COST: $25 /  Minimum of 3 / Maximum of 12 / All ability levels

   Painting Birds
   
   I see them coming
   Walls of winter waves 
   Ragged pointed shapes
   Signs of what
         Will come;
   Black wings against

         Night stars.

Using photos with poetry is a stimulating prompt for the writer and a bonus for the reader—especially in the age of social media. A poem can be inspired by a photograph, or finding a compelling photograph for a poem can be an exciting collaboration. The narrative, the sub-text, and the beauty of both forms can be astonishingly enhanced using this technique.

It will get you writing!  

Please bring a computer or notebook and a cell phone with a camera if possible. 

Hands on Art Registration

Raymond King Shurtz has written more than 30 plays, three published with Samuel French and Anchorage Press/Dramatic Publishing. The Founding Artistic Director of Playwright’s Workshop Theatre in Phoenix, Raymond produced eighty new plays in his 12-year tenure with the company. In 1998, he began teaching, theatre, film and humanities at Metro Arts, a high school for the performing and visual arts in Phoenix, Arizona, where he taught and produced another ten years of new theatre. His play, Blue Baby, A Memoir won the Playwriting Fellowship in 2003 from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Since 2008, he has worked as a free-lance director, actor, writer, and musician. In 2009, Raymond produced and performed his one man show, Bohemian Cowboy at The Elephant Theatre, which was the ‘pick of the week’ in The LA Weekly, and subsequently performed it approximately seventy-five times in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Southern Utah, and twenty-three shows in Austin, Texas. He also fronts a country/rock/western band, Out on Bail, and also performs solo acoustic shows for Hilton Hotels. His Anthology, ‘Seven Plays of the American West’ was released in 2019 by Five Sisters Press. All of his plays are available on Amazon, Dramatic Publishing, Samuel French, and Five Sisters Press.