Another Opportunity for Healing and Growth for Black Women

Hey all, this post comes straight from Alexis @ Broken Beautiful Press announcing their next summer of healing institute. I cannot tell you enough how much I love watching young feminist women take their growth and their healing into their own hands and use it to create and lift up community. So go be fed. (And even if you can’t participate, consider donating and starting your own summer healing group.)

In honor of the great poet Lucille Clifton, who was also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, a mother, an artist and self-identified Amazon warrior through her poetry, the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School is especially designed for families that are committed to ending childhood sexual abuse and all forms of gendered violence. Informed by Generation 5 and the regional plan of the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative, the ShapeShifter Survival School is part of a holistic process of ending child sexual abuse by creating healing community.

Lucille Clifton Rebirth Summer

2011

F0r 5 Thursdays in Lucille Clifton’s birth month of June we will gather as survivors of child sexual and physical abuse and sexual violence and parents and caretakers committed to ending cycles of abuse in our families and communities to do writing activities based on Lucille Clifton’s poetry and the ShapeShifter Survivor Rebirth Broadcast video series.  (See videos here: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/category/shapeshifting/).    Participants in the series will also receive digital mixes of the music we work with to create a sacred space of memory.  We can use the digital music mixes at home to activate memories of safety from the group writing space.

Rebirth Summer Thursdays:

Thursday. June 2

Unapologetic: Reclaiming Our Memories and Voices

Thursday, June 9

Bright: On Clarity and Power

Thursday, June 16

Gentle: On Cultivating Self-Love

Thursday, June 23

Futuristic: Towards the World that We Deserve

Thursday, June 30th

Planetary: The Depth and Urgency of Our Healing

Our intention is that after this summer month of Rebirth the Shapeshifter Survivor writing group will continue on a monthly basis hosted by participants as an ongoing source of support and healing drawing on work by Lucille Clifton and other writers.

For more information or to add your name to the reminder list email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

Related Articles

• Poetry of Lucille Clifton: Miss Rosie (radicalhope.wordpress.com)
• April Is Child Abuse Awareness Month (bodyprinciple.wordpress.com)

National Poetry Month

When I downloaded the “random words” app on my iPad, I had no idea it was National Poetry Month. Instead, I was looking for a way to jumpstart my creativity in a meeting that was sucking the life out of me. Interestingly, the poem below based on an image I chose from my files and the words generated from the app actually inspired me to do more found word writing, ie to be more aware of the words, phrases, and messages in my world and to transform them into art.

autumn breezy light/immaculate in the fields/laughing wonder/ fresh/ tremble me

For the month of April, I will be writing down grafitti, bumper stickers, quotes, etc. and doing short writings on why they intrigued me or simply passed me by in the past and transforming that into poetry. I won’t make you sit through all that processing, but I may post a poem or two … we will see.

What are you doing for National Poetry Month?

Related Articles

• “National Poetry Month: Poetry Pictures” and related posts (smallworldathome.blogspot.com)
• National Poetry Month interview with Norbert Krapf – Part 1 (iupress.typepad.com)
• Poems for National Poetry Month (Hermana Resist)