Registration is full, but we hope you will join us at 4 pm for a reading from participants & the workshop instructors!
The Red Barn Studio Museum is excited to announce a new poetry event on Saturday, September 27, 2025, at 212 S. Main Street in Lindsborg, a day featuring workshops and a public poetry reading with three Kansas-based poets: Caleb Braun Assistant Professor of English at Bethany College, Cydnee A. Reese a spoken word artist, and Traci Brimhall, the current Poet Laureate of Kansas. See more information about each poet below.
The event will include three workshops throughout the day, a lunch for participants, and an afternoon poetry reading that is open to the public. Register online or by calling 785-227-2217 or email raymer@redbarnstudio.org.
Cost:
- REGISTRATION REQUIRED BY September 22nd
- Students: Free
- General Public: $10 per workshop or $20 for two or more
- Lunch will be provided for all workshop participants
Schedule & Wokshop Details:
- 10:00–11:30 AM – Workshop with Caleb Braun
- Objects of Attention: Concreteness and Abstraction: This interactive workshop will invite you to consider the way poets make meaning through the interplay of concrete images and abstract ideas. We will read together a variety of poets, such as Tu Fu, Arthur Sze, and Lucille Clifton, and then produce our own object focused poems.
- Objects of Attention: Concreteness and Abstraction: This interactive workshop will invite you to consider the way poets make meaning through the interplay of concrete images and abstract ideas. We will read together a variety of poets, such as Tu Fu, Arthur Sze, and Lucille Clifton, and then produce our own object focused poems.
- 11:30–12:30 PM – Lunch provided by The Red Barn Studio Museum
- 12:30–2:00 PM – Workshop with Cydnee A. Reese
- Let Go of the Outcome, Lean Into the Unknown: A Collaborative Experience: Come cultivate a space for community and connection through a poetry workshop facilitated by Cydnee A. Reese! This is a safe space for poets of all levels of experience. All materials will be provided, we just need you! Why? Because you deserve it! How? Together!
- Let Go of the Outcome, Lean Into the Unknown: A Collaborative Experience: Come cultivate a space for community and connection through a poetry workshop facilitated by Cydnee A. Reese! This is a safe space for poets of all levels of experience. All materials will be provided, we just need you! Why? Because you deserve it! How? Together!
- 2:00–3:30 PM – Workshop with Traci Brimhall
- Between Clarity and Wilderness: Tuning Your Tension: Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension in poems. We will look at poems that model a balance of tension between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion and intellect. We will then use exercises to generate new work that tries to balance our inherent strengths by employing vocabulary, syntax, and tonal choices we normally shy away from. We will also workshop some new pieces. If you have a natural gift for image and metaphor, what happens when you incorporate philosophy or meditation? If you tend to write simple, declarative sentences, how would your work change if you wrote a poem in a single, long, winding sentence and focused on the musicality of language rather than clarity? Sign up for a tune up.
- Between Clarity and Wilderness: Tuning Your Tension: Every writer has their strengths, but we often tend to over-rely on what we already know we do well. In this workshop we will focus more on how to create a balance of tension in poems. We will look at poems that model a balance of tension between clarity and wilderness, narrative and music, emotion and intellect. We will then use exercises to generate new work that tries to balance our inherent strengths by employing vocabulary, syntax, and tonal choices we normally shy away from. We will also workshop some new pieces. If you have a natural gift for image and metaphor, what happens when you incorporate philosophy or meditation? If you tend to write simple, declarative sentences, how would your work change if you wrote a poem in a single, long, winding sentence and focused on the musicality of language rather than clarity? Sign up for a tune up.
- 3:30–4:00 PM – Break
- 4:00–5:30 PM – Public Poetry Reading
- Readings by workshop participants
- Caleb Braun
- Cydnee A. Reese
- Traci Brimhall
Meet the Poets:
Caleb Braun’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets, The Gettysburg Review, 32 Poems, and more. He holds an MFA and PhD in English and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Bethany College in Lindsborg. https://calebbraun.com/
Cydnee A. Reese, Stage name Wanderer, is a spoken word poet known for her layered, passionate delivery. A U.S. Air Force Academy alum, she founded the institution’s first funded poetry collective and has won slams in Kansas City, New York, and Colorado Springs. Her work centers on social unity, difficult conversations, and diverse experiences. https://www.wandererspeaks.com/poetry
Traci Brimhall, Traci Brimhall is a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University. She is the author of five collections of poetry, including Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon, 2024). Her poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, The Nation, Orion, The New Republic, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She’s received fellowships from National Endowment for the Arts, the National Park Service, the Academy of American Poets, and Purdue Library’s Special Collections to study the lost poem drafts of Amelia Earhart. She’s the currently the poet-in-residence at the Guggenheim museum and poet laureate for the State of Kansas. https://tracibrimhallpoet.com/
