Influency: A Toronto Poetry Salon, offered as a ten-week course twice annually since 2006 through the U of T School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing program, is a contemporary poetry course of study and discussion context. Each session offers registrants intimate engagement with the work of 8 diverse guest poets working either in the Toronto area or beyond. Each guest poet visits the class twice, once to give a 40-minute prepared talk on one of the other poets in the roster, and once to be the subject of such a talk. In each case the class reads a selected book of poetry in advance of the reading poet's visit. Each evening offers comments by the course facilitator Margaret Christakos, the guest poet's prepared talk, the second guest poet's half-hour reading, and a generous Q & A. Registrants compose their own pieces of written response over the following weeks, and for the course finale prepare intertexts in which they consider two or more of the poetries we've explored in relationship. Some of these intertexts, composed in Fall 2008, are posted here, along with a general talk given by Christakos the final evening of the Fall salon.

In Spring 2009, Influency 6 will present 8 more poets: Adam Sol, Billeh Nickerson, Phil Hall, Sina Queyras, Glen Downie, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jacqueline Larson, and Sue Sinclair. For more info about the upcoming spring session, check out the University of Toronto's Continuing Education site.

Influency 5: A Toronto Poetry Salon (Fall 2008) featured guest poets Meredith Quartermain (Matter), Michael Boughn (Dislocations in Crystal), Gary Michael Dault (The Milk of Birds), Emily Schultz (Songs for the Dancing Chicken), Lillian Necakov (The Bone Breaker), David Silverberg (Bags of Wires), Tanis MacDonald (Rue The Day) and Jordan Scott (blert).