No one creates in a vacuum. This space is dedicated to sharing pieces that are shaping our practices and deepening our understanding of each cycle’s theme.

“Identity Politic Confessional: How we read (or don’t read) work by marginalized identities” by Noor Hindi

Thinking about collective resistance; (mis)reading / (un)reading; crying while reading as release, as recognition, as processing grief; the (im)precision of language, of translation; how we grant ourselves permission to write, visibly; visibility; the beauty of being in conversation with living poets; the importance of persistent questioning; “It’s all political”; the distance between our lived realities; acts of joy and survival “rooted in deep seeing”; the grass and the grass’ meaning, growing

“Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude” by Ross Gay featuring Bon Iver

Thinking about thank you, thank you, as chorus, thank you; gratitude as an elixir for loneliness; tender devotional lists; reading aloud to one another, holding each other through it; adding music to the scene; driving off into a sunrise and smiling; soundscapes; birds in the springtime / the act of close listening for birds in the springtime; slow drip of honey, curve of a goose’s neck – all smooth and sweet; allowing emotions to water through us, weeping – take from this cup and drink

“The Lion Speaks: On the Potency of the Epistolary Form” by Daniel Black

Thinking about the song and rhythm of conversation; the musicality of language; the freedom of the epistolary form; to speak unabashedly, to write without pretense; the letter: container for memory, breathing time capsule, envelope of living voice; the legitimizing of our own stories against the grain of the victor, the will of the hunter; a private glimpsing of the naked heart

“Vulnerability Study” by Solmaz Sharif

Thinking about the shyness of strawberry blossoms before the fruit; breadth within brevity; the intimacy of observation; the quiet of our mirrored humanness; the key of our senses; a tension that holds form; the scrutiny / to live under the scrutiny; a violent undertow; our histories, breathing through the walls

“Transformation” by Adam Zagajewski

Thinking about the pause / what happens within the pause; our untold longings; rest as resistance, rest to recuperate, rest to refocus; quiet moments of observation; the sun, the heat of the sun; how the sky changes; what happens when we pay attention; a languageless poem, alive in the world

“Sometimes I can’t feel it, what some call beauty” by Diane Seuss

Thinking about writing as a form of appreciation, how we appreciate the world; a numbness, an oversaturation; histories in the landscape; storied pieces; stories unspoken; the sea and all it contains; the water, containing memory; what we name but cannot feel; what we feel but cannot name; poem obsessions; movement; a cold chill on a fleshy cheek; feeling as flesh or feeling as fleeting; what stirs within us, what stirs around us, what stirs within me

“The Voice Notes We Shared” — the season finale of Still Processing

Thinking about the fluidity of friendship; water as mystery, water as body, water a solace; voice across distance; “the texture of loneliness”; the ways in which we forget, the paths to remember; care-full catalogs of communication; to be in relationship with people, with place; a tending to, a watering, what it means to water.

“in lieu of a poem, i'd like to say by” Danez Smith

Thinking about slow texts as letters; group texts as connection; odes to friendship; showering small details with attention; collective lists; watching ourselves bloom and wrinkle together just to cheer each other on; nourishment versus satiability; to bite into something, to allow the juice to run down our arms; the sweet-sour honesty of love; turning the ripeness, softly, over and over again, in our hands—palming the delicacy of us

“Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild” by Kathy Fish

Thinking about naming, naming as a means to know; how unexpected language shifts our understandings; a sea buoy; slow processing; what keeps us afloat—and how; innocence in joy, joy despite the threat; the blessings of connections, the forms connections take; a spark, illuminating an agency within us, what lights up around us; an exhilaration; what exhilarates you?

“Spell for Grief and Letting Go” by adrienne maree brown

Thinking about divination, oracles, asking; asking our surroundings; looking up, looking around; feeling the air; allowing the pause; allowing the silence; allowing the water to hold, to carry; feeling though movement; talking through discomforts; activating sound; releasing stagnation; starting anew; honoring the past; expanding beyond; learning new laughters; learning lived stories of new friends; dance; what the body holds; moving the body to move what the body holds; poems; embracing the nonlinear; offerings to the earth

“Tigers” by Eliza Griswold, shared in Shira Erlichman’s newsletter

Thinking about ferocity; desire, and the fear of desire; longing and letting go; what happens when we hold on too tight; letters as a list of our loves; what we are able to offer each other wholeheartedly, what we aren’t; the ways we seek wholeness; seasons; landscape; liminal space; sky tigers / earth tigers, wondering: when we let go, which tiger possesses the strongest pull?

“The Gift” by Forugh Farrokhzad

Thinking about night; light; revolution; the darkness rearranged; the unknown, unknowing; transformation; rebirth; separation/togetherness; our becoming, together; a window of hope, climbing through a window of hope holding your hand; uncertainty; the void; odes to friendship; our kindreds as lamps that light our alleys; hair blowing in the wind

"It’s the Season I Often Mistake" by Ada Limón

Thinking about disorientation; a melding, a melting; the tremble of reciprocity and return; movement into being, gentle and slow; discomfort; solace in small moments; unspooling, a spilling of spells; a golden flutter; the whisper of wind that harkens change

“pillow talk” by Audrey Gidman

Thinking about attention begetting beauty; ephemerality; soft spaces; how language builds; what and how we share, and with whom; to ebb and flow / to hold and release; a letting go; a lightness; a levity of feathers

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Thinking about the intimacy of play; play as prophetic; intimacy of friendship; collaboration or friendship over romantic love → tripping up the status quo; intimacies outside of romantic relationship; types of love; devotion; skirts with pockets filled with notes only shared with friends; how we are tricked into romance but the actual romance of community; how to exist and multiply within it

“Creatures Abandoned by Time” by Jackie Wang

Thinking about dream poetics; the power of dreams; where we pour / pay attention; how we pray / show devotion; realities, coming into ourselves; layers, layering; plan(e)s of consciousness; attachment; seeds and their relation to ground; where are we?; who are we?; how memory flows and follows; what more, what more can we imagine?

from “Like Nebraska” by Sophie Klahr

Thinking about stillness; quiet; how we are shaped by stillness, quiet; color; change, or the desire to remain unchanged; change dipping into us no matter what; what we chose to fix and how; what we find in the salvage; what we offer to the darkness; the body made tell-tale; the brutal made tender; the evidence of histories; our landscapes; the scent of smoke and still, how it touches, even now

“From Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee

Thinking about fruition; the delicacy & resiliency of flowers; how we connect & are connected; what the sticky nectar catches; all that we contain; what we cried to this time last spring; welcoming joys; inviting pleasure; sweet moments of realization; holding truths—multiple truths—and turning them in our impermanent hands

“Ode to My Homegirls” by Safia Elhillo

Thinking about closeness; to be let in, to allow each other in, to soften; the landscapes of sense memory; the languages of friendship; joy, tears, what bubbles up in each other’s presence; how we measure distance, intimacy; the details of our memories; what happens when we remember together; the ways we practice being a harbor, holding each other, safe; the safety of us 

“Hope is a thing with feathers (254) by Emily Dickinson

Thinking about the miniscule, the crumbs, “Joy is not made to be a crumb.”; persistence; solitude; “The Gorgeous Nothings”; lineage of poetry, lineage of women, lineage of hope; letters / envelope letters; the language of birdsong, the language of lilacs; to live outside of language; the space of the unspoken; tender as flight, ever-moving light 

“life is like an enormous pavlova” from Brandon Taylor’s newsletter, sweater weather

Thinking about the ritual of the newsletter; creative growth; the order of things; balance; imagined expectations; moments of reflection; taste and sensation; the textures of pavlova; sustenance; feeling on the tongue/writing at the tips; celebration in the face of fatalism; wonder in the face of the world

SEAMSIDE podcast episode STURDY TRADITIONS with Jess Bailey

Thinking about the ways we communicate through handwork—fabric and paper, quilting and letters; collective art-making; softness, sturdiness; the mediums of the archive; all the ways to tell the story; expression outside of the written form; finding a language that fits; asking what is the spiritual function?; making offerings to what we love; the gift economy; the beauty of self-publishing; a belonging to something bigger; “my quilts are a testament that I was here.”

“Love Poem (feat. Chani Nicholas)” by Jose Olivarez

Thinking about types of love; looking up to look within; the new moon as a new start; where we attune to guidance; being together across distance / the tender proximity to our loves; the momentum to move forward; sadness tides AND our joy!; relationality, it’s all relational; “& what will love be then?”