Words from Jampolis, by Janelle Levesque

Applications are open for the 2025/26 Sponsored Residencies and the 2025 Oliver-Craig Black Writers’ Retreat at Jampolis Cottage until February 6, 2025.

WFNS is grateful to Janelle Levesque for sharing the below reflection on (and photographs of) her time at Jampolis Cottage in September, 2024. 

It’s my last day at Jampolis Cottage as the 2024 Robert Pope Foundation poet-in-residence. I’m writing indoors—by a wall made up of sea-facing windows—for the first time since I’ve moved in, because of heavy rain. Every other morning, I rose with the sun, brewed my coffee and walked, notebook in crook of arm, across the yard to the ocean’s edge, where a flock of morning geese greeted me dutifully and I watched the sky change. I watched the indigo flank of Blomidon and its dark skirt of evergreens retreat behind a curtain of clouds and re-emerge as the wind parted them. I watched the seagrass sway hypnotically in the wind, and the slow, faithful pulse of the tide as the Minas Basin filled and emptied, over and over. In this ritual, my own pulse slowed to the bay’s cadence, and I came to understand my own weather, pen in hand.

And words did come to me on the wings of birds, on the wind’s cool breath, and in rusting September leaves, but this residency was so much more than productivity.

It was the pasturing cows at the neighbouring farm that kept me company with a comforting moo; the fisherman gathering on the right shoulder of the beach each day, dipping their lures into the water and releasing the day’s catch; the bald eagle that returned on its stately sail each morning to feast on the leftover bait; the coastal quest from Penny Beach to Blue Beach at low tide, a museum of periwinkles, rock fossils, and blue mussel shells; it was trading good mornings with the kind man and his dog on their daily walk by my ocean perch and later meeting his wife foraging driftwood, who told me about the history of the cottage and stories about their friends, Neil and Jane Jampolis—Neil’s groundedness and his driftwood sculptures that filled the backyard, Jane’s zeal and affinity for all things bovine.

It was the way the solitude and silence both humbled and opened me, eager to strike up conversation with the rare stranger, connections I’d normally miss out of shyness. It was the kindness of those strangers, the kindling of that conversation. It was the rewilding that stirred my spirit—all the ordinary miracles spilling into my palms: a pair of playful foxes by a river to enchant me after a long, solitary hike; the young deer prancing across Penny Beach at dawn that paused her journey to console me as I cried from the weight of writing grief; the murmurations of sandpipers putting on a private show for me each morning.

It was the bookshelf well-stocked with the company of other Nova Scotian writers, the generosity of their words forming a bridge to a felt community. It was the rare gift of wide-open time and space that allowed me to call myself a writer and begin to believe it, in spite of the lack of publications under my belt. It was the bay water that buoyed me, the landscapes that beguiled me, and the old house that held me in its history.

I’m so grateful to have been invited to pen a small part of this history in its new literary chapter, thanks to the generous support of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and the Robert Pope Foundation and, of course, the Jampolises for entrusting their beloved cottage to Nova Scotian writers, giving us the rare gift of time and space—“a cottage of one’s own” to freely pursue the creative path without having to work against the grain of a capitalist value system that makes it so difficult to make a living as an artist. As I leave with a handful of songs and a fruiting manuscript, I know I’ll never forget my time at Jampolis Cottage and all it gave me—most of all, the momentum to keep the pen moving.

Janelle Levesque is a poet and non-fiction writer based in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. She was the recipient of a 2024 Alistair MacLeod Mentorship and was the 2024 Robert Pope Foundation poet-in-residence at Jampolis Cottage. She is currently working on her first full-length poetry collection.

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Simultaneous Submissions

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) administers some programs (and special projects) that involve print and/or digital publication of ‘selected’ or ‘winning’ entries. In most cases, writing submitted to these programs and projects must not be previously published and must not be simultaneously under consideration for publication by another organization. Why? Because our assessment and selection processes depends on all submitted writing being available for first publication. If writing selected for publication by WFNS has already been published or is published by another organization firstcopyright issues will likely make it impossible for WFNS to (re-)publish that writing.

When simultaneous submissions to a WFNS program are not permitted, it means the following:

  • You may not submit writing that has been accepted for future publication by another organization.
  • You may not submit writing that is currently being considered for publication by another organization—or for another prize that includes publication.
  • The writing submitted to WFNS may not be submitted for publication to another organization until the WFNS program results are communicated. Results will be communicated directly to you by email and often also through the public announcement of a shortlist or list of winners. Once your writing is no longer being considered for the WFNS program, you are free to submit it elsewhere.
    • If you wish to submit your entry elsewhere before WFNS program results have been announced, you must first contact WFNS to withdraw your entry. Any entry fee cannot be refunded.

Prohibitions on simultaneous submission do not apply to multiple WFNS programs. You are always permitted to submit the same unpublished writing to multiple WFNS programs (and special projects) at the same time, such as the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program, the Emerging Writers Prizes, the Jampolis Cottage Residency Program, the Message on a Bottle contest, the Nova Writes Competition, and any WFNS projects involving one-time or recurring special publications.

Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that participants in any given workshop have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their career stage. The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions used by WFNS.

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and writing for children and young adults) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If you’re uncertain of your experience level with regard to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca