Welcome to A Habit of Writing.
My name is Bethany Reid, and I have an MFA in poetry and PhD in American Literature, both from The University of Washington. I taught college level English and literature classes for 30 years, and now I’m full-time me, writing poetry, essays, short stories, and book reviews (not-so-secretly working on a mystery novel). I facilitate a weekly writing workshop, coach writers one-on-one, and teach poetry classes whenever I’m offered the opportunity. It’s all a complete gift and a joy.
You can read more about me by choosing the about tab, or scoot over to the blog tab to read my weekly (sometimes more) musings about poetry and life.
Keep reading here to see what new things I’m up to.
New things:
- June 18, I will be the featured reader at Traditions Cafe, Olympia, WA, sponsored by OPN (Olympia Poetry Network). More information to come.
- Spring Quarter 2025 I am teaching another poetry class, on-line via Zoom, for CRI, The Creative Retirement Institute. This is CRI’s write-up for the class:
The Poetry of May Swenson (1913-1989)
Presented by: Bethany Reid
4 Tuesdays, May 6 – 27, 2025, 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Who is May Swensen (I heard someone ask)? She is considered one of the most important and original poets of the 20th century. She was a Swedish-American poet who was granted a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Shelley Poetry Award, and many other prestigious awards.
May Swenson’s poetry has been described as keen, authentic, visionary, accessible (also elusive!), and democratic in its vision. Bethany Reid will share how she first fell for May Swensen when she read “The Centaur,” May’s whimsical, gender-twisting poem about a 10-year-old child pretending to be a horse. Bethany has read and studied May Swensen for years and has learned that every reader has their own Swenson. And people don’t always agree on “who” she was. This class will read Swenson’s writings, a sampling of her influences, and consider how she influenced the generations of poets who came after her. Suggested reading: Swenson’s Nature: Poems Old and New (2000). Poems not in Nature will be provided.
Praise for The Pear Tree: Elegy for a Farm
“Bethany Reid’s The Pear Tree: elegy for a farm is more than a haunting elegy for a farm; it’s a powerful evocation of childhood and a vanished way of life. In poems lush with detail, Reid renders the beauty and suffering of bygone days, not with nostalgia but with clear-eyed honesty, as each poem reveals its hidden facets. Under the watchful eye of a pear tree planted by a grandmother on homesteaded land, we witness the pleasure of day-t0-day life rooted in the earth, the heart-wrenching loss of a brother, a father ‘who taught us to choose what matters and put a fence around it,’ a devout mother who can still play the piano when words have flown. ‘Who will gather what we leave behind?’ one poem asks. Moving freely back and forth in time, this well-steeped, finely honed collection offers a complex, satisfying answer.”
—Holly J. Hughes, author of Hold Fast and Passings
“Packed with a century of images and sensory, sensual detail of Southwest Washington logging, farming, and family, this book transported me across time, place, and generations. More than a collection of poems, The Pear Tree expands these people and this place into inspirational lament, lifting family and home to epic levels of life and struggle, love and wonder.”
—Paul Marshall, author of Stealing Foundation Stones
“Love of family, love of land, love of words. […] Reid chronicles stories of her life on a farm in Southwest Washington and the three generations of her family who lived there. The house we grew up in was large, multi- / syllabic. It babbled and raved / in more than one language. (“A Haunted House”). She weaves the everyday and the eternal with keen observation, insight, and unmatched word craft. The many-layered poems yield new treasures with each reading”.
—Colleen Hull Gray, review for Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature for Women [click on the link to read this review on-line]
“The Pear Tree unequivocally establishes Bethany Reid as one of the foremost poets of the Pacific Northwest. The poems, vulnerable and full of tenderness, fairly glitter with the detail and deep past of a childhood home on Elk Creek in Lewis County, Washington State. This book is a great gift.”
Visit this page to find more reviews of The Pear Tree and a video of my 2023 book launch with MoonPath author Debra Elisa.
Bethany Reid is a poet, writer, editor, and writing coach. She has an MFA in poetry and a PhD in American Literature from the University of Washington. For almost thirty years, she taught composition, American literature, and Creative Nonfiction at Everett Community College and elsewhere in the greater Seattle region.
Bethany’s first book, The Coyotes and My Mom: Poems, was published by Bellowing Ark Press in 1990. Her other poetry books are Be Careful (a limited-edition chapbook from Chuckanut Sandstone, 2005); Sparrow, which won the 2012 Kenneth and Geraldine Gell Poetry Prize, selected by Dorianne Laux; and Body My House, published by Seattle’s Goldfish Press in 2018; her chapbook of poetic riffs, “The Thing with Feathers” (inspired by poems of Emily Dickinson), was published in 2020 as part of Triple No. 10 by Ravenna Press. Her parenting memoir, originally a creative nonfiction piece, You Are Very Upset, was published as a Kindle Short by DLG Publishing Partners, also in 2020.
In addition to the Gell Prize, Bethany’s poetry has won numerous awards, including Calyx’s Lois Cranston Memorial Prize, The MacGuffin’s 22nd annual Poet Hunt Contest, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye, and the Olympia Poetry Network’s Jeanne Lohman Prize.
Bethany has been blogging since 2009. Read more on this site, and at One Bad Poem.
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” –Octavia Butler (1947-2006)
Recent Posts
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” –Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Reviews
Sparrow —
“The whole book might be seen as … a parade of tenderness and grief, joy and longing, dreams stubbed out like cigarettes in ashtrays at a diner counter, hopes held like quarter tips in a waitress’s apron pocket on her long walk home….The sensory images are precise and gorgeous …, the whore’s dishabille … transformed into the bride’s wedding dress.”
–Kathleen Kirk, author of Spiritual Midwifery, and ABCs of Women’s Work
Body My House —
“…powerful stuff—crafted, courageous, poignant, resonant. I know that humming desk, those dull thumbs of crayons, those brambles along the path to the creek, that hitch in the knee. The crumpled coffee cups, cellophane wrappings. I know the string of angers chained in the muddy side yard, that sense of something ‘off,’ of things brewing below the surface. And those awkward hungers, those longings—their reverberations, their echoes. This work speaks to me.”
–Terry Martin, author of The Light You Find
Triple No. 10: The Thing with Feathers —
“We love the Triples, and this is another great one in the series. Comprising poetry by Jayne Marek and Bethany Reid plus artwork by George J. Farrah, there is substance, humor and heart throughout the pages.”
–Kathryn Rantala, editor, Ravenna Press
Events
To see a portion of my Edmonds Bookshop reading with the amazing poet Holly J. Hughes (October, 2020):
Video:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=363658788167525&ref=search
My feature on Abbey of the Arts (Nov. 2019): https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2019/11/20/featured-poet-bethany-reid/
I love working with individual poets and writers, and Zoom makes it possible to work with you no matter where you live. Whether you are writing poems, putting together a poetry book, or writing prose, my goal is to help you find and deepen your voice, and to support you as you become the writer who can conceptualize, write, and complete your project.
I charge a sliding fee of $40 to $80 per hour, depending on what you can afford. Please contact me at Bethany.alchemy@gmail.com if you want to talk. (Consultation is free.)