Sundog Poetry Center, Inc. - Tamra Higgins

Tamra J. Higgins, MFA, M.Ed. and Sundog Poetry Center, Inc.

Tamra J. Higgins holds an MFA from the Stonecoast Writing Program, University of Southern Maine and a M.Ed. from Johnson State College. After teaching in Vermont public schools for 19 years, she founded Sundog Poetry Center, Inc., a nonprofit 501c3 organization that promotes poets and poetry throughout Vermont. Higgins is current President of the Poetry Society of Vermont. Her work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Passagers, Modern Haiku, Avocet, The Aurorean, The Mountain Troubadour, Vermont Magazine, and other publications. She is the author of Nothing Saved Us: Poems of the Korean War and co-editor of Tasteful Traditions: A Collection of Cambridge History, Memories, and Family Recipes. Higgins lives in Jeffersonville, Vermont.

Higgins brings poetry alive in classrooms by linking poetry to units of study that teachers are planning or that students are already engaged in. As examples, she has given workshops connecting poetry to kinds of energy in a 6th grade science classroom and to a multi-disciplinary unit on survival for 8th graders in which she used her book, Nothing Saved Us: Poems of the Korean War, during which she and the students also discussed the integration of history and poetry. She is also available for other engagements such as readings and workshops for teachers. 

Fees are negotiable and depend on type of activity (i.e. poetry reading, workshop for students, workshop for teachers, retreat, etc.) and duration (i.e. 1 hour reading to several days in a classroom). 

In addition to working in school classrooms, she has given poetry workshops to such groups as cancer-survivors and the entire staff of a nationally published magazine. Workshop topics include but are not limited to An Introduction to Poetry, Creating Images in Poetry, Poetry of Place, Reading and Writing Robert Frost, Do You Haiku, Playing with Form in Poetry, Narrative Poetry, Nature Poetry, and others. 

Sundog Poetry Center is located on 46 acres 1 mile outside of Jeffersonville, Vermont. Workshops and retreats can be held on site, which includes post and beam house with full kitchen, meadows, nature trails, community garden, platform overlooking wetlands, six resident sheep, and a (very) small yurt. Accommodations are available 1 - 7 miles from the site at various inns, hotels, bed and breakfasts, and ski resort condos. Retreats are also held at our alternate site on Fielder Farm, Huntington Center, Vermont. A summer camp for students will pilot on our site in the summer of 2015. See www.sundogpoetry.org for more details of upcoming events.