Date: Saturday, March 21, 2026
Time: 11 am to 8 pm.
- Writing Workshop from 11:00 to 6:30 (includes lunch and dinner).
- Free public reading at 7 pm.
- Jeff will also be involved in the Rainbow worship service on Sunday, March 22.
Facilitator/Leader: Dr. Jeff Gundy 
Event description: Join Dr. Jeff Gundy for a day-long generative poetry workshop for poets of all levels and an open-to-the-public evening poetry reading by Dr. Gundy and other poets. Whether you have been writing poetry for years or only occasionally, this workshop invites you to continue your poetry-writing journey. The workshop begins at 11:00 with lunch, continues through an afternoon of writing, and, after dinner together, will be followed by an evening poetry reading at 7 pm that is open to the public.
Just as “it’s possible to live on bread and water,” Jeff Gundy says, “it’s possible to live without poetry. But life is better with it.” . . . “Poetry is a tremendous personal and communal resource, a great storehouse of wisdom, beauty, consolation and joy,” [as quoted in EMU News, 2018 by Christopher Clymer Kurtz]
Facilitator/Leader bio: Jeff Gundy grew up on a farm in central Illinois and studied at Goshen College and Indiana University, where he earned his Ph.D. His fourteen books include Reports from an Interior Province: New and Selected Poems (Dos Madres. 2025), Wind Farm: Landscape with Stories and Towers (Dos Madres, creative nonfiction, 2021). His work appears in The Sun, Georgia Review, Christian Century,, Image, and dozens of other journals. Among his many awards are a 2008 Fulbright lectureship in Salzburg, and the Ohio Poet of the Year award for Somewhere Near Defiance. Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Poet in Residence at Bluffton University, he is at work on a project with the working title Phantom Power(s).
Space is limited to 25 participants
Fill out the registration form including one poem that you have written.
Cost of the event: $25.00 payable by credit card.
Things to bring along: Bring a pen/pencil and a writing journal.
Accessibility: Accessibility: ADA compliant including an elevator to the meeting space level
Drinks, Lunch and dinner are included.
For questions, contact Lonnie Buerge, Coordinator, at arts@rainbowmennonite.org.