Poetry of Vision & Transformation

Poetry of Vision & Transformation

A retreat with Marie Howe

Poetry brings us to ourselves. It opens doors. It creates paths we didn’t know were there. Poetry recognizes us – we see ourselves in its mirror: our griefs, our loves, our joys, our bewilderments. And its visionary power can transform us, change us, so we are refreshed, resuscitated, alive to more within and without us.

How can the spirit of poetry help us to pay attention to what is right in front of us? How can it remind us of what we often forget? How can it transform a story we have told ourselves over and over and over? How can we recreate our lives by reimagining the past? How can we create a future, a world we really want but might be afraid to imagine?

I have longed to travel to the island of Iona, the holy island, island of silence and deep connection to the sea, the sky, the spirit, and many deep voices. Come with me to experience the poetry of transformation and vision.

Each day we will have time to read, reflect, and talk in a gathering which will be comfortable, caring, and uncritical. I’ll share contemporary poems as well as poems written in the past. We will have time to write and time to share. This retreat is open to everyone: beginning writers, experienced writers, and people who have never written a poem before. All are welcome.

Our sessions will take place in the beautiful new Village Hall – a short walk from our hotel. There will be plenty of free time to explore the island, to join daily worship at Iona Abbey if you wish, and to meet with members of the Iona community.

Our experience on Iona will be coordinated by the very wonderful scholar and liturgist Pat Bennett, who is based in Glasgow and is a member of the Iona Community.

Arrive Saturday 13th March, Depart friday 19th March 2027

Marie Howe is the author of five volumes of poetry, New and Selected Poems, which won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Magdalene: Poems; The Kingdom of Ordinary Time; The Good Thief; and What the Living Do, and she is the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic.

Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Agni, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and The Partisan Review, among others. She has been a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and a recipient of NEA and Guggenheim fellowships, and Stanley Kunitz selected Howe for a Lavan Younger Poets Prize from the American Academy of Poets. In 2015, she received the Academy of American Poets Poetry Fellowship, and from 2012-2014, she served as the Poet Laureate of New York State. She is a member of The Academy of Arts and Letters.