Ms. Magazine Poetry Editor Bia Lowe was recently invited to spend time at the famed artist retreat called MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Here is her report. Lowe writes:

To say MacDowell Colony is female is hardly a metaphor.

Started in 1907 by Marian MacDowell at the final request of her composer/husband Edward, the first artist colony in the United States has remained faithful to it’s founder’s commitment to “not let the great poem go unwritten.”

How is this commitment realized? A studio in the woods continues to afford an artist — of any stripe — freedom from the constraints of everyday responsibility and the access to work undisturbed, in solitude.

Read the full story here.