Flight Paths

A poetry workshop dedicated to playing with forms

Ready to walk deeper into the world of poetry?

From acrostics to villanelles to golden shovels, this workshop will explore the strange and beautiful landscapes of poetic forms.

What feelings can you crack open with constraints? What might new forms have to offer to the images, stories, and questions you want to express?

This is a great workshop for people who have taken our Lift Off poetry workshop, but there’s no pre-requisite, all are welcome.

Here’s how it works:

We’ll start each session with an easy warmup to find our voices. Then, we’ll try out a new form to carry our ideas forward in new ways, possibly including Pantoums, Haibuns, Tankas, Cinquains, blackout poems. You don’t need to be familiar with any of these to sign up for this workshop. You just need to be eager to try.

There will be some homework, so expect to keep writing between sessions!

The heart of this workshop isn’t “mastering” a form, but joyfully colliding with it, to see what it has to offer us. Rule breaking is encouraged.

- Have a little experience with poetry, and want to be challenged by new forms.
- Struggle to make time for creativity in the bustle of daily life.
- Love the idea of a weekly creative date with a small group of humans.
- Feel ready (though maybe a little scared) to share their writing.
- Enjoy wild experimentation, innovation, rules and rule-breaking.
- Thrive in small, cozy groups (this class will never have more than 8 participants).
- Feel aligned with our fundamental beliefs.
- Lots of poems written by you!
- New favourite poets — both from out in the world, and from around the workshop table.
- A renewed sense of your writing voice and your unique gifts as a writer.
- Writing peers whose work you are invested in.
- A feeling of creative playfulness and possibility.
- Creative courage.
- Critique or competition. We’re all about the love.
- Strict rules on “how to write poems.” We’ll work on developing your writing skills, but we don’t subscribe to the idea that there’s one way to create powerful work.
- Pressure to write things you don’t want to write. We go where the joy is.

Details for Summer 2026:

On Zoom with Mari (she/her)

5 Thursdays evenings, weekly
6:30-9pm ET
July 23 - August 20

Cost:

The Total Workshop Fee is $505 plus applicable taxes. If you prefer, you can pay in 4 monthly installments of $126.25. There is no extra fee for this service.

Kindly note that since this workshop is for a small group, deposits are non-refundable. One week before the workshop starts, the full fee is non-refundable. See our financial policies here.

If money is a barrier, check out our financial aid program, which we open up four times a year.

If you don’t have a credit card, let us know and we’ll gladly find a way to make it work.

Sign up here:

Registration opens May 5th! Join our early bird mailing list for early access to future registrations or sign up for our newsletter.

Questions?

Your answer is probably on this page.

Credit where credit is due:
The photo we’re using to promote this page was taken by Chris Robert (via Unsplash).

What clients are saying…

Exploring all the forms of writing poetry showed me ways I can write that I never imagined. The coach held the space, it was comfortable and flowing and eased me into the process. I enjoyed every minute! Thank you.

Hala
Artistic Mom