**What is Archipel about?**

Archipel is an ongoing dialogue between me (Cara Waterfall) and other poets and creatives of all kinds, celebrating the ways we connect through mentorship, community and transitions.

I am a poet and have lived over half of my life overseas. Most of my poems have been written in isolation, often adrift from the geographical, cultural and linguistic ties that might anchor me. But connection is essential to creative practice, whether you are doing it remotely or in person.

What has sustained me creatively? My generous and brilliant mentors, and the poetry community at large. They have helped me brave rejection and combat doubt. They have cheered me on and taught me the importance of respecting other people who have chosen a similar calling.

Archipel was also inspired by my very first poetry mentor, my father. When you purchase a subscription to this newsletter, you are paying into a scholarship fund in his name, which will support emerging poets.

Archipel (the French word for archipelago) embodies the idea of being separate yet interconnected. As a French-speaking Anglophone living in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire for the third time with a French partner and three children whose mother tongue is French, Archipel also explores my own experiences with the French language as well as the ways in which poetic language straddles the porous border between the real and the speculative.

Archipel will also include occasional reflections on transitions in my life, including my foray into new creative projects.

Why subscribe?

In Archipel, I hope you find inspiration for your own creative process.

I hope you feel inspired to embrace new ways of finding and fostering connection through your art.

This project is also my way of giving back to the people and community, who have kept me afloat, while I was working, mothering, moving, witnessing, writing and not writing.

I hope a part of Archipel resonates with you.

The Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund

Donald E. Waterfall was my father and my first poetry mentor. When you purchase a subscription to this newsletter, you are paying into a scholarship fund in his name, which will support emerging poets.

My father was the first person in his family to finish high school and went on to graduate from the University of Toronto in 1965. Subsequently, he earned a full scholarship to complete his PhD in Philosophy at Princeton University.

A former diplomat, he retired early to return to academia and became an undergraduate sessional instructor in Philosophy at his alma mater. When his grandchildren were born, he prepared education funds for each of them.

My father had a preternatural ability to read under any circumstance, including when my children would interrupt him.

Education — and reading poetry, in particular — was really important to my father. We read Robert Louis’ Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verse together. By middle school, my father had already introduced me to both Williams (Blake and Wordsworth) and I had taken a crack at T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Later, he made sure I always had the latest Canadian poetry books on hand.

When my father died suddenly in April 2021, I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could honour his memory. The Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund is one way I can do that.

The whole of every paid subscription for this newsletter will go toward the fund, which will provide financial support and mentorship to an emerging poet who possesses an original perspective and a potent mixture of passion, craft, intuition and attention.

I want to amplify your poems, perspective and voice.