The Poetry Workshop at VHOB Last Night, with Erica Goss, was a big success

Last night's poetry workshop, put on by Erica Goss, Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, was a great event.  Erica is a teacher, as well as a poet, and does an excellent job of leading a workshop.  Although Joni and I were minding the store, and not officially a part of the activities, we still found ourselves caught up in Erica's exercises.  Everybody seemed to really enjoy them.  As one example of what she had her students doing, she asked them to take an object from the store and describe all of its principles.  She also asked everybody to identify their very earliest memories and write them down.  of course, most people did this in a poetic way.  It was a pleasure for VHOB to host this event.  Hopefully, Erica will consider coming back and doing this again.

Here are a few pictures from the event.  In the 1st 2, Erica is reading a little from her new book, Vibrant Words:  Ideas and Inspirations for Poets.  In the 3rd picture, Los Gatos's own author, filmmaker, and poet, Victoria Johnson, is listening to Erica.  And in the last picture, we've got a group shot of the attendees - including Spike Wong (closest to the camera) and Jan McCutcheon (2nd from the left), who own and operate Pushpen Press, the publisher of Erica's books of poetry.