Writing Workshop, Wednesday. FREE. At Port Angeles Library.

PORT ANGELES — The poet laureate of Washington state came from a whole other land.

Kathleen Flenniken, a former civil engineer at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, knows how it feels to be a grown-up walking into a poetry class — with only the foggiest notion of how to write a poem. 

She did just that when she was 32 years old.

It was 1993, and she’d signed up for Mike Hickey’s poetry writing course at the University of Washington Experimental College — a community education program like the one at Peninsula College.

“It was instant love,” recalled Flenniken, who has since published two books, Famous in 2005 and Plume in 2012; won an array of awards; and established Floating Bridge, a press devoted to poetry. 

Today, as the 2012-2014 poet laureate funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Flenniken travels around the state giving workshops like the one she’ll teach here at 3 p.m. Wednesday.

Registration is open for the program at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St.

Admission is free, and participants can sign up by phoning the library at 360-417-8500, ext. 7750, or emailing lkovell@nols.org.

In the workshop, “I put the emphasis on community and fun,” Flenniken said.

No experience required 

Not a speck of experience is necessary to attend, added librarian Lorrie Kovell, and all materials will be provided for the 90-minute class.

Flenniken will use writing prompts to help participants get started, and she’ll invite people to share their work and ask questions about writing. 

But most of all, she said, this is about enjoying the process: “having fun playing with language and [finding] a new means of expression. We all need ways to express ourselves.”

Flenniken teaches workshops for grade-schoolers all the way up to adults, from complete beginners to poets who have published books. 

Her own first collection of poems, Famous, won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was an American Library Association Notable Book.

Her second and latest book, Plume, is a meditation on growing up in Richland in Hanford’s shadow. It was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams Award.

Kovell urges would-be poets to seize the chance to work in Wednesday’s group writing session. 

“I’ve been to these [poetry] workshops before, and it’s tons of fun to see what bubbles up,” she said.

The workshop “is a fabulous opportunity to work with a really generous, open-hearted person.”