Poetry of Nature 2024 — A Year of Poetic Medicine

We invite you to join us! 

We offer 2 levels of membership - a monthly Poetic Medicine Circle, and a Letters Circle (letters-only) option. All participants will receive NanLeah’s letters, which arrive on the first Sunday of each month. Letters feature selected Nature poems, Nature images, quotes for every season, and plenty of poem-making prompts to support and inspire you as you co-create and deepen your connections with Nature and your inner landscape. Experience with poetry and poem making are not necessary. An example letter is available here.

Letters Circle subscriptions are available at any point during the year through either a one-time donation using this link or by a monthly subscription to the Letters Level of Membership. 

POETRY OF NATURE - A Year of Poetic Medicine

Two levels of membership are available for registration: a Letters Circle option and a monthly Poetic Medicine Poetry Circle.​ Please note that the PON Poetry Circle co-facilitated by NanLeah and Geoff fills quickly and our circle is limited to 12 participants. We meet from February through November, on the 2nd Monday of each month from 1-3 PT.  Registration for the 2024 PON Poetry Circle is full as of January 29th. 

The Poetry Circle dates are: February 12, March 11, April 8, May 13, June 10, July 8, August 12, September 9, October 14, November 11

“The determination to know a particular place, in my experience, is consistently rewarded. And every natural place, to my mind, is open to being known. And somewhere in this process a person begins to sense that they themselves are becoming known, so that when they are absent from that place they know that place misses them. And this reciprocity, to know and be known, reinforces a sense that one is necessary in the world.”

—Barry Lopez

Our planetary predicament calls for all possible creative responses. Poems of Nature and poem making can help us tap into the catalyzing intelligence and reciprocity of Nature. The Institute for Poetic Medicine’s annual Poetry of Nature program, fondly known as PON, invites participants to become more sensitively attuned, to know and be known by your “neck of the woods”. We are celebrating our fifth year of Poetry of Nature, which is a part of IPM’s Year of Poetic Medicine series.

We offer 2 levels of membership - a monthly Poetic Medicine Circle, and a Letters Circle (letters-only) option. All participants will receive NanLeah’s letters, which arrive on the first Sunday of each month. Letters feature selected Nature poems, Nature images, quotes for every season, and plenty of poem-making prompts to support and inspire you as you co-create and deepen your connections with Nature and your inner landscape. Experience with poetry and poem making are not necessary.

Our Poetic Medicine circle convenes February through November on Zoom and is co-led by poet and Nature photographer NanLeah with poet and climate change activist Geoff Oelsner. We meet the second Monday of each month from 1:00 – 3:00 Pacific.

Letters Circle subscriptions are available any point during the year through either a one-time donation using this link or by a monthly subscription to the Letters Level of Membership. An example letter is available here.

Throughout our 2024 journey we will practice curiosity, openness, and deep listening. We will invite you to share your poems, Nature experiences, and anything else that inspires you in our private, virtual Poetry of Nature (PON) Commons. Our commons is a place to show up, be seen and heard, and listened into being. A place to know and be known by your fellow PON journeyers. All contributors retain their copyrights to their work.

The Poetry of Nature has never been more relevant than now. Each year as PON has grown, we are constantly amazed and lifted by those who share their unique Nature experiences, expressions of love, beauty, and concerns for our Earth. We are always heartened by how quickly we deepen into sacred community and live and love more deeply our one wild and precious life.

“As I walk with you through your surrounds and feel your appreciation of Earth and her children- the trees, the birds, the rain, I feel more than healed- I feel emboldened to protect this inestimable gift, and I feel grateful to people like NanLeah and Geoff who are using their gifts to enlist us all in the most urgent call.”  ~ Cathey Capers, IPM Poetry Partner — Poetry as A Tool for Wellness

The Summer Day

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 ~ Mary Oliver

Space in the Poetry Circle is limited to 12 people. Poetry Circle registration closes February 1st.

Letters Circle subscriptions are available at any point during the year by subscribing here.

An example letter is available here.