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Date: June 13
Times: 12noon - 4pm w/ two 15 min breaks
Level: All
Membership Price: $50 (Members can use code MEMBERS10 upon checkout to receive 10% off)
Workshop Description:
Water is located, tied to place, and water, as land, is everywhere. In this reading and writing group, we will think about river as a verb. Amidst ongoing apocalypse and climate catastrophes, as well as demands for material decolonization and abolition, we will hold the strengths of multiplicity, spaciousness, and spilling/excess as a feature of water bodies. What can water teach us about gender, intimacy, collaboration, and collective power? What are the life forms at the border, which is also the river? By learning from and with rivers, we will attempt to embody poetry and prayer as an action. Poem as something we do. River as something we do.
To ground us where we are, we will engage with the work of ecologists and artists working in and around the Mendocino region waterways. We will also read and respond to the work of poets, writers, and researchers including Natalie Diaz, Asiya Wadud, Hiba Ali, Nick Estes, and Brandon Shimoda, as well as the manifestos and demands of land defense organizers, such as Pueblo Action Alliance, who are struggling for the reclamation of their lands and waters.
Participants will be asked to arrive with stories of their own relationships to waterways, to write from the perspective of a body of water, and contribute to a collective mapping exercise.
Expect a group walk over to the Marin Headlands to celebrate and connect with the water around us!
About the Instructor:
mallika singh is a poet, farmer, and community cook based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised across India, California, and New Mexico. you can read their writing in Protean Magazine, the Poetry Project, and baest journal. their chapbook, Retrieval, a poetic investigation into an NSA data collection site, was published in 2020 by Wendy’s Subway. often working in collaboration with others, mallika makes experimental poetics and soundscapes which explore resonance, power, intimacy, and ecosystems. mallika is growing okra and more with their coworkers at Ashokra Farm. find them out in the field or by the river.
Required Materials: Something to write with/on or type on.
Optional Materials: Anything to be comfortable throughout the workshop: cushion, meditation chair, snacks, water, and comfortable shoes.