Many of us have been taught to write through thinking of ideas, but…
What if we relied more on remembering, feeling, and deep knowing to guide our literary practice?
When I began to take writing workshops, everything I produced felt forced and disingenuous. I thought my inability to just “come up with ideas” or follow specific prompts meant that I wasn’t a real writer–or worse, that writing wasn’t my calling after all.
It wasn’t until I gave myself permission to discover my own epistemological approach to writing–modeled by Black women writers such as Audre Lorde, Toni Cade Bambara, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and many more–that it all finally clicked. Writing was spiritual, sacred, ancestral. And it was time to treat it as such.
“The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am; and the black mothers in each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams, I feel therefore I can be free.”
– Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury
“These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman's place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.”
– Audre Lorde, “Poetry is Not a Luxury
INQUIRIES WE’RE EXPLORING IN THIS WORKSHOP:
What is hidden within your deep, dark, ancient place of possibility, creativity, and power?
What stories have you inherited from your dead that they themselves weren’t able to record?
What creative lineages do you belong to, do you have a responsibility to write in continuation of?
MEET YOUR WORKSHOP FACILITATOR
Sasadya Jade
Conjuring worlds with words, spellcasting through “acts of language,”* and creating stories that create myself** is when I feel the most powerful. My independent study of Black women’s literature has been the foundation of my spiritual, creative, and literary practice over the past 2 years. Whether it’s Audre Lorde’s “Uses of the Erotic” or Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” I read these women’s texts as gospel and share the wisdom I find with you.
*ode to
Toni Cade Bambara
**ode to
Octavia Butler
Not only is deep study of the Black women writers who came before us a form of ancestral veneration, but we, as their descendants, have a responsibility to continue the literary tradition they created. Alice Walker called herself a medium. Lucille Clifton claimed the identity of “spirit writer.” The woman we know as Beloved came to Toni Morrison in a vision.
Our inheritance from these creative ancestors is to reclaim and embody a literary conjure practice, one that is spiritual, ancestral, and erotic* in nature.
Let’s explore how to reckon with this inheritance together.
*When I refer to the erotic, I’m referencing Audre Lorde’s conceptions as posed in her essay “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power”:
In the Remember What You’re Here to Conjure
workshop, we will:
01.
Invoke our most beloved Black women writers
and explore what they taught us about the power of the written word.
02.
Reflect on our intuitive understanding of our own literary practice,
which may be in opposition to how we have been instructed to approach writing within academic institutions or traditional workshops.
03.
Explore The Gathering’s Literary Conjure framework
to remember what you’re here to conjure through (ancestral) reverence, (sacred) rituals, and (erotic) research.
Saturday, December 6th at 3 PM EST / 12 PM PST
A replay of the workshop will be sent to all who register
REGISTER NOW
Remember what you're here to conjure.
Saturday, December 6th
at 3 PM EST / 12 PM PST
Free virtual workshop inviting you to explore your writing practice through the lens of ancestral inheritance, literary continuity, & communal accountability.
A homeplace for rigorous spiritual and intellectual study of the lives and literature of Black women writers.
The Gathering
