The Soldner Center for the Arts and Innovation in Aspen, Colorado is excited to announce the inaugural year of the Ginny Soldner Poetry Collaborative. This continuing commitment to the art of writing by the Soldner Center is in honor of the legacy of Ginny Soldner.
As an artist, Ginny painted large abstract pieces of personal and philosophical content. “We are emanations of energy. Our thoughts, emotions, actions, and relationships create constantly changing design of color, lights, sounds; a dazzling kaleidoscope of shifting energies. I overlap, interlock, and intersperse color, shape, and space,” wrote Ginny to describe her paintings.
In addition to painting, poetry was an important mode of expression for Ginny, and she attended the Aspen Writers Workshop for many years. She is fondly remembered as warm and engaging who enjoyed welcoming friends, students, and the curious and creative into the home and studio she and her husband, ceramicist Paul Soldner, hand-built over 40 years.
The Ginny Soldner Poetry Collaborative is an expansion of the successful poetry workshops held in 2023 and 2024. This year, the Poetry Collaborative is offering a 12-month intensive workshop led by published poet and author Heather Swan and will be open to 15 poets of all levels. The initial workshop will be held June 6-8 at the Soldner Center in Aspen. The remaining 11 months will be remote via Zoom.
“Poetry is a pathway to know yourself and the world more deeply,” shares Heather Swan. This year’s workshop is entitled, A Year of Poetry and Introspection. Heather, author of several books of poetry and a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will host all the sessions and will invite a variety of visiting poets to meet with the group throughout the year. The monthly sessions will be generative spaces for writing, reading and critique.
Space is limited. Applications for 2025-26 are now closed. For more information and application guidelines, click the button below.
