The Deschutes Public Library and Second Sunday are offering a free poetry writing workshop with local writer Judith Montgomery. The workshop will take place on Sunday, June 12, from 11:00 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. at the Deschutes Public Library Administration Building. Light refreshments will be served. This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. You can register by calling Lisa McGean at 541-312-1034 or online.

Workshop instructor Judith Montgomery is interested in writing from different points of view, and says, “What if Red Riding Hood was told by the wolf? The mother? The hunter?” And she adds, “History, it’s said, is written by the victors—but what if someone else told that tale—or any other? How else might we enter the story?—by telling it slant, telling it from unexpected points of view.”

Workshop participants will set the stage for writing by exploring “phantom narrator” poems by Cornelius Eady and contemporary twists on fairytales to open possibilities for alternative narrators—real or imagined bystanders, animals, inanimate objects, and other non-traditional storytellers—to see how differently events may be understood, undercut, and illuminated. Participants will write, at least twice, in response to photographs, paintings, and other artifacts to explore both the apparent and the many hidden stories. Participants are encouraged to bring such artifacts to share.

Judith Montgomery is the author of “Passion” (Oregon Book Award for Poetry 2000), “Red Jess” (2006), and “Pulse and Constellation” (2007).  Her poems appear in such journals as Ars Medica, The Bellingham Review, Dogwood, and Northwest Review. She lives and writes in Bend, where she is working on two new manuscripts with the aid of fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission and Literary Arts.