Kingston, Jamaica - Shaping New Poems: Finding a Form to Fit This Place

Instructor: Tanya Shirley

Application Period: Thursday, August 6, 2026, 12:00 AM EST - Monday, September, 7, 2026, 11:59 PM EST

Workshop Sessions: Weekly on Saturdays, Oct. 3, Oct. 10, Oct 17, Oct. 24, Oct. 31, Nov. 7

Workshop Location & Reading: 10 A West Kings House Road

Cave Canem’s workshops are rare opportunities for poets of all experience levels to work with and learn directly from accomplished poets in Cave Canem’s network. Limited to small enrollment groups, these multiple-session workshops offer rigorous instruction, careful critique, and an introduction to the work of influential poets. Workshops are tuition-free and free to apply.

For Fall 2026, Cave Canem is excited to welcome poet and teacher Tanya Shirley (Cave Canem Fellow, 2004) as the facilitator of our Kingston Regional Workshop, Shaping New Poems: Finding a Form to Fit This Place. 

This workshop will encourage intermediate-advanced stage poets to think about ways to write about the reality of living in Jamaica. Through a combination of lectures, prompts, close readings and peer critique, we will focus on how traditional forms can be used as a base for capturing our unique individual and collective experiences and elevating our poems from mere description or abstraction. How can the elegy be used to portray the paradox of grieving for the receding shoreline while enjoying the delicious fry fish at Hellshire Beach or mourning the loss of our favourite cookshop, or the death of the colleague who annoyed us with her music blaring over our too-tight cubicle, but who baked a potato pudding for us every end-of-month? How can the sonnet’s turn be used to capture our journey on the highway – one minute, admiring the majestic mountains and singing a reggae song, the next, cursing the taxis swerving through traffic? How can the ekphrastic form encourage us to revel in the ordinary details of our lives – the cacophony of Coronation Market, the boisterous rise of high rise buildings, the exercise enthusiasts at Emancipation Park weaving in and out of a wedding party’s photoshoot, the colourful conversations in a bank or utility company’s queue, the sights and sounds of a hurricane observed through a slit in the plyboard? How do we make praise songs for the street we grew up on, the things about this country that we hold dear?

The workshop will also make a space for our innovative spirit and offer ways to bend these forms to fit the shape of this place we call home.  

Eligibility

Any adult (18 or older) Black poet of any experience level who is a resident of the city or the immediate surrounding area may apply to participate in the workshop. Cave Canem defines Black poets as any poet who identifies as a member of the African Diaspora.   

Guidelines

• Applicants must submit five original poems and a short cover letter through the Submittable application.
• One application per poet will be accepted. 
• Please note that all workshop participants are required to take a post-workshop survey after the conclusion of the program. Photos of participants may be taken throughout the workshops and reading.     

About Tanya Shirley

Tanya Shirley has published two poetry collections with Peepal Tree Press (Leeds, UK): She Who Sleeps with Bones and The Merchant of Feathers. They will also be publishing her third collection, Riddled, in April 2026. Shirley’s work has been featured on BBC World Service, BBC Front Row, Scottish Poetry Library, www.poetryarchive.org and translated into Spanish and Polish. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies such as Unwritten: CaribbeanPoems After the First World War ed. by Karen McCarthy Woolf, To Coventry by Sun: Poems from Twin Cities ed. by Jane Commane, New Caribbean Poetry: An Anthology ed. by Kei Miller, Another English: Anglophone Poems from Around the World ed. by Catherine Barnett and Tiphanie Yanique and Jubilation!: Poems Celebrating 50 Years of Jamaican Independence ed.by Kwame Dawes. She received an MFA from the University of Maryland and taught for many years at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus. She is the recipient of a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica for her outstanding contribution in the field of Literature. She is also a proud Cave Canem Fellow. More information can be found at www.tanyashirley.com.

Submissions received after Tuesday, October 6, 2026, at 11:59 PM ET will not be accepted.

About the Cave Canem Fellowship

Cave Canem supports the work of Black poets through a suite of core programs, namely an annual retreat consisting of intensive poetry workshops and readings, hosted at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg.

The retreat offers an unparalleled opportunity for Cave Canem Fellows to study with esteemed faculty and to join an expansive community of peers. Fellows write from a range of poetic traditions: blues; confessional; experimental; dramatic; lyric; narrative; performance; political; etc.

Due to our generous community of institutional funders and individual donors, there is no submission fee for the Fellowship application, and the retreat is free to all Fellows.

Application Guidelines

Applicants must submit a Cover Letter and a writing sample via Submittable. Attachments that do not follow these guidelines will be disqualified:  

• A PDF of six (6) pages of poems, written in English
• The poet's name should not be included on any page of the poetry attachment.
• Page breaks should be used to separate poems. Each poem should start on a new page and its title formatted in bold. 
• The document should be paginated. Place page numbers in the footers of each page (Example: Page 2 of 6)
• Legible, 12-point font, serif should be used.
• One application per candidate.

For any questions on formatting or other queries, please reach out to our Programs team at programs@ccpoets.org.  

Considerations & Exclusions

Applicants must confirm that they will be 21 years or older at the time of the 2027 Cave Canem Retreat, which will take place June 6-13, 2027.  

The Cave Canem Fellowship includes:    

• Invitation to the Annual Retreat
• Access to Fellows & Faculty Fund
• Access to exclusive scholarships for select writing residences
• Archival training
• Inclusion in public programming (readings, panels, multi-genre collaborations, etc.)
• Subscription to a bimonthly Cave Canem resource containing community news and exclusive offers