Oceans Without End Â
 June 13-July 18, 2025
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Are you longing for more ease in your creative life or a rhythm that feels spacious?
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Are you seeking a way to reconnect with poetry and yourself, along with renewal and inspiration for your personal writing practice?
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Oceans Without End offers exactly that—a generative writing course for poets and emerging poets that emphasizes the embodied experience of slow flow, oceanic time, and release from rigid expectations.
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This intuitive six-week journey welcomes writers of all levels to immerse themselves in seasonal inspiration, gentle prompts, and supportive community while crafting their personal 'Water Book' collection—no experience required, just openness."
With Intention
This summer, we will move intuitively, finding inspiration in the season and each other. Through a gentle but deliberate process, you will gather language, beauty, and meaning—and then shape these elements into a final project—A Water Book—a small collection of your summer’s work.
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For You
This course is for you if you want to…
- Feel more free and connected in your writing life
- Learn to trust your process—and come to enjoy it more
- Fall a little in love with poems, poets, and poetic living
- Write new work at a gentle, natural pace
- Explore new forms, voices, and possibilities
- Create a personal collection of your writing to hold in your hands: something all your own.
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Whether you’ve been writing for years, or haven’t written since high school, this is a space where your voice is welcome. There’s no need to be ready—just bring yourself.
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Receive
- 6 weekly print-and-go packets full of prompts, readings & creative nourishment
- Video and audio lessons to guide and encourage you
- Five Live Zoom gatherings for connection & accountability (all recorded, come as you are)
- A final project: your own Water Book—a curated collection of your poems
-Bonus lessons and materials to keep you writing well after the course ends
- Flexible timing: move with the group or take it slow, asynchronously. Either way, you belong here.
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We Begin
June 13, 2025
I invite you to begin with me, aligning your writing with the rhythm of early summer. We'll meet in Live workshops during June and July, or enjoy the replays on your own schedule.
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Your Teacher
This course is led by Holly Wren Spaulding—poet, teaching artist, and founder of Poetry Forge. Holly has helped hundreds of writers find their way back to poetry through intuition, kindness. Her approach invites an embodied experience and the poems that come from this tend to surprise and delight.
Her philosophy? You can start from where you are.
You already have what you need.
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A Summer Syllabus
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Lesson 1:Â Of Pleasure, Glistening, How to Be & Wanting Nothing Else
Lesson 2:Â On Portable Studios, Invisible Collaborators, & Magic Against Death
Lesson 3:Â On Taking Time, Good Faith, Essentials for Creativity
Lesson 4:Â Of Heat, Remembering, Bravery, Air, Ambition, & Flower Walks
Lesson 5: Of Sunsets, Electric Instants, Light Rain, Blue Vaults, Hibiscus Blooms, & Things I Didn’t Know I Loved
Lesson 6:Â On Stray Notes, Finding the Glimmering Bits of Language
Lesson 7: A Water Book, & Honoring What We’ve Made
Lesson 8:Â Sparks and the Ocean
Lesson 9:Â Returning to the SourceÂ
Creative expression is a uniquely human impulse—
Throughout history and across cultures, humans have made art with words. And despite what you may have been lead to believe, we don't require ideal conditions, or perfect silence, or a studio, or an audience, or extraordinary talent to claim this birthright. However, many of us flourish and flow only once we find a teacher and a community that supports this way of being in the world. In this brief video, writer and teaching artist, Holly Wren Spaulding, shares some of her teaching philosophy -->
Important Dates
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Course portal opens for orientation: June 8Â
Packets will be released weekly on Mondays, beginning June 9, to offer structure to your personal process. Live writing workshops take place on Zoom, Fridays: 2:00-3:00 pm Eastern:
June 13Â
June 20Â
June 27
July 11
July 18
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Lifetime access to all materials.Â
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"As one of your secret poets, I have found this class a wonderful, affirming experience. I started writing very frequently almost as soon as I signed up for it, and blessedly wrote without any attachment or expectations, simply observing and recording snippets and savoring (the process).—Jeanne B., 2023
"This whole course has been wonderful. Receiving the packets on Monday mornings was definitely a highlight of the summer. I was engaged at such a deep level . . .I found myself taken in and nurtured by words and language in a new and different way . . . I was surprised by what came up for me by a few of the prompts or poets we read."—Diane L., 2023
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"(Holly's) teaching style is so tender and inspiring, and I look forward to continuing to learn from her and work alongside this wonderful community she's curated through Poetry Forge."—Autumn, 2022
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"I expected to read poems, to write poems, to hone my craft. I did not expect to deepen my connection to myself, to reconsider what it means to be a poet, to learn that slowing down isn’t the same as giving up . . . I feel optimistic about my writing process and the sense of endless possibility that envelops me. Oceans was so much more than a poetry workshop. I look forward to making it a part of many summers in the future."
—Lily T., Oceans Without End, Summer 2024
Frequently Asked Questions
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Who is this course for?
Poets and secret poets. Prose writers, visual artists, therapists, parents, MFA grads, teachers, as well as published and unpublished poets have all taken this course, and benefitted from the experience.
What is a hybrid course?
While the coursework is delivered via our easy to use online learning platform (provided by Kajabi) and there are regular Live Zoom workshops where we will engage with elements of the curriculum together, the deeper work happens away from the screen, when you discover where your personal interests and desires flow into the materials I've created for you. What will we find in the weekly lessons?
Each week Holly presents a thoughtful selection of poems and writing provocations to stir your imagination, craft tips, and suggestions for how to integrate poetry into the flow of your life. The written materials are complemented by pre-recorded video and audio content.
What kinds of poets will we be exposed to during the course?
Expect to find inspiring selections from Kimiko Hahn, Linda Gregg, Mary Oliver, Joe Brainerd, George Oppen, Claribel Alegria, James Schuyler, Carl Phillips, Alex Dimitrov, Ron Padgett, Naomi Shihab Nye, William Stafford, Suzanne Buffam, Nazim Hikmet, Jim Harrison, Wang Wei, & many others.Â
Tell me more about the schedule?
You will have access to the entire curriculum once the portal opens . It's up to you to pace yourself in a way that feels good, but it's designed to offer focused engagement during the heart of summer, with 9 weeks worth of writing inspiration and instruction.
What if I'm traveling and unable to keep pace with the rest of the cohort?
You will have lifetime access to the course materials.Â
Does Poetry Forge offer financial aid?
Payment plans are available to make taking class accessible to as many people as possible.Â
Questions? Tech hiccup?
Just reach out—Holly is here to help. In addition to our Live Zoom workshops where there is always time for discussion and Q & A, you can always reach out by email:  holly (at) poetryforge (dot) us
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You are not alone. But if you feel that way, please join us. There is room for you here.
