Sunday, June 27, 2010

Lucille Clifton Sunday ShapeShifter Rebirth BroadcastL Birthday Edition

This week…in honor of Lucille Clifton’s first birthday since her transition to starshine I offer the first of a series of weekly Sunday Rebirth Broadcasts in honor of Lucille Clifton! Today’s exercise is based on her powerful survival poem “won’t you celebrate with me.”


Lucille Clifton Sunday ShapeShifter Rebirth Broadcast: Birthday Edition from Alexis Gumbs on Vimeo.


This series of broadcasts is part of the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School:

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.

for more details on the 4 components of the ShapeShifter Survival School look here: http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/survival-school/

And finally…no one delivers this poem better than Ms. Lucille herself.




Happy Birthday Lucille Clifton: Announcing the Shapeshifter Survival School

http://blackfeministmind.wordpress.com/survival-school/

Introducing the Lucille Clifton ShapeShifter Survival School in Durham, NC!!!!

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.

The ShapeShifter Survival School has 4 components:

Lucille Clifton Sunday Rebirth Broadcasts: Every Sunday starting on Lucille Clifton's birthday (June 27th) and going until November 7th Lex will video broadcast a poem by Lucille Clifton and a survival reflection/activity.

ShapeShifter Poetry Intensive for Parents (Saturday August 21st 10am-5pm) CHILDCARE AND MEALS PROVIDED (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com if you want to do childcare or donate food or photocopies!)

For all parents and caregivers and survivors of sexual violence who are committed to ending child sexual abuse this poetry intensive will allow participants to reflect on Lucille Clifton's ShapeShifter series and other poems that deal directly with her experience as a survivor of child sexual abuse and to write and share their own poetry of healing and transformation.

Suggested donation: $25-100 (monetary and in-kind donations welcome at any point in the process...we encourage asking for donations from your families of origin and communities as a way to share your vision with them of creating a world free from child sexual abuse)

On Tuesday August 24th participants and allies will reconvene over tea to check-in in a loving affirming space and to make handmade ShapeShifter booklets as a fundraiser for the continued work of the ShapeShifter Survival School .

On Wednesday September 15th we will have another check-in about the process of sharing this work and bringing up the topic of child sexual abuse in our communities.

Everett Anderson Storytime Week! (Monday September 20-Wednesday September 22) (ALL AGES INCLUSIVE DONATIONS WELCOME!)

Lucille Clifton wrote a series of books called the "Everett Anderson Books" for her children and other children that discuss difficult issues, including the loss of a loved one, internalized racism and sexism and witnessing abuse as child. With dinner and cookies and milk we will read these stories together and do a series of activities designed to help us create ways of sharing difficult and important stories across generations in our communities. We believe that sharing stories, truthtelling, is a key practice towards ending child sexual abuse and all cycles of violence in our communities.

All Souls ShapeShifter Story Making Day (Sunday Oct 31st 11am-6pm) (ALL AGES INCLUSIVE...SWEET DONATIONS WELCOME!)

Replete with costumes, candy and storymaking stations this will be a chance for us to make our own collaborative illustrated community story about transformation, facing what scares us and creating a world free from child sexual abuse and all gendered violence. Our beautiful story and our beautiful process of creating together will be a resource for us and for superheroes everywhere.

Applications for the poetry intensive coming soon! Email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com to express interest in participating, donating a scholarship or donating food, money, photocopies, DV tapes and other forms of love!!!!!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Notes From Kansas: by MobileHomeComing Interviewee Angela Denise Davis

*Note: We are thrilled to be practicing intergenerational love and we are learning from the best. This piece is a beautiful reflection by MobileHomeComing Interviewee Angela Denise Davis about FINDING her mother's garden.


I know there is a poem in this somewhere. It almost got lost this evening when my mother did a final spray over her garden and did not notice that my laptop was on the patio table.

My mother’s back yard is full of flavor: an old kitchen, ceiling fan turned sideways on a patio column, a black mailbox that peeks from the grapevines, an umbrella on the deck that leans to kiss the umbrella on the patio, and a striped snake whose presence is the reason for a container of mothballs on the table. I wish I had a camera.

Her back yard is her sanctuary. I find shelter in a chair that is snuggled by a palm plant and a family of pots – terra cotta, green plastic, clay, metal, and those invented out of found objects.

She is out there in the morning and in the late evening when the sun is less brutal than at mid-day.

I watched this evening as she cut down wandering vines and swept the patio clean. My father will have work to do tomorrow. I ask if I should put the cut greenery in the garden trash can.

“No,” she says.

“Mama, dad ain’t gonna like seeing this stuff on his fresh cut lawn,” I tell her.

She just replies with a chuckle that he needs to see all the work he should have done. She said he would never recognize her work if she didn’t leave the pile in the yard. She is right, of course. My father says she works too hard, but he enjoys the creation of vines structure and spirit as much as she does.

I listen as the water from the faucet trickles into a bucket she has slid under the attached hose.

“I don’t like to waste water,” she informs me and I take the bucket into her garden. The Marigolds did not get rain last night. They will thrive in their homes made of the holes in the cement blocks that line her rows of tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and okra.

There is always work to do in this space my mother has created. This evening she wants to place hooks on the beams of her patio roof.

“Who does this when I am not here, Mama?” I ask with the answer already in my head.

“Oh, your dad,” she says. I know that she does not always have the patience to wait for him, though. Tonight, I make sure that she does not over exert herself and reach for the drill in her hand.

I step on the small, metal stool and place the drill over my head, reaching as high as I can. Three hooks later, we place the ferns and other potted plants just beneath the lattice covered with wild vines. She tells me that anyone from Alabama or Mississippi would know the name of the mass of greenery that hangs from the patio roof like a blanket of leaves. I tell her that I will ask Mary Anne about the vine which my mother thinks may be named Ms. Astor.

The night was closing fast around us, but I would not go in the house until my mother was trailing behind me. I knew that she could always find more work to do before calling it quits. She will be 70 years-old next January. She has more work in this life than she will ever finish.

“We’ll get the rest in the morning,” I tell her.

This week has been full of heart work. We have grieved the loss of her niece, my cousin. It has been a loss that has made our distance more regretful. Here, in her green world we seem to be finding our way back home to each other. We are two women working on reconciliation. Perhaps, we are planting new ways of being mother and daughter. I hope so, but do not invest too much time in expecting what the harvest of these days will bring. I am simply satisfied with the knowledge that we have planted something new between us here in her back yard even though there is more work for tomorrow.

-Angela Denise Davis

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Eternal Summer Reading List

Hello loved ones!

Yesterday as we drove from Atlanta to London, Kentucky on the MobileHomeComing Journey I started to wax nostalgic about summer reading. Clearly I have been reading all year long since I was 2, but there was something about the booklet we used to get from school with recommended summer reading and the trip to the library to get the books and the excitement that though school was over books would always always be with me. Now that I have my PhD receipt in hand and it is officially Eternally Summer AND I've just returned crates and crates of books to Duke University Library...I want to reinstitute summer reading for all of us (and especially for all of you that have been asking me for booklists)!

Yippee!

So the theme of this Summer Reading List is....SPIRIT (and no I wasn't on the cheerleading squad) as you get ready for a soon-coming publication Spirit Vol. 2 of the Little Black (Feminist) Book series...get a head start on some of the reading that has given me access to Black Feminism as a spiritual practice and an everyday healing and inspiring walk.

Books that I have read:

(please feel free to donate one or more of these to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Lending Library via this wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_wl)

Non/fiction


Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred (Perverse Modernities) by M. Jacqui Alexander

Zami, Audre Lorde

Fiction


At the Full and Change of the Moon, Dionne Brand

The Salt Eaters, Toni Cade Bambara

The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson

Sula, Toni Morrison

Poetry


The World is Round, Nikky Finney

Gospel, Samiya Bashir

The Book of Light, Lucille Clifton

AND A non-fiction book that I haven't read yet that I REALLY want to read: (please feel free to donate this to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Lending Library via this wishlist: http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_wl)

by Angel Kyodo Williams


Have the best summer ever. May it never end.

love,

lex

Thursday, June 10, 2010

How do you spell a very long scream?


And Sometimes Why

Poem against the speechlessness of oil spills and flotilla attacks.


A

Asthma

Ask Audre

ask Audre angel above

ask

ask about ash

about aid

about asking

about anything


Ask about anguish

and Atlas

about anger at atoms

about artillery

about acid

about animals

about ache


Ask

about authoring abundance

about awe

about awful


Ask Asha

Ask Angela

Ask Assata

about apocalypse

ask about after

about

after about

after


At answer

Ask

Ask

Ask again


At apocalypse

ask again.


E


Early egg

every easy enterprise

each Edenic endeavor

eager executive execution

eats everything


express ending


each ending eats earth

everytime


end


entertain excellence

explain energy

each essence ending

empty economy


emergency everytime


each empty eagle egg

eats everything

ending earth


everytime


end



I


ill innoculate

itching intern

idiot industry

icon inside ice

inside interest

international impasse

impossible island

inside innocence

i

imagine

i ignore

i invade

i invoke

i incite

i identify

i imitate

i isolate

i inflame

i inhabit

i implode

israel


indefinite ice incident

increment

inches inside ideals

ink in iris

inches inside

ices over

indian ink

intimate

indispensible

indigenous

incantation


imperative


i itch

i inch

ice isn’t infinite

is it


O


o owl

o otter

o oak

o oyster

o ozone


o Oya

o Oshun

o Okefenokee


ordain order

o offshore oil

o oil orgy

o ornament oscillation


om


our own out

ooze out our only

onto our own

off our only orbit

out

obey


oil over

our only

ocean


oil options

over olive oil

over our oath

oil over opening ownership

oil over opening our one oath

oil over our opening

our objection

occuptation


o Omar

o Oprah

o Omran

o Obama

o Obsidian ocean


our own occident

over offering


oil

over

our own one


oil


over our only ocean


U


up

use up until until

up up

US uses us

use us up until

up up up


urgent useless us

up up up up

united us unties us up

up until u ululate


unless u unsettle

usher us up

urgent ugly uncle

umbilical up

use us until

up up up


uncage

underneath

unleash


up until up up

until up up up up

u up up up

up up

up

up


up


-Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Monday, June 07, 2010

Keep Doing It: aka The Black Women's Walk on Water Mutual Respect Supreme Love Society Award

At a celebration of Toni Cade Bambara's short, powerful everything-changing life, Toni Morrison, her friend, editor and collaborator mentioned that the two of them formed a committee called some poetic variation on "The Black Women's Walk on Water Mutual Respect Supreme Love Society." At sporadic times when they wanted to support each other's writing and work in the world they would send each other small checks, whatever they could afford...with the note...you are the recipient of the Black Women's Walk on Water Mutual Respect Supreme Love Award...

What a beautiful practice. What a tradition we walk in. For those of you who contributed your "Walk on Water" dollars to the QBG preservation fund, for all of us who bankroll paypal by helping to fund each others dream projects, healing tattoos, necessary journeys, lifeline equipment, we are next generation initiates in the way Toni loves Toni and we love each other/each self enough to insist that wealth is never individual and that we have the material power to create the world we deserve.

And there is evidence of this everywhere. I am particularly present to and grateful for the way over 60 loved ones and comrades made donations and hooked up speaking gigs so that Q(ueer) (B)rilliant (G)ander Julia and I could actually achieve our dream and buy the Revolutionary Vehicle an old-school retro fuel efficient RV that will allow us to enact the MobileHomeComing Project and travel the country documenting and amplifying the resilience and brilliance of our queer Black community. Missed the fun? Feel free to donate to keep us eating and mobile on the road. And check out a video of our journey to find the RV here: http://vimeo.com/12297014

And a couple of weeks ago some Quirky radicals gathered in Durham, North Carolina to celebrate the Combahee River Collective and honor Sakia Gunn with a week long ritual of creating and transforming community. Check out pictures from Combahee Survival Revival Week from QBG Moya here:

Combahee Survival in general: http://picasaweb.google.com/qbgphotography/CombaheeSurvival?feat=email#

a very hot game of "Hot Date" http://picasaweb.google.com/qbgphotography/CombaheeSurvivalistsPlayHotDate?feat=email#

and a super useful guide to edible plants from QBG Zachari's herban foraging tour of Durham: http://picasaweb.google.com/qbgphotography/HerbanForagingWithZachari?feat=email#


And this week...like every week you have plenty of opportunities to show your Mutual Respect and Supreme love with that which matters so much more than money ever should. Your words and your presence!

For example...rock out to QBG Corinne Stevie's new album at the Land of the Free Release Party: http://quirkyblackgirls.blogspot.com/2010/05/corinne-stevie-kara-kersey-present-land.html

Contribute your brilliance and ferocity to the FAAN Mail project...engaging popular artists in transformative feminist ways: http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/FAAN-Mail/116931731667497

Write something for the American Pariah project: http://quirkyblackgirls.blogspot.com/2010/05/american-pariamerican-pariah.html

and very urgently due to the further escalation of the state of Israel against human rights activists bringing aid to Gaza raise your voice in support of Palestine following the lead of QBG Mai'a: http://guerrillamamamedicine.wordpress.com/

You are a recipient in the Black Girls are From the Future (cite QBG Renina) Multi-directional Bliss Lustful Revolution Award.

Don't spend it all in one place! :)

Infinite love,
QBG Lex

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Poetry is Not a Luxury: The Remix (by School of Our Lorde Poetry Webinar Participants)

www.summerofourlorde.wordpress.com

(Lex's wardrobe provided by Ammoliscious and sister-comrade Leah Burke)

I LOVE THE SCHOOL OF OUR LORDE WEBINARS!!!!!!

After reading and discussing Audre Lorde's "Poetry is Not a Luxury" the participants in the School of Our Lorde Poetry Webinar collaboratively created these two poems about what poetry IS and what it IS NOT!!!! Much love to Monchel, Chantal, Rosa and Leana for being badass cyber cypher warriors!!!!

not

poetry is not a mask

poetry is not a commercial

poetry is not homogeneous

poetry is not an excuse

poetry is not perverse

poetry is not linear

poetry is not just for white guys with nothing better to do

poetry is not canonized

not a classroom unit

poetry is not a bunch/of line breaks/in random/places

not a grade

poetry is not taught or learned--it's the language we were born with

not death without a birth

poetry is not inhibited

poetry is not brought to you by hallmark

a competition

poetry [will] not be televised

not a "10"

poetry is not about meter

poetry is not an accessory in a psuedo-revolutionary lifestyle

poetry is not oppressive

poetry is not convenient

poetry is not always easy

poetry is not boxable

not a bindi on a dreadlocked white girl's forehead at a powwow

poetry is not the destination -- it is the journey

poetry is not standard english

poetry is not patchouli

is

poetry is my son's smile

my fingers walking across his belly and squirming back

poetry is a heartbeat

yes

poetry is what i say to my reflection when i think no one is listening

poetry is a place to live

poetry is goosebumps!

poetry is breath

poetry is prayer

poetry is a breath of fresh air

poetry is italian ice on a 90-degree day

lol

poetry is your hand in mine

poetry is laughing out loud :P

hee!

poetry is an ecosystem

YES

poetry is painful but not in vain

poetry is a lifeline

poetry is family

poetry is an open heart

poetry is a safe space

poetry is knowing when you've met The One (or The Ones)

poetry is an exorcism

poetry is jabberwocky

poetry is knowing when you've met yourself

poetry is a new spelling of my name and everything else

poetry is the sound of sitting still

the sounds of getting up

poetry is raw

sdrawkcab si yrteop

poetry is forwards

poetry is a yes followed by an oh yes!

poetry is circular

poetry is everpresent

poetry is old

is silent when we're not listening, but still persistently there

poetry is about to happen

poetry is our only hope

poetry is wanted and feared

poetry is your skin knitting itself back together

poetry is omnipresent

poetry is an open door

this language is beautiful

poetry is love

poetry is stinky funky lust

poetry is knowing when to stop

and start again

poetry is what makes you say "aww" when you see a little kid

poetry is putting into words what had no words before

poetry is putting into words what never existed before

poetry is what my heart is saying to my hand

poetry is constantly naming what is so it doesn't get lost

poetry is mothering myself

poetry is how my mom calls my cell phone whenever i say (or type) the word “mother”

poetry is calling for my attention


to join the School of Our Lorde Poetry Webinar email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com

Friday, June 04, 2010

MobileHomeComing Update!: We Got the RV!!!!

www.mobilehomecoming.wordpress.com

We got our Revolutionary Vehicle!!!!!

Dear Family,
With your support Julia and Alexis have actually obtained the RV (Revolutionary Vehicle) that will transport us to you and all of our far flung loved ones to document the resilience and brilliance of Black queer folks across generations!

love,
lex and julia



Watch this video about how we got it!

RV Adoption! from Alexis Gumbs on Vimeo.

It's never too late to help us out with gas money and living-on-the-road costs! Donate or become a monthly sustainer today!

Click below on the amount that feels generously doable to you to sign up for an automatic monthly donation (you do not have to sign up for a paypal account):




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Make a donation to the A Black Queer Mobile Homecoming - An     Immersive Archive

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