Sitting by the river. Photo by Dannette Sharpley

For the past three days I have had the healing, transforming, invigorating honor of facilitating 9 black and brown femmes (including myself) in a love-filled intensive inspired by our recent ancestor Michelle Cliff and her magical realist historical novel Free Enterprise.   We drew on the militant legacies of Mary Ellen Pleasant and other participants in a plotting to arm enslaved people and create a free black state to clarify our relationships to our own writing lives in these urgent times.   We spun and unraveled the stories of our names, created aliases to live into, cultivated our relationships to necessary refusal, found our concealed weapons,  made bottle tree monuments to our memory and healing and gave ourselves permission to love the communities of accountability, visions of freedom, daily practices and physical tools that make our freedom-seeking and freedom-producing creative lives possible.   The following is one arrangement of our closing blessing and affirmation of the deep love that fuels our work.   I encourage you to repeat the refrain “I love my own,” aloud as you read the poem.

P.S.  If you want to sign up for our next intensive, Breathe Underwater: A Baptismal Intensive for Ancestor Accountable Artists, Activists and Intellectuals click the link for more info.

i love my own

“I don’t hate you and yours.  I love my own.” -attributed to Mary Ellen Pleasant by Michelle Cliff in Free Enterprise: Novel

(by the participants in Free Enterprise: Towards a Sustainable, Autonomous, Accountable Writing Life)

i drink water

i love my own

i listen to whales

i love my own

walking up early to be with the beautiful thoughts that arise with me from dreams

i love my own

visiting ancestors while dreaming

i love my own

remembering my dreams

i love my own

i love my own

bed

all the fabrics

i love my own

watercolor paints

i love my own

things to collage other things with

i love my own

feathers and stones

i love my own

rose quartz, black onyx, lapis

i love my own

sewing machine and old clothes

i love my own

bodily integrity

i love my own

freedom of form

i love my own

reciprocal relations to earth

i love my own

refuse scarcity

i love my own

define accountability

i love my own

Abolition now!

i love my own

sun and moon blessings

i love my own

clean water free healthcare

i love my own

writing while Black

i love my own

beautiful brilliant black

i love my own

concealed weapons

i love my own

making magic

i love my own

we have the tools

i love my own

ancestry

i love my own

abundance

i love my own.

poetry

i love my own

saying what i mean

i love my own

saying i love you

i love my own

what can we do together today

i love my own

what would the Ancestors say

i love my own

the ancestors who mean our freedom

i love my own

space and time to grow food

i love my own

my time in the sunshine with you

i love my own

staying free

i love my own

ancestors, blood and chosen

i love my own

my mentor and teacher

i love my own

my mothers (all of them)

i love my own

black women regardless

i love my own

if she hears you, does she feel your words?

i love my own

poet homies

i love my own

black girls in white spaces

i love my own

children who need to learn their histories

i love my own

youth organizers

i love my own

black and brown femme artist theorists who are unafraid

i love my own

a movement that came from deep within me

i love my own

living with our spiritual gifts in the open, without fear or shame

i love my own

do you want to know the meaning of your name?

i love my own

Swahili names!

i love my own

The African Diaspora

i love my own

choosing to uproot

i love my own

our selves always in relation to others

i love my own

always with intention and integrity

i love my own

we have everything we need to be FREE

i love my own

no police to make me anxious

i love my own

kissing my daughter without fear that it will be the last time

i love my own

black babies, safe here and there, always

i love my own

spirit and goddess manifested in the vulnerable and oppressed of the world

i love my own

sun kissed/ never burnt/ moon held/ always revealed/ glowing expanded lives and spirits/

i love my own

dancing warm bodies alive

i love my own

sing, dance and love our entire, beautiful and difficult selves into fiery existence

i love my own

capacity, agency, space, and discipline to create media and art for the revolution

i love my own

freedom is where each of us gets to be our full selves, always and all ways

i love my own

i love and care for for Earth, my universe home

i love my own

being held and nourished by my own

i love my own

laugh with a cousin every day

i love my own

black music for any mood

i love my own

i love us

i love my own

Breathe Underwater: A Baptismal Intensive for Ancestor Accountable Artists, Activists and Scholars  July 25, 26, 27  3pm to 6:00pm Eastern.

There is so much to react to in this moment.  The media and the ongoing triggering reality of intersecting oppressions has us frantic.  We have to do something.  We feel we aren’t doing enough.  Haven’t we been doing this forever? Why isn’t this over yet?

Breathe Underwater is designed to wash us clean, reset our clarity, renew us for the long-term.  Recognizing the unsustainability of reaction-mode alongside the urgent need for meaningful action in this moment, we call on the ocean as the oldest place we know and as a repository of resistance, memory and rebirth.

This online intensive uses a curriculum informed by June Jordan’s Who Look at Me, Jaqui Alexander’s Pedagogies of Crossing and M. Nourbese Philip’s Zong along with guided meditations, writing exercises and facilitated conversation to immerse participants in the peace, urgency and depth of ancestral accountability.  Building on the work of the Guardian Dead Retreat, this online experience will provide tangible ways to root your action steps, creative decisions and intellectual offerings in a profound connection to legacy and power.

Hold your spot with your $50 deposit here:  

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $175-300.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by July 23rd.

We are out in the streets.  We out of words to describe this.  We are walking in circles.  We are out of our minds. We are out of our bodies.  We are everywhere.  And we are nobody.  And it hurts.   This course is for those of us who are scholars, writers and artists who are figuring out our role in a moment characterized by (a need for) drastic change.  This one night workshop draws specifically on ways that June Jordan and Audre Lorde responded to police violence as poets, university teachers and public intellectuals.   We need the depth of their legacy right now as much as we ever have.

The class will draw on Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s chapter “Nobody Mean More: Black Feminist Pedagogy and Solidarity” in the book The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent (eds. Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina Maira.)

As she says in the chapter itself “This chapter is a meditation on what it means to be nobody in a university economy designed to produce somebody inviduated, assimilated and consenting to empire.  Is it possible to instead become nobody in the academic space? Is it possible to align with the illegible oppressed/contemporary subaltern, the falling apart abject nonsubject, inside a university English class?” (Participants in the course will get a pdf of the full chapter to refer to for the class.)

If you, like Audre Lorde and June Jordan, are a writer or teacher or a theorist or a thinker or an activist or a mother or all of these things at the same time, join us for a supportive space where we tap into the the power of black feminist legacy and empower each other (the nobodies that we are) to face this moment.

Sliding Scale Registration here.

FAQs

Who should take this course?

Anyone who identifies as an artist, writer, scholar or intellectual who wants to clarify their revolutionary role in this moment by learning about the approaches that black feminist ancestors June Jordan and Audre Lorde took.

How do I log-in to the course?

Log-in information will be sent to participants who have registered for the event on Eventbrite 6 hours before the event and 30 minutes before the event, through the Eventbrite platform. Please be sure to register before 6pm on the night of the event and please check the email address associated with your paypal or eventbrite account.   We will be using a technology called Zoom which is accessible from computers and phones.

What if I just want to read about this on my own?

Please read The Imperial University: Academic Repression and Scholarly Dissent which in addition to Sista Docta Lex’s chapter on June Jordan and Audre Lorde also includes chapters by many other activist scholars.

Last night in honor of Michelle Cliff about 20 self-identified flamboyant writers gathered to honor her legacy by writing our love in fire.  We are taught by Michelle Cliff that the work of loving our people, embracing our divinely destined communities and audiences and writing the words that we need to burn through the systems of oppression that divide us is complex and necessary.   Through a series of activities inspired by Cliff’s essay “If I Could Write this in Fire, I Would Write this in Fire,” participants lit candles that brought our flamboyant loved ones (and the loved ones who make our flamboyance possible) into the virtual space and then we did the difficult work of mapping the distance between us and those we want most to embrace with our words.  We grappled with the depth of grief and love that our connection requires of us.  We used our own writing as a reflective surface to go deeper into the reasons behind the moments we shy away and the instances where we sometimes reproduce our separation in our own acts of articulation.  We stated our love as boldly as we could and then we found even deeper love under that.  I am so grateful to each of the participants and everyone who sent love and good thoughts for this gathering.  If you want another opportunity to learn from the legacy of Michelle Cliff, one of our newest, fiercest ancestors, consider signing up for this month’s 3-day intensive Free Enterprise: Towards a Sustainable Autonomous Writing Life.

For now, here is the group poem of commitment that we created in the flamboyant tradition of Michelle Cliff which burns through us.

and i will

a group poem by the participants in the Write this in Fire online workshop

“There is no end to this piece of writing. There is no way I can end it.”

• Michelle Cliff in “If I Could Write This in Fire, I Would Write This in Fire.”

si pudiera escribir mi amor en el idioma de tu alma,

escribiría mi amor en el idioma de tu alma.

y lo hare

if i could dance this bass and rhythm in honor of pleasure and sensuality

i would dance this bass and rhythm in honor of pleasure and sensuality

then i will

if i could write this in a free and uninhibited, raunchy and elegant dance

i would write this is a free and uninhibited, raunchy and elegant dance

and i will

if i could write this in excessive glitter that will never be ignored

i would write this in excessive glitter that will never be ignored.

and i will

if i could write this is in the freedom of my body through swinging hips and thick thighs in “too bright”, “too tight” dresses

i would write this in the freedom of my body through swinging hips and thick thighs in “too bright”, “too tight” dresses

and i will

if i could write this in the erotic epiphanies that manifest in long walks at sunset when all the connective tissues of the universe become apparent

i would write this in the erotic epiphanies that manifest in long walks at sunset when all the connective tissues of the universe become apparent

and i will

if i could write this in free holistic integrative healthcare for all of us and everyone we love

i would write this in free holistic healthcare for all of us and everyone we love

and i will

if i could write forcefields of protection around the beautiful vulnerability

i would write forcefields around the beautiful vulnerability

and i will

if i could write this in the words you long to hear spoken

i would write this in the words you long to hear spoken

and i will

if i could write this in Sunday dinners that you don’t have to cook

i would write this in Sunday dinners that you don’t have to cook

and i will

if i could write this with the hope that i’m trying to untangle from the thorn bushes of indifference,

i would write this with the hope that i’m trying to entangle from the thorn bushes of indifference

and i will

if i could write this in skywriting on fire above 32 south flagg st, worcester ma

i would write this in skywriting on fire above 32 south flagg st, worcester ma

and i will

if i could write this in the last storm cloud you left on your bedroom floor

i would write this in the last storm cloud you left on your bedroom floor

and i will

if i could write this in water that envelops and holds

i would write this in water that envelops and holds

and I will

if i could write this in lovenotes that will reach you one day

i would write this in lovenotes that will reach you one day

and i will

if i could write rain into the parched places

i would write rain into the parched places

and i will

if i could write this into the broken places and by writing manifest something whole and abundant

i would write this into the broken places and by writing manifest something whole and abundant

and i will

if i could write this in oven-clay fingers,

i would write this in oven-clay fingers.

and i won’t — they are much too hot –

but i will sculpt you the poems that i owe our femme bodies, darling

i will pick your lilies

if i could write this into wretched tears and each drop be a new birth

i would write this into wretched tears

and each drop be a new birth

and i will

if i could write this in the scars and tender places on our souls, I would write this in the scars and tender places on our souls

and I will.

if i could write this in healing rosewater baths to soothe our wounds, so we can see each other and ourselves clearly

i would write this in healing rosewater baths to soothe our wounds so we can see each other and ourselves clearly

and i will

if i could write this in dirt for us to grow through

i would write this in dirt for us to grow through

and i will

if i could write this into the earth beneath our feet

the soil touching our soles

i would write this into the earth beneath our feet

and i will

if i could write this in liberation songs sung deep into the core of your bone marrow i would write this in liberation songs sung deep into the core of your bone marrow and i’m sent to

i’m damn sure sent to

if i could write this in the cells that are you and already know the magnificence of your being

i would write this in the cells that are you and already know the magnificence of your being

and I will

if i could write this onto your beating heart so you can see me in my entirety

i would write this onto your beating heart so you can see me in my entirety

and i will

if i could write liberation into every beating heart

a freedom that cannot be removed

that would be unnecessary

it’s already been done.

Free Enterprise: Towards an Autonomous Sustainable Writing Life (After Michelle Cliff)

July 11, 12, 13th 12pm Eastern, 9am Pacific

The late  Jamaican black lesbian feminist genius Michelle Cliff wrote a historical novel about Mary Ellen Pleasant aka Mammy Pleasant, a freedom-fighting radical who collaborated with John Brown and also funneled escaping enslaved Africans through a hotel that serviced the richest white folks in San Francisco and who also disagreed and theorized across space and time with black and indigenous thinkers about what how black freedom could im/possibly exist in capitalism.

What does that have to do with you?

You are a writer from and accountable to oppressed communities still seeking freedom through black words  on the white paper and screens of an anti-black capitalist context.  This three day online intensive connects the freedom-seeking in Free Enterprise to our fugitivity in this moment and offers exercises, insights and technologies to go deep and emerge with tangible strategies and goals for your autonomous sustainable writing life.

Hold your spot with your $50 deposit here:  

registration for the whole intensive is sliding scale $150-300.  (Installment payments available upon request.) Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com and let me know your goals for the course by July 9th.

Write This In Fire (In Memory of Michelle Cliff): Thursday June 30th 6:30pm EST

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/write-this-in-fire-tickets-26207353901

On June 12, 2016 on the same day as the Pulse massacre, we lost the genius, jamaican, black feminist lesbian author Michelle Cliff.  In honor of Michelle Cliff and her legacy and all of our unkillable queer of color flamboyance this one-night webinar is for writers who want their words to make the impossible possible, those of us who will not be content until the bodies of our readers answer the challenge of our words. Through exercises inspired by Michelle Cliff’s work and in honor of our loved ones at Pulse we will bring our words together in a cleansing, purifying, unforgettable flame.  In preparation (or to convince yourself it’s worth it) read Alexis’s 2009 essay on Michelle Cliff’s book If I Could Write This in Fire:  http://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=jiws

Yesterday was the last day of Brilliance Remastered‘s June class Maroon Studies Intensive #1: Debt and Black UnBelievability.  I can never repay the participants in this class for their bravery in co-creating it, the honesty they inspired in me and the generosity of what they each shared.   Yesterday we articulated the urgency of how debt and credit emerge in our lives, the false binary between the external enforcements of capitalism and how those enforcement filter into our closest relationships and the depth of incalculable love we are experiencing.  On this morning when we are reckoning with the incalculable loss caused by a murderous attack on Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC it feels even more necessary.   Below are some poems from our process.

and then the phone rings

by the participants in Maroon Studies Intensive #1: Debt and Black UnBelievability

“We felt it in the way someone saves the best part just for you, and then it’s gone, given, a debt.  They don’t want nothing.  You got to accept it, you got to accept that.  You’re in debt but you can’t give credit because they won’t hold it. Then the phone rings.  It’s the creditors.  Credit keeps track.” -Debt and Study by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

then the phone rings

it’s the person i owe a bio (and i still don’t know who i am)

then the phone rings

it’s me asking myself am i smart enough am i good enough did i plan well enough this month

then the phone rings

i need to graduate in order to validate my learning

then the phone rings

it’s your future, the one desired for you, foreclosed, all the major appliances missing.  you are going somewhere unknown, but dark

then the phone rings

it’s your cousin who needs help but he always lies to you

then the phone rings

i have nothing to offer you because i don’t have any money

then the phone rings

it’s my partner who needs a place to stay but can’t help pay the rent we can’t afford

then the phone rings

my parents need to retire and be taken care of

then the phone rings

your family is trying not to resent you for being so happy and so broke

then the phone rings

it’s your sister, your niece is hurt, your sister is full of rage, your niece is hurt, your sister’s rage is older than both of them

then the phone rings

it’s auntie, she wants to know what it is i could possibly see without a television

then the phone rings

and you don’t answer because you didn’t do what you said you would do yet, and you did so many other things

no payment possible

(debts that cannot be repaid)

by the participants in Maroon Studies Intensive #1: Debt and Black UnBelievability

“The place of refuge is the place to which you can only owe more, because there is no creditor, no payment possible.”  Debt and Study by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney

i am selling my house back to the bank, but i cannot repay the land i’ve lived on

i cannot repay my grandmother’s labor in hospitals and schools

the bush tea strangers made to save my grandfather’s life when  he was a child

nearly bleeding to death in the cane fields

the teachers who told my mom she was smart and held high expectations for her

my teachers waiting while I work it through

my mother’s voice telling me I was wonderful before gender in the womb

my mother teaching me to dance and cook despite my resistance

the many conversations i’ve had with my mother that allowed me to find my voice

the experience of watching my father and his siblings dance, reminding me of an unstoppable sense of pride

or you for how you don’t understand and you love me anyway

and you for how you do understand and don’t mind when i don’t notice

*******

(And) Now it’s time to sign up for July’s class: Maroon Studies Intensive #2: Necessary as Water

July 15-17, 2015  (12pm to 2pm Eastern)

This is a webinar intensive for thirsty visionaries who value transnational/intercommunal connections and a planetary scale of transformation.  Transubstantiating the poetry of Audre Lorde, the theoretical work of Jacqui Alexander, Chandra Mohanty, Michelle Wright 
and Katherine McKittrick and the activist legacies of June Jordan and Lydia Gumbs, this webinar is especially necessary for thinkers connecting basic needs to brave visions.

8 spots are available. $150-225 sliding scale (payment plans available).

You can reserve your spot by offering a $50 non-refundable deposit here (please include the name of the webinar in the notes):