Blog
Meet the Teaching Artist: Honing the Craft of Poetic Image with Lindsey Royal Wayland
by Writing Workshops Staff
4 days ago
Step into the luminous world of poetry with Lindsey Royal Wayland. In her upcoming workshop, Honing the Craft of Poetic Image, she invites students to explore poetry through the lens of deep noticing, transforming seemingly ordinary objects and actions into portals for timeless creativity. With her trademark grace and a curriculum rich in sensory exercises, guided prompts, and readings from master poets, Wayland illuminates how everyday images ground us in the present while connecting us to the shared threads of humanity.
If you’ve ever yearned to craft poetry that stirs the soul—your own and others’—this is your invitation. Expect to leave with not just new poems, but a profound toolkit for sensate writing, a deeper connection to the world around you, and a shared creative community. Wayland’s students describe her classes as “priceless gems” and “a gift to yourself,” where the process of writing becomes an act of intentional beauty.
Join us as we delve into the art of poetic observation with a teacher whose impact, like her work, is both powerful and enduring. This is more than a workshop; it’s a journey into the universal truths of the everyday.
Hi Lindsey, please introduce yourself to our audience.
I’m a poet, calligrapher, and researcher. My work explores the beauty of everyday moments, finding profound meaning in small, simple images, objects, ideas, and experiences. I have an MFA in Poetry and a background in depth psychology with a decades-long Zen Buddhism practice. I am very interested in nuance, particulars, and origin stories.
What made you want to teach this specific class? Is it something you are focusing on in your own writing practice? Have you noticed a need to focus on this element of craft?
This class grew out of my own practice of observing and honoring everyday images through poetry. The most moving poems often hinge on vivid, resonant images that bring a shared experience to life. The best poems are like the best people, I feel so alive when I'm with them. Right now, I’m working on a poetry collection that centers on the intersection of mindfulness, language, and domesticity, so this focus on images feels quite personal.
I’ve also noticed that writers sometimes struggle with translating what they see and feel into imagery that resonates, and this class is designed to bridge that gap.
Give us a breakdown of how the course is going to go. What can the students expect? What is your favorite part about this class you've dreamed up?
Students can expect a confluence of generative writing exercises, close readings of masterful poems, and thoughtful discussions, plus a few surprises that cultivate the art of seeing. We’ll circumambulate the craft of imagery, exploring how to observe the world with fresh eyes and translate those grounded and personal observations into poems that reflect universal truths. My favorite part of this class is helping students unlock their unique voice by connecting deeply with the world around them. Students can expect to experience how much poetry already exists in their everyday lives.
What was your first literary crush?
E.E. Cummings & Matsuo Bashō
What are you currently reading?
Right now, I’m reading The Gateless Gate by Kōun Yamada, I Love Hearing Your Dreams by Matthew Zapruder, Daybreak by Claire Malroux, and Mountains and Rivers Without End by Gary Snyder. I’m also rereading The Lives of the Heart by Jane Hirshfield and The Essential W.S. Merwin by W.S. Merwin. I always keep a translation of the Tao Te Ching close
How do you choose what you're working on? When do you know it is the next thing you want to write all the way to THE END?
I follow a thread of curiosity that stems from a question I keep returning to. When I’m working on a project, it’s almost always a meditation on or a response to that question. Typically, when a new question emerges, I find myself fully immersed in it—it becomes a lens through which I experience everything. I explore it from many different angles, and while each project may feel complete at a certain moment, I know I’ll keep returning to these questions in new ways, through new work, again and again.
Where do you find inspiration?
I find inspiration in the small, quiet details of life like the absence of the last maple leaves on the tree or the sound of pages turning at the library, in newspaper headlines, in events and experiences. Curiosity about, attention to, and astonishment by daily life leads my inspiration.
What is the best piece of writing wisdom you've received that you can pass along to our readers? How did it impact your work? Why has this advice stuck with you?
Pay attention. Attention is the most important aspect of being a poet and, I believe, a human. The art of attention impacts my work in focus, craft, and content. By paying attention to my writerly life I give life and space to my practice. By paying attention to craft, I am cultivating the art form. And by listening with attention to the content of the poems, I am giving breath to the inner voice that speaks quietly through my poems. To pay attention has stuck with me because it covers every aspect of writing (and living) for me.
What is your favorite book to recommend on the craft of writing? Why this book?
Jane Hirshfield's Nine Gates and Ten Windows both offer a bountiful glimpse into the vitality and breath of poetry. The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux are rich with exercises and a comprehensive approach to various aspects of craft.
Bonus question: What’s your teaching vibe?
Warm and competent, effervescent and clear, intellectual and accessible.
You can sign up for Lindsey’s upcoming class: The Every Day: How Honing the Craft of Image Brings Alive the Poem, and avoid the waitlist.
Lindsey Royal Wayland is a poet, calligrapher, and researcher with an MFA in poetry from Pacific University. A finalist for the 2024 Patricia Cleary Miller Award for Poetry by New Letters, her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in swamp pink, Southern Humanities Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Amsterdam Review, the Haiku Society of America, and others. Wayland is the recipient of the Washburn-Hayes merit scholarship and two Port Townsend Arts Commission grants. A native Texan, she lives with her husband and three children on the Salish Sea.
