Wellspring of Imagination
Wellspring of Imagination is an extensive poetry program for high school students. It consists of an intensive 3-day retreat with prominent poets, working on writing and presentation of poetry in a spectacular natural setting.
The writing activities are supplemented with hikes, music and presentations from visual artists.
The retreat culminates with a recital for family, teachers, friends and our poetry community.
The teacher/poets will then mentor the students for the next calendar year. At the conclusion of the program, a book of their poetry will be produced.
While we get grant funding some year, the financial support of our generous donors really makes this program possible.
WHAT THE STUDENTS ARE SAYING:
2025 Wellspring Student: “I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to attend and participate in Wellspring this year. This program has been one of the highlights of my year, and I have loved to make new friends and cherish new memories. This time has sparked some serious creative thinking for me. I have created poems that I would never have thought of outside of this camp. Hearing all of the poems from these brilliant young poets has also influenced my skills. The location alone was an outstanding factor for this camp. The area that the cabin was in and the cabin itself both shattered my expectations coming into the camp. Walking into the cabin for the first time, I knew that this was a place I could comfortably call home for the time spent at Wellspring.
I thoroughly enjoyed the bonding time we spent together as a community. I especially enjoyed hiking through the trails, and finding acorns along the path. I feel that this brought me closer to my peers here and inspired some great poetry. My highlight from the whole event was going out in the night with the group to see the stars. We were pleasantly surprised to also find the Northern Lights painting the night sky alongside the stars. This moment was one that every student cherished, a moment that cannot be recreated nor retold to feel the gravity of the experience.”
2025 Wellspring Student: “Wellspring was an amazing experience, and the people were even better. I loved it with all of my heart. Going in at first I didn't know what to expect apart from the fact that I would be writing poetry. I didn't think it would be as emotional healing and transformative as it was. We didn’t only share poetry, we shared our emotions, experiences, and stories which were held together by poetry and our love for writing. Sharing all of that with everyone, especially since it was a small community was amazing. Our identities were able to bounce off of each other creating this amazing atmosphere with so many interesting people. To me the connections that i made with the people at wellspring are what made it so amazing. Just having a safe environment to pour all your heart and creativity into a poem and then being able to share it with others who are going to soak it in deeply creates an ecstatic but warm atmosphere, that I would love to experience all over again.”
