The Poet’s Toolbox

Do you want to write poetry but have trouble getting started? Are you interested in stepping outside of your comfort zone to generate new pieces? This workshop will help you to develop your voice as a poet by kindling your creativity with the support of a variety of writing tools, prompts, poetic forms, and other techniques.

In each session, participants will be presented with some combination of readings, writing constraints, or guided prompts. These will include assignments to write new pieces using different poetic forms including ekphrastic poetry (verse inspired by visual art), erasure/blackout poetry, OULIPO games, centos, prose poems, and haiku. Participants will be encouraged to share their writing results and will have a chance to discuss each other’s poems. 

By the end of this 8-week generative poetry writing workshop, participants will have a chance to produce a portfolio of approximately 8 new pieces of creative work.

Greg Santos is a poet, editor, and educator. His most recent book is Ghost Face (2020) and he has published several other poetry collections. His writing has appeared in CBC First Person, The Walrus, Geist, AGNI, The Best American Poetry Blog, and World Literature Today. He has worked with the QWF’s Writers in the Community Program, Vallum Society for Education in Arts & Letters, Poetry in Voice, and the Thomas More Institute to spread the joy of verse and creative writing to diverse communities. He is the Editor in Chief of the QWF’s online literary journal carte blanche. He is an adoptee of Cambodian, Portuguese, and Spanish heritage. Greg lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal with his wife and two children.