Poésie à Haute Voix est une invitation pour les Francophones, ceux qui parlent Franglais et ceux qui ont le courage de dépoussiérer leur français et de se renouer avec leur amour pour la langue française. Rassemblons-nous à travers un atelier d’écriture et un micro ouvert. Animé par Medgine Mathurin.

Poésie à Haute Voix is an invitation for Francophones, those who speak Frenglish and those brave enough to dust their French off the shelf and reconnect to their love for the French language. Let us gather through writing workshop and open mic. Hosted by Medgine Mathurin.

$15 Advance Registration
$20 at the door

Venue

CO*LAB

9641 102A Ave NW
Edmonton, AB T5H 0G3 Canada

Sometimes language fails us. Especially in some of our most difficult moments. Perhaps our vocabulary isn’t enough to express what’s going on or what we’ve experienced is beyond words.

In this workshop we will find ways to create new words and sounds that can help us approach difficult subject matter in a new, creative and even fun way. We’ll look at ways to help our bodies articulate their experience and challenge ourselves in how we speak about trauma. We’ll approach these experiences as something that can provide new, exciting information about ourselves. This is not a therapy session, but it might feel therapeutic when we’re done. Arrive with an open mind and a willing heart to explore the possibilities of change.

Facilitator: RC Weslowski

$15 Advance Registration
$20 at the door

Venue

CO*LAB

9641 102A Ave NW
Edmonton, AB T5H 0G3 Canada

Participants in this workshop will be invited to challenge dominant discourses about poetry, identity, community, and activism. They will be invited to approach writing form a more global perspective and to consider its impact on the world. They will be given strategies to write for a global audience.

Facilitator: Bänoo Zan

$15 Advance Registration
$20 at the door

Venue

CO*LAB

9641 102A Ave NW
Edmonton, AB T5H 0G3 Canada

Jully Black made a gesture towards reconciliation by changing one word in our national anthem. This workshop is focused on how your poems can speak truth and – word by word – unmask fear, release dread, share pain, welcome courage – save kindness – help us remove barriers to reconciliation. Image by image, can you create a room in which others can dwell, a room your reader can furnish?

Facilitator: Jane Munro

$15 Advanced Registration
$20 at the door

Venue

CO*LAB

9641 102A Ave NW
Edmonton, AB T5H 0G3 Canada

Inclement Weather is a two-part event, including a workshop and reading, that highlights how poetry can spark conversation about climate change and our energy future that is sustainable and socially equitable.

This event is Part One of Inclement Weather – the Workshop. Join visual artist Hannah Gelderman and poets Alice Major and Kim Mannix for a two-hour workshop that explores our fears around the climate crisis, and what art can do to offer hope for the future. Attendees will have a chance to get creative with zine making, collage, drawing, writing and found/blackout poetry. Materials provided. Capacity is limited. Advanced registration required.

Hosted by Hannah Gelderman.

Venue

Latitude 53

10248 106 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 0J2 Canada

Join Edmonton’s Poet Laureate Titilope for an intensive masterclass.

Bring me your life rafts, a song in the storm, a word like an oasis in the desert. What keeps your heart soft and sends the blood rushing to your cheeks? Let’s build a cathedral of tenderness here, a place to name what was lost and honour what refuses to die. In this masterclass we are digging through the rubble and pulling into the light poems that keep our hearts soft. In a series of writing, reading and listening exercises, we will explore how art can offer refuge and peace in tumultuous times.

Hosted by Grayson Thate.

Venue

Latitude 53

10248 106 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 0J2 Canada

Join us for: tips, techniques and strategies for how to host/facilitate great online events, including online event planning preparation , host/facilitator duties before, during and after the events, and techniques to encourage active listening and engagement.

About our author: Marty Chan loves to write. Before he became a kids’ author, he worked in theatre, radio, and television. Now his passion is inspiring the next generation of lifelong readers and writers. Using a combination of storytelling, improv, humour, and stage magic, he shares his love of words with audiences young and old. You can learn more about him at https://martychan.com.

Venue

Online

If “the poem does not start until you start to tell the truth” then a poet’s work is to be relentless in the search for that truth both on and off the page. This workshop is an excavation into the bone, into the truth, to write poems from the depth of our personal experiences. Through a series of writing exercises and discussion, the workshop will ask, “Who am I?”, “What do I want to say?”, “Why does my story matter?” and “What is my responsibility to myself and to the audience in telling my story?”

To maintain accessibility for all audiences, a limited number of free or by-donation tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis through our Community Access Ticket Program. If you have any questions about this program, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at outreach@litfestalberta.org.

In collaboration with Edmonton Poetry Festival.

Venue

Online

Whether we’re writing memoir, fiction, or reported non-fiction, our ability and willingness to confront our own bias and privilege informs the quality, richness, and intellectual rigour of our work. Editor and journalist Lauren McKeon knows that recognizing bias is a messy and often uncomfortable task. It involves talking—and, more importantly, listening—to people who have different lived experiences than we do, and being deeply honest about our own assumptions, experiences, and shortcomings. In this 90-minute workshop, McKeon discusses strategies for tackling bias in our research and writing, and how to intentionally hold space for diverse voices. The author also talks about how she learns from each project, and why recognizing privilege and bias is constant, ever-evolving, and always worthwhile work. With host Anya Zoledziowski.

Want to buy the book? Find it here.

Lauren McKeon’s critically acclaimed first book, F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, was a finalist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and was selected by the Hill Times as a book of the year and by the Feminist Book Club as one of their top five feminist books ever. McKeon is the winner of several National Magazine Awards, including a Gold in the Personal Journalism category. Her writing has appeared in Hazlitt, Flare, Chatelaine, and Best Canadian Essays, on TVO.org, and in the book Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault. McKeon has taught long-form writing at Humber College and holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College. She was the editor of This Magazine from 2011 to 2016 and the digital editor at The Walrus from 2017 to 2020, and she is currently a contributing editor at Toronto Life and the deputy editor of Reader’s Digest.

To maintain accessibility for all audiences, a limited number of free or by-donation tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis through our Community Access Ticket Program. If you have any questions about this program, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at outreach@litfestalberta.org.

Venue

Online

Everything you need to know about oral biography in one easy lesson, with renowned biographer Michael Posner.

Want to buy the book? Find it here.

Michael Posner is an award-winning writer, playwright, journalist, and the author of seven books. These include the Mordecai Richler biography, The Last Honest Man, and the Anne Murray biography, All of Me, both of which were national bestsellers. He was Washington Bureau Chief for Maclean’s magazine, and later served as its national, foreign, and assistant managing editor. He was also managing editor of the Financial Times of Canada for three years. He later spent sixteen years as a senior writer with The Globe and Mail.

To maintain accessibility for all audiences, a limited number of free or by-donation tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis through our Community Access Ticket Program. If you have any questions about this program, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at outreach@litfestalberta.org.

Venue

Online

“This seminar will touch upon some of the questions that keep me awake: How do you write a memoir when your memory’s shot? How do you tell the truth when the truth hurts others? When is nonfiction therapy and when is it art?”

Want to buy the book? Find it here.

Lorna Crozier is the author of seventeen books of poetry, including God of Shadows, which was longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award, What the Soul Doesn’t Want, The Wrong Cat, Small Mechanics, The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems, and Whetstone. She is also the author of The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things and the memoir Small Beneath the Sky. She won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for Inventing the Hawk and three additional collections were finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. She has received the Canadian Authors Association Award, three Pat Lowther Memorial Awards, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She is a Professor Emerita at the University of Victoria and an Officer of the Order of Canada, and she has received five honorary doctorates for her contributions to Canadian literature. Born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan, she now lives in British Columbia.

To maintain accessibility for all audiences, a limited number of free or by-donation tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis through our Community Access Ticket Program. If you have any questions about this program, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at outreach@litfestalberta.org.

Venue

Online

James Raffan explores the challenges and opportunities that come with writing about the environment. He discusses creative nonfiction as an effective approach to engaging readers, and addresses the connections between wild spaces and Indigenous peoples, along with the challenges of voice and appropriation that exist for the creative nonfiction writer.

To maintain accessibility for all audiences, a limited number of free or by-donation tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis through our Community Access Ticket Program. If you have any questions about this program, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at outreach@litfestalberta.org.

Venue

Online

The Edmonton Poetry Festival is happy to share that award-winning author Jordan Abel will be hosting a special workshop on manuscripts. Are you an author with a whole lot of writing, and no idea what to do next? This workshop might be just what you need!

Registration is free! This workshop will help writers of all disciplines prepare their manuscripts for submission, walking through helpful insight for writers hoping to take their next steps. Click here to register!

This event is funded by the Edmonton Arts Council and the Edmonton Community Foundation. Please share with writers all around! Registration is limited, so register early to secure your seat.

Venue

Online

Presented in partnership with the Canadian Authors Association.

Arleen Paré will explore rhyme, rhythm and repetition in poetry through this extended workshop, presented in part with the Canadian Authors Association. This intensive workshop will guide participants through an understanding of musicality and how it affects the word, shaping the form and cadence of our writing and how it meets the open air when spoken out loud.

Venue

The Matrix Hotel

10640 100 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 3N8 Canada

In this workshop, participants will explore how the lands we carry with us can be both places of belonging and epicentres of disconnection. Drawing from Robert Macfarlane’s lyrical book of essays, Landmarks, participants look at creating their own word-hoards for the places they live and the landscapes we carry within them in the form of personal or familial memories. Writers of all genres and all levels are most welcome. Please come prepared with notebook and pen/pencil, and some sturdy shoes for walking in the Garden.

This is a workshop event. Admission to this event is not included in a festival pass.

U of A Botanic Garden

Venue

University of Alberta Botanic Garden

51227 AB-60
Spruce Grove, AB T7Y 1C5 Canada

An editing masterclass with Peter Midgley.

After Peter won the Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence, he remarked in an interview that editing is like carving a delicate relief on an eggshell, that he is terrified each time he starts to edit a book. Many seasoned editors chastised him for that remark: you should have confidence, they told him. You should think like a winner, for that is what you are. Be bold and confident. Those are fine traits to aspire to, but what gets pushed aside brashly as a result of such thinking is that the craft of editing needs vulnerability. Boldness and confidence in writing and editing emerge from embracing fear and vulnerability. This is a workshop about embracing the hidden potential of vulnerability in your editing practice.

This is a workshop event. Admission to this event is not included in a festival pass.

Venue

The Matrix Hotel

10640 100 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 3N8 Canada

Alexis Hillyard is a content creator. And she breaks a lot of the typical content creator rules. In this workshop, she will take participants on a journey through her YouTube Creator life, from start to present, and share best practices for content creation – based on what has worked for her Channel, Stump Kitchen. This will include the hows and whys for starting a YouTube Channel or other Internet Content; the glamorous grunt work behind the scenes of a DIY YouTube Channel including materials needed and growing your editing chops; when and how often creators can produce content; marketing your amazing creations; and most importantly, how to stay true to your purpose throughout the entire process.

Venue

The Matrix Hotel

10640 100 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T5J 3N8 Canada

Join Jan Zwicky for a three-hour workshop focussing on the musical aspects of poetic language. The workshop aims to heighten awareness of rhythm and sound through close readings of sample poems by established authors and through exercises that participants can take home. It will occur in the Ozawa Pavilion, an authentic Japanese Tea House.

Jan Zwicky has published eleven collections of poetry, most recently The Long Walk. Her books of philosophy include Wisdom & Metaphor, Lyric Philosophy, and Alkibiades’ Love. Her collection, Songs for Relinquishing the Earth, won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.

Register online at the ticket link below or call 780-987-3054 × 2227. Directions will follow registration.

This event is sold out!

Venue

University of Alberta Botanic Garden

51227 AB-60
Spruce Grove, AB T7Y 1C5 Canada

Update April 27, 2018: Lorna Crozier is unable to atten the festival due to a family health emergency. Alice Major will lead this workshop in her stead.

Presented in partnership with the Canadian Authors Association.

Registration cost is $30 for members of the Canadian Authors Association or the Poetry Festival, $50 for non-members.

This event is sold out!

Does the length of the free-verse line matter? What about the hook you tie on the end? Will any free-verse line catch the fish? We’ll explore the characteristics-the tautness, the slackness, the measure, the knots-of this malleable, adaptable poetic line, and write a poem or two that focuses on ways it can be used to emphasize meaning and rhythm. Please bring writing materials of either a laptop or paper and pen. Please register at the CAA website link (www.canauthorsalberta.ca) as the workshop is limited to 16 participants.

Venue

McLuhan House

11342 64 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5W 4H5 Canada

Join Trinidadian-Bahamian poet, essayist, and cultural critic Christian Campbell in this invigorating two-hour workshop. His debut collection, Running the Dusk, was shortlisted for several awards and won the Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection. Christian will lead the class through an analysis and discussion of model poems and then guide them in exercises to help craft exquisite beginnings to their own poems.

Register in advance as this workshop is limited to 16 people. Space for this event is generously supported by the Canadian Literature Centre.

Venue

Rudy Wiebe Room (HC-459) @ University of Alberta

Humanities Centre, University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5 Canada

Terse verse comes in many styles. From limericks and clerihews to haiku and tanka, these little treasures can express words of encouragement or simple salutations. They’re fun to write and pack big-time punch! In this workshop we’ll introduce several styles of terse verse; you can choose to write them all or just the forms you like best. There will be fancy papers and pens available if you’d like to turn your terse verse into purse verse and pocket poem treasures to pack in your lunch as a midday snack or slip in a friend’s pocket to discover later.

We’ll kick off the event with music featuring Luke Tracey Newmann & Poets House Band. The day closes with a BYOP open mic and musical finale. Enjoy with your day of poetry, a variety of teas, coffee, cold drinks and snacks.

Performers

• Jade O’Riley has been teaching poetry forms and styles at Edmonton City Arts Centre since 2007. In 2016 Jade founded Edmonton Poets House where she holds poetry readings for her students, and has open poetry library reading hours for the public. Over the years, Jade has published 10 chapbooks featuring the poets in her classes.

Venue

Edmonton Poets House

9016 153 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5R 1P4 Canada

Gathered in the Devonian Gardens, participants in this workshop will explore poetry and prayer where poetry is a kind of answer, however uncertain. And prayer is a kind of request. These two seem opposite, yet in the garden they may be joined in that neither can be true unless we are open to how vulnerable we are to beauty.

Pre-purchased tickets are required. Buy tickets at the link below or call 780-987-3054 × 2227. Directions will follow registration.

Venue

University of Alberta Botanic Garden

51227 AB-60
Spruce Grove, AB T7Y 1C5 Canada

A workshop from Jane Munro. As a witness in an era of crisis, what do you feel yourself called to do? How do you write a political poem without being didactic? What learning and teaching is it possible to do with a poem? How can poetry act as a change agent? What could you use as a meaningful structure for a poem on climate change (or any other huge topic)? What if you just don’t know enough? How on earth can you write poetry now?

Bring your own questions. This will be a workshop in which you can explore your relationship with your writing and your relationship with Earth. Come prepared to draft new poems.

Space is limited to 16 participants.

Presented in partnership with The Canadian Authors Association.

Venue

McLuhan House

11342 64 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T5W 4H5 Canada