While chapbooks can be crafted from handmade paper with exquisitely ornate bindings and all manner of beautiful bells and whistles, they can also be made on the fly with whatever’s at hand.
In this workshop at Enabling Arts, we’ll write some poetry (using chapbooks that engage in multiple languages as prompts), look at a large sampling of different types and styles of chapbooks, and we’ll learn three basic chapbook folds. The diversity of chapbooks might be seen as mirroring the diversity of languages across Turtle Island and poetry is what can sometimes bring this together.
After examining the craft behind the multilingual sample poems, participants will edit their own work and consider the physical expression of that poem in chapbook form.
Everyone will leave with not only their favourite chapbook from the sample selection, but also their very own handmade chapbook (folded, sewn, collaged in whatever way they please) and poem. With a multidisciplinary practice that includes performance, chapbook-making and music, Kevin Spenst (he/him) is also the author of four full-length books of poetry and 19 chapbooks. An assortment of his lyric essays, interviews with his neighbours, and personal accounts from others make up the collection Stanley Park Manor: a Collective History, out with Anvil Press in the fall of 2026. He is one of the organizers of the Dead Poets Reading Series, has a chapbook review column for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and is one of the poetry ambassadors for Vancouver’s 2025-2027 Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner. He is one of the Poetry Mentors at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory where he cohabitates with the one and only Cheryl Rossi.
Location: Enabling Arts, 343 Railway St Unit 104, Vancouver
Type: Workshop
Sponsored by: Word Vancouver · Koerner Library · Enabling Arts
Host: Writer-In-Residence Kevin Spenst
About The Host
Kevin Spenst
Kevin Spenst (he/him) is the author of four full-length books of poetry and 19 chapbooks. An assortment of his lyric essays, interviews with his neighbours, and personal accounts from others make up the collection Stanley Park Manor: a Collective History (Anvil Press, 2026) He is one of the organizers of the Dead Poets Reading Series, has a chapbook review column for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and is one of the poetry ambassadors for Vancouver’s 2025-2027 Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner. He is one of the Poetry Mentors at The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territory where he cohabitates with the one and only Cheryl Rossi.
