Writing Workshops
Workshops with Yvonne Blomer and Ariel Gordon
The Caetani Centre is excited to welcome renowned Canadian writers Yvonne Blomer and Ariel Gordon for a writing residency at the end of August.
While here, both Blomer and Gordon will offer writing workshops open to both emerging and established writers.
Workshop Information
Beginning a Creative Workbook: Using “Illustration” or Mark Making to Think Through Writing with Yvonne Blomer
When: Friday, August 22, 2025 from 12:30 to 3:30 PM
Where: Caetani Gallery
Cost: $75.00: Bursary is available. Please contact the Caetani Centre with your name, contact information and reason for applying to the bursary.
Limit 12 people
Postcards from the World: An urban nature workshop with Ariel Gordon
When: August 29, 2025 from 9:30 AM to 12:30 PM
Where: Outdoors on the Caetani grounds (In case of inclement weather, an indoor venue will be provided)
Cost: $75.00: Bursary is available. Please contact the Caetani Centre with your name, contact information and reason for applying to the bursary.
Limit 12 people
Registration and payment can be done online or in person at the Caetani Centre, 3401 Pleasant Valley Rd. in Vernon, BC.
Please contact us at programs@caetani.org or 250-275-1525 if you require more information.
Workshop Descriptions
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Description: In this three-hour class we will begin to think through a few pieces of writing, or a larger writing project using paint, found and cut up images, and words.
Through play with images and texts, we can loosen our ways of approaching our written work and find new ways of writing, editing and thinking through a small or large project.
Yvonne will offer writing prompts to help generate poems and prose, and provide instruction on playing with colour and images using watercolour paint, pencil crayons and pens. Through writing and mark making, you can explore multiple ways of creating and editing. We will create 2 full spread pages of writing and visuals while working on several new pieces of writing in this play-based class.
This is for all writers who want to explore using multimedia.
Materials required: images from magazines or old photographs printed on paper for cutting and tearing, questions from a project you are starting or struggling with and 2 rough drafts of poems or prose.
Suggested materials: A soft cover sketch album is recommended. The Ingress sketch album can be found at Opus Art Supplies for $14.99.
You don’t need the sketch book and can just bring the scraps of images, some ideas and a couple of pieces of writing you are struggling with.
When: Friday, August 22, 2025 from 12:30 to 3:30 PM
Where: Caetani Gallery
Cost: $75.00: Bursary is available. Please contact the Caetani Centre with your name, contact information and reason for applying to the bursary.
Limit 12 people
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Description: Wild turkeys roaming the back alleys. Coyotes running down the street. Canada Geese roosting on rooftops. What does it mean to slow down and pay attention to the urban ecosystem? What lives in the urban forest with us?
This workshop will be ambulatory, spending time with the flora/fauna/funga of the Caetani Centre grounds. We will be doing a variety of exercises, including ones that draw on forest bathing invitations. We will focus on close observation of urban nature, writing about what we see/hear/smell/taste.
This workshop is appropriate for writers of any level working in any genre.
Materials required: Please bring a notebook, pen or pencil
When: August 29, 2025 from 9:30 to 12:30 AM
Where: Outdoors on the Caetani grounds (In case of inclement weather, an indoor venue will be provided)
Cost: $75.00: Bursary is available. Please contact the Caetani Centre with your name, contact information and reason for applying to the bursary.
Limit 12 people
Meet the Facilitators
Yvonne Blomer
Yvonne has published six books of poetry, most recently Death of Persephone: A Murder (Caitlin Press, 2024). Her work has won awards and appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Japan. She has an MA with Distinction from the University of East Anglia and lives on the territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən (Lekwungen) speaking people. She was the City of Victoria’s poet laureate from 2015-2018.
Yvonne has been teaching in-person and online classes in poetry and creative nonfiction for over 20 years. During the past few years, she has focused on editing, teaching, mentoring and writing.
She began to use a Creative Workbook to explore a writing project when working on poems and images for her recent chapbook Tracings: Strolls Through Assisi, which her husband illustrated.
She is currently using a visual workbook with a new project titled "Frock Consciousness."
Ariel Gordon
Ariel is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast.
She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with Plume Winnipeg that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press. She is the author of seven books, the most recent of which are the essay collection Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) and the epistolary specfic novel Blood Letters, co-authored with graphic novelist GMB Chomichuk (Great Plains Press, 2025).
She is also the author of the first book in the public poetry project TreeTalk (At Bay Press, 2020), where Ariel hangs poems in trees and asks passersby to add their ideas, poems, and confessions.
TreeTalk was nominated for three Manitoba Book Awards. In winter 2022, Ariel was the Writer in Residence with the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.