Poetry Forge makes space for poets & secret poets
through online writing workshops, practice periods, creative mentorship
& an annual manuscript incubator called A Body of Work.
All are welcome here.
Explore
This is imagination school.
“Our visions are essential to create that which has never been,
and we must each learn to use all of who we are
to achieve those visions.”
—Audre Lorde
"I just want to tell you how much this space has meant to me. It is no small thing to create and hold welcoming, creative, beautiful, soft space in this world, and Holly is doing it. And teaching by example, which is of course the best way to teach."
—Kim F., Poetry Forge Student since 2020
What We Do
We are writing poems. We are imagining a future.
We are reading, studying, planting, practicing, publishing, and making work that fluidly crosses boundaries.
We are materializing our innerlives.
We are paying attention.
We are quietly saving ourselves and some of our kin.
Through an ethics of humility, listening, and honoring—we are fostering places where poetry lives on and beyond the page.
This is how we forge meaning; how we repair some of the damage that has been done; and how we express what exists beneath the visible and known surfaces.
Our human wonderings, emotions, experiences, essences.
Our fervent hopes, despite everthing.
Poetry is our way of being in the world.
Workshops
& Classes
Now enrolling
Join Us
Poetry Forge offers year-round programming for emerging writers from across North America, Europe and beyond. Join us for any of our pop-up community sessions, called Poetry as Consolation, where you will get a feeling for what we do and how we do it. We also offer free workshops at the end of the year and once each spring. Subscribe to the mailing list to receive an occasional Postcard from Holly containing news about upcoming offerings, resources of interest to poets and secret poets, and accounts of her life on the southern coast of Maine.