Poet.. storyteller. mentor.
Tides, tongues & translation — movement between languages, forms & belonging.
I write toward language, loss & belonging, & teach writers how to sustain creative practices.
I build creative communities, one conversation at a time.
join the archipel community!
A Creative Current for Writers, Readers & Dreamers
Subscribe to Archipel, an ongoing dialogue between poets & creatives of all kinds, featuring craft columns, new poems, and spotlights on artists, with a dedicated focus on West African poets in Currents: Voices in Motion — celebrating the ways we connect through mentorship, community & transitions.
Every paid subscription directly sustains the Donald E. Waterfall Scholarship Fund in honour of my father, supporting poets like our inaugural 2025-2026 scholar, Isaiah Adepoju.
New this month: 🌊 Currents: Voices in Motion, a poetry craft column that also spotlights West African poets.
join the next wave
THE DONALD E. WATERFALL SCHOLARSHIP FUND
Making space for voices that deserve to be heard
Named for my father & first poetry mentor, Donald E. Waterfall, the DEW Scholarship Fund supports emerging poets through financial support, mentorship & a platform to share their work with a wider audience.
Each paid subscription & donation help sustain a poet’s year of growth, like our 2025-2026 DEW Scholar, Isaiah Adepoju.
for writers
GROW YOUR PRACTICE
CF
THE COUNTERFEED:
We feed each other what the canon won’t.
The Counterfeed is a FREE living archive and invitation — a place where poets feed each other new language, new lineage — and new ways of making meaning through craft notes, creative prompts & essays on process, language & translation — feeding writers who work against the current. A rebellion against the algorithm, and a return to communion. Discover resources drawn from my workshops and mentorship practice.
I
IMPRINT: 1-on-1 mentorships
Every voice leaves an imprint - let’s trace yours.
For poets—and anyone who writes like one. Page, stage, or in-between. For anyone who feels like they don’t belong. Multilingual or language-curious. Emerging, returning, or refining your next book. Translators, educators, editors, and interdisciplinary artists welcome.
Begin with a discovery call to explore your goals. A 1-on-1 creative mentorship to help you uncover your language, your lineage, and your own poetic frequency.
Wt
WORKSHOPS & TALKS
Make language your plaground.
Age-responsive, generative sessions for middle-schoolers through adults. Experiment with languages, translation as method & form as playground. Workshops become meeting points: between languages, between ages, between what you meant to say and what the poem teaches you to hear.
Here, discovery matters more than polish — the joy is in the making. Writers leave with pages that sound more like themselves — alive in the language(s) they love.
coming soon
Introducing:
Intertidal: A Counterpoetics Lab
Between languages, between tides.
A self-paced course for writers exploring hybrid forms and belonging.
radiant wound
Explore RADIANT WOUND — poems born between languages and the shores of Côte d’Ivoire.
“Cara Waterfall’s stunning debut, Radiant Wound, places us alongside her life in Côte d’Ivoire after the second civil war...Waterfall possesses the rare ability to write into ‘the between-work’ of a land, a culture, a language and reveal the radiant remnants of survival. ”
“Each poem in Radiant Wound feels like an exclusive invitation into a private room… a vivid, three-dimensional experience that invites us to reflect on the proximity of our own stories.”