It’s almost summer. Let’s be impractical, local, and small.
The edge of a swimming pool with a bright yellow deck. Photo credit: Etienne Girardet (via Unsplash).
Seven Swimming Pools is back!
The sky is clear, the leaves are singing, and one of our favourite things is coming up.
Seven Swimming Pools is a once-a-year program designed for everyone.
It’s large format, so no limit on how many people can come.
It’s sliding scale so you can find a price that works for you (or suggest one if the whole scale doesn’t fit.)
It’s a distraction-friendly, cameras on or off, wide-open invitation into experimental joy.
It’s also really, really fun for us.
All year we keep a little corner of our brains on the question: What new, fun thing do I want to explore with our people this summer? What’s coming alive in my workshops? What keeps niggling at my attention?
Each of us land on something we would love to do with a group for 90 minutes, and we support each other to design a session around that.
Then you get seven sessions, one led by each of us, in our uniqueness and our weirdness, offering something that lights us up.
This year we have a gorgeous line up:
Sophia’s session will be about animal stories, and all the ways non-human life can shine in our work.
Kim’s session will be about writing for kids — including our own child selves.
Asifa’s session will focus on accessing courage in this bruising world, and bringing that to our writing.
Mine is on Covid stories — unpacking some of the writing material we’ve gathered in this extraordinary time and starting to write it.
Mari’s session is about ekphrastic writing, using graffiti, dance and paintings to unlock new directions in our work.
Britt’s will be helping us write with our distractions, not despite them.
Nina will close us out with a session about accessing self-compassion for our writing selves.
Personally, I’m hoping to make it to all of them. :)
We’re recording all the sessions this year, they’ll be available through the summer if you miss one.
This is where we try to open our door the widest, so if there’s any way we can make this more accessible for you, let us know.
And, we’re also sailing some cozy little boats into the summer months with our small group workshops.
These are max 7-8 people depending on the class, so they’re much more connected and relational than Seven Swimming Pools, with lots of time to share, get feedback, talk about growth, and be heard.
Whatever your path, I’m wishing you expansiveness and inspiration ahead.
Writing Workshops for people who are just starting out on (or getting back to) a writing path.
Asifa will be running Begin Here on Thursday evenings. This class is a series of starting points to find our way (back) to our work. No homework, ever.
Nina will be running a shortie 5-week version of Keep Your Pen Moving on Tuesday evenings. This is similar to Begin Here in vibe, but longer sessions, different activities, and some homework.
Writing Workshops for folks who want to make stuff up.
Brief Bursts (The Fiction Edition), on Monday mornings, is for anyone who wants to dabble in flash fiction and the power of brevity. Run by Britt.
The Fiction Workshop, on Tuesday evenings with Kim, is for anyone with a fiction project on the go who wants structure to move it forward.
And, Romantasy, on Wednesday evenings, also with Kim, is a class that blends romance and fantasy in delicious ways.
Writing Workshops for folks who want to find their flow.
On Monday evenings, Sophia will be running the gentle and generative Focus and Flow. We’ll be finding our flow states, writing lots. Writers may or may not arrive with projects on the go.
And, Progress, on Thursday mornings with Britt, is for writers who have a project on the go, and want to tune out the world and move it forward.
Writing Workshop for folks who want to play with poetry.
On Thursday evenings, Mari will be running Flight Paths. She created this class a couple of years ago from her love of poetic forms. It’s for anyone who wants to shape and bend their ideas in new ways, and explore the joy of a constraint.
And Seven Swimming Pools! For a little bit of everything, with all of us.
This one is large format, so big group, less sharing, shorter sessions, and lots of experimental fun.
All sessions will be recorded if you miss one.
We’d love to meet you in the pool.
A poem for your heart.
This poem, “Sea Church” by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, is full of fluid beauty, and the feeling that anything could happen next.
Let’s let Rebecca Solnit take us out today.
I read this passage a couple of weeks ago and I can’t stop turning it over in my mind.
I still think the [real] revolution is to make the world safe for poetry, meandering, for the frail and vulnerable, the rare and obscure, the impractical and local and small.
Yes. Let’s be impractical and local and small. Together.
Wishing you space for all your meanderings today…
In it with you,
