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Camden, NJ - We Still Here: Present-Moment Quilt Poems / Quilt, Spell, Incantation
Instructor: M. Nzadi Keita
Application Period: Wednesday, February 4, 2026, 12:00 AM ET- Wednesday, March 4, 2026, 11:59 PM ET
Workshop Sessions: Weekly on Wednesdays, March 18, March 28, April 1, April 8, April 15, April 22, April 29, May 6, May 13
Workshop Location & Reading: La Unique African American Books & Cultural Center
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 Spring 2026, Cave Canem is excited to welcome poet, essayist, and scholar M. Nzadi Keita (Cave Canem Fellow, 1999) as the facilitator of our Camden, NJ Regional Workshop, We Still Here: Present-Moment Quilt Poems / Quilt, Spell, Incantation.
About We Still Here
We are living at a time when hostility seems to escalate and draw closer with each breath. Through this work, poets will make poems that hold us in awareness of our treasures, poems that affirm our power to persist, by reminding us of “the present moment” as [extolled] by Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Holding the artistry of Gee’s Bend quiltmakers, Faith Ringgold, and Bernice Reagon in mind, participants will consider quilts, spells, and incantations as emblems of some singular moments. The workshop will include discussion, prompts, periodic reading in and outside of the workshop, and drafting poems for collective commentary. Poets will strive, through this process, to distill affirmative, restorative power from the poems to themselves. Not just about writing sonnets, this workshop about forms offers writers the opportunity to more deeply engage questions of structure, sound, and innovation. Rigorous and playful, Pattern/Constraint/Sound helps writers take such questions up, exploring and then exploding forms inside and out. Poets will develop their prosodic chops, fortifying not only their writing but also their understanding of why we have certain habits, blocks, and technical mojos. Poets will try their hands at forms old and new from around the globe, develop their own new forms, and experiment with writing formats outside of poetry (including tables, questionnaires, prescriptions, and more!).
Eligibility
Any adult (18 or older) Black poet of any experience level who is a resident of the city or theimmediate 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 M. Nzadi Keita
M. Nzadi Keita is a first-generation northerner and a proud ’99-’01 Cave Canem alumna. Her third book, Migration Letters: Poems, reflects on her background as a Black working-class woman in Philadelphia, originally Lenapehoking land. In Brief Evidence of Heaven: Poems from the life of Anna Murray Douglass, Keita uses persona to unveil Frederick Douglass’s first wife. Her essays and poems have been published widely, appearing in anthologies including the forthcoming Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Motown Poetry Revue, and in journals such as Obsidian, Mid-American Review, Raising Mothers, and About Place. While parenting sons, Keita worked as a Professor of English, a nonprofit administrator, and a freelance journalist. She was an adviser to the award-winning documentary, BadddDDD Sonia Sanchez, and has consulted for the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Foundation and Mural Arts Philadelphia. Keita is a Pew Fellow in Poetry and a Leeway Foundation Transformation Award recipient.
New York, NY - Digging in the Crates: Creating Space for Revelry and Repair
Instructor: Brian Francis
Application Period: Friday, February 6, 2026, 12:00 AM ET-Friday, March 6, 2026, 11:59 PM ET
Workshop Sessions: Weekly on Tuesdays, March 24, March 31, April 7, April 14, April 21, April 28, May 5, May 12, May 19
Workshop Location & Reading: Cave Canem Office
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 Spring 2026, Cave Canem is excited to welcome poet and teacher Brian Francis (Cave Canem Fellow, 2011) as the facilitator of our New York Regional Workshop, Digging in the Crates: Creating Space for Revelry and Repair.
About Digging in the Crates
This workshop invites poets to mine personal and collective histories for joy, grief, whimsy, and survival, to write toward the fertile space where these forces meet. Through generative prompts, close readings, and workshopping, participants will examine how craft choices around language, line, form, and rhythm shape their poems. Poets will experiment with free association, found text, and image-based writing prompts, and will take that care to their revision practices as well to help them toward the final drafts. From hardships/challenges, through their work, participants can insist that their losses hold value. Alongside poems, poets will engage film excerpts and texts across genres to consider how realities of personal challenge and injustice enter their interior lives and can ultimately reflect beauty and gratitude around and within their artistic practice. Centering care and curiosity, this workshop creates room for risk, invention, revelry, repair, and for poems that bend memory and narrative toward possibility.
Eligibility
Any adult (18 or older) Black poet of any experience level who is a resident of the city or theimmediate 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 Brian Francis
Brian Francis is a Cave Canem fellow from New York City. He has a BA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in poetry from New York University. His work has appeared in The Cortland Review, BPJ, and ANMLY. He lives in his native Harlem, where he teaches English Language Arts to middle school students.