Workshops

We’re beyond thrilled to announce the next component in CV2’s 50th Anniversary year of special programming: CV2’s 50th Anniversary Workshop Series!

In 2025 CV2 will offer five free, generative poetry workshops for emerging poets, each hosted by CV2 poetry editors past and present.

With a capacity of 10 people per workshop, we’re excited to offer 50 emerging writers the chance to work closely with our editors and their fellow workshop attendees to hone their craft, and to build meaningful connections within the literary community.

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Announcing the next in CV2’s 50th Anniversary Workshop Series: a free, two-part poetry workshop with Clarise Foster and Winnipeg’s new Poet Laureate Jennifer Still!

In 2025 CV2 is offering five free, generative poetry workshops for emerging poets, each hosted by CV2 poetry editors past and present.

We’re thrilled to announce that the third of these five workshops will be hosted by poets and CV2 editors past, Clarise Foster and Jennifer Still!

Clarise and Jennifer’s two-part workshop will take place Saturday, June 7th, and Saturday, June 14th, in person at 100 Arthur Street in Winnipeg. As space is very limited, we require interested participants to apply using our application form. Applications are open now and are due by June 2, 2025, at 5:00pm Central Time.

As space is very limited, priority will be given to emerging writers who also fall under one or more of the following categories: a writer who is a member of an equity-seeking community; a writer with no post-secondary education (such as university, college, etc); a writer with no post-graduate education in writing (such as an MA or MFA degree).

There is no registration fee for this workshop intensive. We ask that all successful applicants commit to attending the entirety of both workshops; priority will be given to those who are able to attend both of the two workshops.

Only successful applicants will receive a response to their applications, and will be contacted via email by Tuesday, June 3, 2025. Apply here!

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What do you write with?

Feeling the poem with Clarise Foster and Jennifer Still

In this two-part workshop, we will engage in writing and revision exercises that connect us to our most valuable writing tools: who we are, where we’re from and the feelings and experiences we write with.

There are a million ways to write a poem, but ultimately the success of a poem is determined by how you engage with it—the feelings you write it with and how you feel about it when it is done.

We will explore poetry as a mode of understanding ourselves and what language reveals to us, through meaningful, purposeful practice.

Please bring a cell phone (for taking a photo or two), a pen and a notebook, and be prepared for an outdoor excursion!

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Clarise Foster is a Winnipeg poet, editor and workshop facilitator, who served as the Editor of Contemporary Verse 2: The Canadian Journal of Poetry from 2001 to 2021. She has worked as a freelance poetry editor, editing nearly thirty poetry collections for Canadian literary book publishers. She has also been an editorial consultant, assessor, and mentor on a number of other book projects. Several of the books and authors she has worked over the years have either won or been shortlisted for local, provincial and national awards including the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Clarise’s workshop experience includes leading/co-leading workshops on writing and publishing—several in collaboration with Jennifer Still. Clarise Foster is also the author of two collections of poetry, whose writing, interviews, reviews have appeared in Canadian literary magazines and newspapers including, Geist, The Malahat Review and The Globe and Mail. In 2016, Clarise was awarded the Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making a Difference Award.

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Jennifer Still finds poetry in physical motion. Her practice includes stitching, needling, beading, handwriting, and typewriting.

Still is the author of several handbound chapbooks and three poetry books, Comma, Girlwood and Saltations and the video poem legs, an award-winning short film collaboration with Winnipeg artists Christine Fellows and Chantel Mierau.

Still has mentored poets as Writer-in-Residence at The University of Winnipeg, The University of Manitoba Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture, Winnipeg’s Millennium Library, and as faculty at The University of Saskatchewan’s Creative Writing MA program and The Banff Centre of the Arts Wired Writing Studio.

Jennifer and Clarise met in 2001 when Clarise accepted Jennifer’s first poems for publication in CV2. Nearly 25 years later, these two poets meet regularly for fireside poetry chats and a new editing project that involves sharing a swim lane. Clarise is currently mentoring Jennifer in the butterfly.