commencing January 2025
Community Engagement Through Poetry: a primer and a practicum
A Virtual Training with Poet Ronna Bloom
In my work as Poet in Community at the University of Toronto and in hospitals, I have seen how a poem, like a treatment when it works, can go to the site of a need and meet it. I lead workshops where poems are the doors to people's unexpressed experience. The workshops are not therapy nor are they about being "good writers." They are opportunities for people to name and explore their needs, struggles, and passions through writing.
Community Engagement Through Poetry is both a primer and a practicum. In this virtual training, I will share the process of how I facilitate workshops, and support participants as they plan and then offer a pilot workshop within their chosen communities. (A community could mean three friends at the kitchen table!)
You will have the opportunity to:
participate in a writing workshop and debrief the experience
learn practices and processes of facilitating a writing session
explore what communities you wish to serve
design and carry out your own pilot workshop
share learning in a small group setting
Who is this course for?
Right now, we are in need of alternative places for expression and understanding. Communities need more support than official care systems currently offer, and different! Fittingly, more creative people want to engage bringing new kinds of support.
This training is especially for you if you are a poet, therapist, healthcare provider, educator, activist, a community organizer, spiritual care provider, or someone with a keen interest in poetry who has developed knowledge and comfort working with groups of people.
Cost and commitment
Participants must be willing to commit to the whole course to the best of their ability. I am committed to fostering opportunities for people to use poetry around the world and need your commitment too.
Regular rate: $500 CAD. Subsidized: $450 CAD.
Dates and Times
How to Apply
Please fill out the application below. Space is limited.
Apply Now
If you have any questions, please let me know.
“... if it wasn’t for those wonderful weeks with you, I think I’d still be grappling with how to take learning from the classroom into the field.”
“This course was so beneficial to my practice as a relational artist, and I’m hoping will bring respite and hope to some in our community who are facing grief of many kinds. ”
“Thank you for offering us the gift of how to create this space of being, in poetry.”