Join The Poetry Society of New York family for a good, old-fashioned weekend writing retreat in the Catskills!***If this event is a little out of your price range, please contact tova@poetrysocietyny.org to learn about our Work-Study discounts, PSNY member discounts, and available payment plans!***Come get inspired in the beautiful Catskills mountains of upstate New York! We invite you to sit by a campfire under a sky full of stars with a group of poets reading poems and singing songs. We’ll fill our days with forest hikes, building fires, eating delicious food, and of course, sitting down to write. Sounds like a dream come true? We think so, too. This is first and foremost a poetry campout—we sleep in tents, walk around the woods with flashlights, collect sticks, and share poems beside the campfire. Think “summer camp,” but one that’s run by a wild lot of poets! Each participant is encouraged and instructed through the creation and performance of new poetic work, emphasis on performance, we love hearing poets read their work outloud. We believe the experience of reading poetry aloud and also hearing it are incredibly crucial to honoring the poems we create. The long weekend features a program of activities that include meditative free-writing, group creative writing workshops, campfire readings, performance help, wilderness walks, wildcrafting sessions, fire building instruction, summer foraging, yoga classes, guided meditation, forest-bathing, breath-work, and three prepared meals each day. Every Poetry Camp event concludes with a talent show on the final night. While no one is required to perform everyone is encouraged to and supported through that process. We are poets and we are also performers. We've been at this for a while now and we love it. Helping other poets and performers find both healing and power in their voice and the performance of their artform has always been central the the mission of The Poetry Society of New York. Participants are invited to camp on-site or to stay in canvas bell tents or rooms in a farmhouse on-site. Participants may also stay in self-chosen nearby lodging & gather each day on site for meals and activities. There are plenty of Airbnb’s, traditional bed & breakfasts, hotels, and luxury campgrounds in the area with extra amenities. Simply contact us if you'd like our staff to recommend such facilities.PLEASE NOTE: Proof of vaccination against COVID-19 is required to attend. Please send a photo of your vaccination card or screenshot of your Excelsior Pass to info@poetrysocietyny.org.If getting a glamping tent or room in the farmhouse, and you'd like to bring a guest to stay in the room or tent with you, you can just purchase a second Campout Admission ticket for them. No pets this year. Sorry folks!TeachersEve Bradford is an educator, artist and oracular practitioner working at the intersections of art, activism, medicine and magic to create work that is an uncompromising call into authentic aliveness and embodied belonging.Eve has been producing events, curating content, facilitating community ceremony, creating ritual theater & film and generally contributing to the evolution of underground culture for the last 20 years. With Isis Indriya, she is the co-founder of Living Village Culture and The Compass at Lightning in a Bottle, as well as a collaborator and teacher with the Academy of Oracle Arts. She has toured by sailboat creating traveling feasts of story, song and food through the Gulf Islands with the Sea to Seed Tour, invoked the humanizing and healing power of story and food with the Feasting the Enemy dinner series, and been a part-time whore with the Poetry Brothel. She was a founding member of Reclaim the Streets NYC, dedicated to undermining the privatization of public space and community gardens through unpermitted celebrations in the streets and subways. She graduated from the Gallatin Division of NYU with an independently designed BA in Art Making and Cultural Process, and from California College of the Arts with an MFA in Creative Writing.After a series of profound life-changing events in 2017, Eve began training intensively and is now a senior teacher and staff member within the Mogadao practice tradition of mythosomatic qigong, depth sexuality, and Post-Daoist philosophy. She is also a core player in Zhen’s SACRA Immanence Theater, a troupe dedicated to theater as the apotheosis of sacred embodiment, radical creativity and queer ontology. Eve currently stewards a small acequia-fed homestead and heritage orchard on the lands of the Tiwa and Pueblo People in what is now often referred to as Northern New Mexico. She offers drop-in classes, retreat immersions and private sessions that call upon the full capacity of our integrated personal ecology in service of full-spectrum health, liberated embodiment, radical expression and deeply rooted ecstasy.Stephanie Berger is the Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director, and a co-founder of The Poetry Society of New York. She is also a poet and performance artist. She is co-creator with Nicholas Adamski of The Poetry Brothel, The New York City Poetry Festival, & The Typewriter Project. She is the author of IN THE MADAME’S HAT BOX (Dancing Girl Press, 2011) & co-author with Carina Finn of THE GREY BIRD: THIRTEEN EMOJI POEMS IN TRANSLATION (Coconut Books, 2014). With Jackie Braje, she founded Milk Press, a publisher & nurturer of poetic collaborations. Her work is largely collaborative, interactive, & community-oriented; & it straddles the worlds of literature, immersive theatre, & public art. Stephanie earned a B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Southern California, received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the New School, & taught in the English Department at Pace University.Nicholas Adamski is a poet and a producer. Nicholas has co-produced and performed in over 250 Poetry Brothel productions since 2008, alongside his longtime collaborator Stephanie Berger. The two have also produced The New York City Poetry Festival since it's debut in 2011. Along with countless other schemes and plots the two have also teamed up to produce Poetry Camp which takes poetry out into the woods to breathe some fresh air for a change. Nicholas is passionate about creating opportunities for people to have their voices heard. In addition to building stages, Nicholas believes in the power good poetry contains when it is shared. Hearing poetry read allowed has offered Nicholas more crucial information than almost any other form of education. Sharing this education is a large part of his life's work. He believes in poetry as a powerful tool for both healing and creation. Nicholas lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York, which he sometimes refers to as the upper, upper, upper West Side. He is passionate about so many things but travel and nature most accurately describe where you are most likely to find him: at his home in the woods or on the road.Matthew Yeager's poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, and elsewhere. His long poems have been included in several anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2005 and 2010. "A Big Ball of Foil in a Small NY Apartment," his micro-budget short film, was an official selection at eleven film festivals in 2009-2010, picking up three awards. Other distinctions include the Barthelme Prize in short prose, multiple fellowships to MacDowell and Yaddo, and inclusion in Oprah Magazine’s “Top 30 Love Poems of All-Time.” The co-curator of the KGB Monday Night Poetry Series since 2011, Yeager worked in the NYC catering industry for fourteen fucking years in various capacities: truck driver, waiter, sanitation helper, sanitation captain, bartender, bar captain, lead captain, producer. His first book, Like That (Forklift Books, 2016) received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly. He is currently a doctoral fellow at the University of Cincinnati, where he lives with the poet Chelsea Whitton and their cats Merle and Dolly. Kate Belew is a Brooklyn-based Writer, Poet, Storyteller, and Witch. Her work spans genres and spaces: poetry, nonprofits, immersive theatre, health & wellness, herbalism, witchcraft, and the psychedelic. She have a decade of experience in writing facilitation and teaching, copywriting, social media, and content marketing. Kate offers Mercury Meetings to help create and craft intuitive and supportive content plans. She is the founder of The Bardo, a writing school for Word Witches and Storytellers. You can also find her on a weekly podcast called Magick & Alchemy. Kate is the author of a chapbook called 13 Writing Spells with LoomBound. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College in Writing and has studied, Herbalism, Astrology, Energy Healing, and Green Witchcraft.