that connection, something beyond social media,” says Hess.
