Bethlehem poet to hold class on memoir writing

Dana Wildsmith is a well-published poet from Bethlehem. She will be teaching a workshop at the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation Center in Watkinsville.
 

The well-traveled Dana Wildsmith always has maintained an affinity for words.

An author of five published books of poetry, Wildsmith balances her time between taking care of 40 acres on her family's farm in Bethlehem and writing. And she still finds time to teach English as a second language to adults at the Winder campus of Lanier Technical College.
 

Wildsmith's most recent book of poetry, 2005's "One Good Hand," led her to begin writing in an entirely different style, that of memoir. Her first nonfiction work, "Back to Abnormal," reflects her life on a farm in the middle of so-called progress.
 

"The book came out of my last book of poetry," said Wildsmith, whose first book of poetry was published in 1995. "I wrote this nonfiction book about where we live now. We're living on a 200-year-old family farm in the midst of growth all around us and the English classes I teach reference another kind of growth, the cultural growth in our area.
 

"I realized there were some things I just couldn't say with poetry, so I started writing essays, which I reworked into a long nonfiction work. ('Back to Abnormal') is about life on this old piece of land, surrounded by all this growth and change."
 

A skilled instructor in language, Wildsmith has served as a writer-in-residence, teacher or associate artist at locales like the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta, the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, the Fitton Arts Center in Hamilton, Ohio and the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna, Fla.
 

Bringing her subject matter a little closer to home, Wildsmith will lead a three-day workshop on memoir writing at the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation Center in downtown Watkinsville. The workshop will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Jan. 17, 24 and 31.
 

Recognizing that not everyone might be able to make all three events, Wildsmith said that while the program is progressive, each session is self- contained and builds on the previous session.

"The focus is to take the material in your life and make it useful to someone besides your children and your mother," Wildsmith said. "It's a process of transferring fact into something else - it's inviting others into your life who might otherwise not be interested."
 

"We've been trying to offer more with the literary arts at OCAF, and this is an excellent offering we have now," said OCAF assistant director Cindy Farrell, who added that the memoir workshop came about through support from the center's writing group, which meets at the facility every Monday afternoon.

If she'd never written a word of poetry and stuck strictly to the "material" in her life, Wildsmith would have plenty to write about. The daughter of a Methodist minister and the wife of a career military man, Wildsmith rarely has stayed in any one area long. As a child, her father ministered in Cordele, Vidalia, Macon, Jeffersonville and Savannah (to name but a few towns).
 

"I'm not from anywhere - my dad was a minister and I married a Navy man," she said. "When I was growing up, we lived all over Georgia and then I spent 25 years going up and down the East Coast."
 

Wildsmith tells people she's from Savannah because she went to high school there; she was enrolled at the University of Georgia but eventually graduated from Virginia Wesleyan when her husband, Don, was stationed there.
 

"Before my father retired, he'd never owned a home because he always lived in the parsonage," Wildsmith said. "He wanted to buy some land in the mountains, but found this farm in Bethlehem and bought it in 1971. We lived here between the time my husband got home from Vietnam and joined the Navy."
 

Now retired from the Navy, Don Wildsmith returned to school and earned a degree in technical theater from UGA. He now works as the Cultural Arts Director for the City of Winder. Married for 37 years, the couple has a daughter, Snow, who works in North Carolina as young-adult librarian and budding author.
 

In previous memoir workshops where she's taught, Wildsmith said all kinds of writers are attracted.

"I've had poets, novelists, short-story writers ranging in terms of experience from people who have been published to people who've never written anything," she said. "Some people come in with a story almost completely written while others come in without an idea as to what their story will be. I had one older woman come to a session because she wanted to write something just for her children to read and she didn't know quite how to go about it."
 

Wildsmith described the workshop of being "both pedagogic and hands-on."
 

"I do a combination of writing exercises and talks about why they're doing the exercises," she said. "And there are some assignments to complete between classes."
 

It's clear folks are interested in what Wildsmith is offering.
 

Farrell said five people - members of the OCAF writer's group - had signed up for the workshop before it officially was advertised and several more have since registered.
 

"Our max is about 15 people, so you should sign up early," said Farrell, who pointed out that the fee for the three-day workshop is $150. "This is the first time Dana has been with us and if interest is strong enough, we'll see if we can offer a second class."
 

For more information on poet-author Dana Wildsmith, visit www.danawildsmith.com. For more information on Wildsmith's memoir writing class at the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation, call (706) 769-4565 or visit www.myocaf.com.
 

This article was originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Wednesday, December 31, 2008