Description
Presented in collaboration with Indian Summer Festival, this generative workshop with Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal, Upstart & Crow’s 2025 Poet in Residence, invites participants to explore the theme of borderless solidarities through creative writing, connection, and shared reflection.
We’ll begin with a series of freewriting exercises that invite you to explore the idea of borders — between people, places, identities, and within ourselves. Through grounding prompts, sensory details, and gentle strategies to quiet the inner critic, we’ll experiment with different ways to find your flow and create space for language to move through us with more ease. To wonder and to begin.
The second half of the workshop will include a collaborative writing process: at each table, participants will create a group pantoum, a form with roots in Malaysia that loops and repeats from quatrain to quatrain. What begins as an individual line will become part of a shared rhythm, shifting meaning as it moves from one person to the next. This collective process will allow us to move past the borders of our own pages, loosening control and making room for surprise, connection, and co-creation.
It’s not about making a perfect poem. It’s about experimentation and gathering; discovering what becomes possible when we write together; and seeing the reverberations and juxtapositions that invite us to see our own words — and each other’s — in new ways. Together, we’ll explore how writing can be an act of deep hospitality — welcoming the lines of others into the same space to create new relationships and new meanings.
You don’t need to come in with an academic opinion, or even a sense of yourself as a writer. You don’t even need to consider yourself creative. All you need is a desire to write and be in community.
To support our non-profit programming and to help us cover costs, this workshop is $10. If you are experiencing barriers to attend, please reach out over email. We’re happy to provide you with one of our scholarship spots. We have reserved half of our available seats for attendees who are BIPOC/PGM. Anyone who self-identifies as Black, Indigenous and/or a Person of Colour or People of the Global Majority is welcome to buy these tickets.
We have very limited seating and spots go quickly, so please reserve your place here!
What to bring:
Please bring something to write with, an open mind, a mask and a willingness to let your words travel beyond you. (If you forget a mask, a pen or paper, don’t worry, we got you!). Please note, we strive to maintain a fragrance-free environment to support the health and comfort of all participants (including the health of the facilitator) — please avoid wearing scented products.
Additional information:
If you can’t make it to this workshop, you can find Preeti’s online drop-in writing sessions here. To find out more about Indian Summer Festival, or to register for one of their upcoming events, click here.
About Upstart & Crow:
Located on Granville Island, Upstart & Crow is a not-for-profit literary arts studio for curious readers and creative storytellers alike. We are international in our outlook, and local in our sensibilities. We create opportunities to surface new talent and champion bold ideas through events, workshops, literary launches, unique partnerships — and yes, we also sell books!
Accessibility:
The main studio of our shop is accessible for folks with mobility aids. There is a washroom on the main floor available for attendees.
Questions: hello[at]upstartandcrow.com.
