Registration Now Open: Combahee Pilgrimage May 31-June 3rd

“The Combahee River Collective was a Black feminist group in Boston whose name came from the guerrilla action conceptualized and led by Harriet Tubman on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal region of South Carolina.  This action freed more than 750 slaves and is the only military campaign in American history planned and led by a woman.”

What and Why

June 2, 2013 will be the 150th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s successful uprising where 750 enslaved Africans freed themselves and each other at the Combahee River.  This uprising was also the inspiration for the Combahee River Collective a Black lesbian feminist socialist collective founded in Boston in 1977 who created an analysis of interconnected liberation centered on the lived experiences of Black women and designed to free us all.

In the spirit of the Combahee River Collective, Harriet Tubman and all the people who stood for their freedom that day the Mobile Homecoming Project and Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind will be coordinating a pilgrimage to the Harriet Tubman Bridge on the Combahee River for a weekend of celebration, clarification, community building and ritual.   Special invited guests include Combahee River Collective Statement co-authors Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith and Demita Frazier, and Black Feminist Retreat Attendee and Mobile Homecoming Interviewee Cessie Alfonso.

Who

This journey is for self-identified queer, LGBTQ or queer affirming Black people who are committed to fulfilling our freedom legacies in our daily lives and our communities.
(Allies who share this commitment are welcome to contribute financial or in-kind donations, to spread the word to loved ones in the core constituency, to contribute organizational scholarships and to support their loved ones in being able to attend.  Thank you for your love!)

Why name it after one person? … I think if we had called ourselves the Harriet Tubman Collective, there wouldn’t have been any problems, because she stood for so much.  But why not name it after a liberation, a very specific instance of a liberation struggle and liberating action? That’s how the name came about.

Combahee River Collective co-founder Barbara Smith in an interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs in 2011

Where:

Mobile Homecoming and Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind will be leaving from Durham, NC on Friday May 31st and caravaning to the Penn Center on St. Helena Island in South Carolina where we will be together until Monday Morning (June 3rd) when we will return to Durham, NC to bring the liberation energy to the Eno River.   Participants are free to fly in to Charleston and meet us at the Penn Center or to attend whatever part of the events speak to your soul and resonate with your schedule.

A rough idea of the daily breakdown is

Friday: arriving by evening and settling in

Saturday: liberation workshops at Penn Center and community connections with Sea Island Black Farmers

Sunday: dance, ritual, music, celebration  at the Combahee River

Monday: travel to NC and celebration at Eno River with Durham community

Location:

Harriet Tubman Bridge is located on Highway 17 over the Combahee River
32.652406, -80.683246‎     +32° 39′ 8.66″, -80° 40′ 59.69″

How:

Online sliding scale registration will open on May 1st.  There is limited housing which will be reserved on a first come first serve registration basis.  Registration options are available that include transportation (from Durham), housing, food and all events OR just housing, food and participation in SC OR just day passes for folks local to SC or who can provide their own housing.

Our funding model is characterized by grassroots partnerships.   Individual registrations will pay for logistics, housing, facilitation, documentation and transportations for our esteemed Combahee River inspired Black feminist lesbian elders.  We encourage participants to fundraise and we will help spread the word about individual or group fundraising campaigns.  We are also working with our favorite Combahee inspired organizations to provide scholarships for participants.

Register Here:
https://www.artful.ly/store/events/1212

email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com to make other payment arrangements

.
Co-sponsors can provide scholarships at 3 levels

$500 for one participant
$375 each for two participants ($750 total)
$300 each for 3 or more participants

Co-sponsors can choose to use their scholarships to send LGBTQ or LGBTQ affirming Black participants in their own organizations or to make participation available for participants seeking support directly from Mobile Homecoming/Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

Individuals who are not attending can also provide scholarships named after loved ones who they want to honor by supporting this work.

Location of the Harriet Tubman Bridge on Highway 17 over the Combahee River:
https://www.google.com/maps/ms?msid=216283980164012257864.0004db9d2365d247f474a&msa=0

View Harriet Tubman Bridge in a larger map

Finding Poems: A Creative Writing Retreat Series by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Finding Poems: A Creative Writing Retreat Series by Alexis Pauline Gumbs*
 This set of 6 one-day community writing retreats over a six month period is designed to offer writers at all levels an opportunity to find the poems speaking to them everywhere and to deepen their poetic practice by drawing inspiration from black feminist poets.  Each retreat will be all day on a Saturday in Durham, NC and will include meals, inspiration, nerdy contextualization and loving support from an exuberant educator who has been creating transformative writing space for over 15 years.

1. The Lorde Concordance and Oracle Building (inspired by Audre Lorde)
This first retreat is about queerly finding poems in the alphabet.  Drawing on Alexis’s Lorde Concordance practice, this retreat consists of activities that re-alphabetize poems in order to find new messages, and sometimes the same messages and some times silliness.   Every poem we love is a possible oracle.  Each participant should bring a favorite poem.

2.  A Thousand Words (inspired by Evie Shockley)
In her Half-Red Sea Evie Shockley has a powerful thousand word poem that performs the never equal relationship between words and imagery.  In this retreat drawing on our own photographs and some chosen by the facilitator we will make our own thousand word poems in conversation with an image that we find meaningful, impossible, sacred or something.
3. Walking Into Poems (inspired by Alice Walker)
Alice Walker writes everyday planetary poems.  As one of the most explicitly political nature poets ever, the simplicity of her poems has a lot to teach any poet about the relationship between writing about nature, as such, and writing about the healing potential “human nature.”  This retreat will consist of a series of guided walks searching for everyday poems offered by the planet.

4. Poems as Architecture (inspired by June Jordan)
Did you know that acclaimed black feminist poet June Jordan was an architect?   Not only that, she won the Prix de Rome in architecture in the 1970s.    This retreat asks us to find the poems in the built environment around us in conversation with the poems that June Jordan wrote while in Rome (some of her less studied work).  For more by Alexis on June Jordan and the poetics of architecture see: http://pluraletantum.com/2012/03/21/june-jordan-and-a-black-feminist-poetics-of-architecture-site-1/
5.  Lucille Clifton and the Poems of our Past Lives
Many people do not know that the great poet Lucille Clifton was also in communication with other worlds.  In her archived papers there are several proposed manuscripts of books that talk about her communication with the dead. Based on Lucille Clifton’s dream poems and past life poems this retreat is about looking for the poems in our own dreams, memories and inklings and maybe even our conversations with folks who are no longer on this plane.
6. Finding Poems Underwater (inspired by Marlene Nourbese Philip)
Drawing on excerpts from Marlene Nourbese Philip’s epic, orchestral, heteroglossaic book length poem Zong, written in honor of captured Africans who were intentionally drowned off the coast of Jamaica so a slaver could collect insurance money for their deaths, this retreat is about finding poems underwater, in deep inner space, behind trauma and the unsayable.

Logistics:
In order to make this rare and priceless opportunity accessible and sustainable it will be community funded.  All workshops will take place in Durham, NC.   Community members interested in participating can help with a process through which Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind gains new monthly sustainers of 750 per month (15 sustainers at $50 each, 150 sustainers at $5 or any combination).  People who participate in the sustainer-raiser have first priority in any or all of the 6 retreats. Dates will be set after the success of the community sustainer raiser.  If there is space in any of the retreats community members who have not participated in that process can sign up with a deposit two weeks in advance of the retreat and an offering of something they can afford.   If you would like to be part of the sustainer/raiser project email writerwk1 at mac dot com.


ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, a prayer poet priestess and has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University.  Alexis was the first scholar to research in the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University and is currently on tour with her interactive oracle project "The Lorde Concordance" a series of ritual mobilizing the life and work of Audre Lorde as a dynamic sacred text. Alexis has also published widely on Caribbean Women's Literature with a special interest in Dionne Brand. Her scholarly work is published in Obsidian, Symbiosis, Macomere, The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Literature, SIGNS, Feminist Collections, The Black Imagination, Mothering and Hip Hop Culture, The Business of Black Power and more. Alexis is the author of an acclaimed collection of poems 101 Things That Are Not True About the Most Famous Black Women Alive and poetic work published in Kweli, Vinyl, Backbone, Everyday Genius, Turning Wheel, UNFold, Makeshift and more. She has several books in progress including a book of poems Good Hair Gone Forever, a scholarly monograph on diaspora and the maternal and an educational resource called the School of Our Lorde. She is also the co-editor of a forthcoming edited collection on legacies of radical mothering called This Bridge Called My Baby. 

Alexis has been living in Durham, NC for almost a decade and has been transformed and enriched by holistic organizing to end gendered violence and to replace it with sustaining transformative love.  Locally she is a founding member of UBUNTU a women of color and survivor-led coalition to end sexual violence, of the Earthseed Collective a black and brown land and spirit reclamation project and the Warrior Healers Organizing Trust, a community accountable foundation practicing organic reparations and transforming blood money into blood relations.  Nationally Alexis is co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Project, an experiential archive project amplifying generations of black LGBTQ brilliance, and intergalactically she is the instigator of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, a multi-media all ages community school based in the wisdom of black feminist literary practice.   Alexis is also a literary scholar with a PhD in English, Africana Studies and Women's Studies from Duke University and a widely published poet and essayist.   Alexis likes to pray by walking, dancing, remembering poems and talking and playing with loved ones.
Alexis was named one of UTNE Reader's 50 Visionaries Transforming the World in 2009, was awarded a Too Sexy for 501-C3 trophy in 2011 and is one of the Advocate's top 40 under 40 features in 2012.
*This idea was made possible by conversations with two of my favorite poets: Samiya Bashir and Faith Holseart.

Brilliance Remastered Been There Lecture #2 Dr. Anjail Ahmad Tuesday, April 16th 7pm ET

The Been There Online Lecture Series is a series of inspired interactive conversations with experienced community accountable scholars offering their lessons learned while navigating multiple institutions and putting their brilliance to work with and in honor of oppressed communities. These lectures are open to scholars, writers, activists and folks in all walks of life ready to be inspired!
Been There Lecture #2  Dr. Anjail Ahmad  Tuesday, April 16th 7pm ET/6 CT/ 5 MT/4 PT

Dr. Ahmad is a poet, educator and activist writing, speaking and teaching in venues throughout the United States. She received her PhD in African American Literature and 20^th Century American Poetry from the University of Missouri-Columbia, her MA in Creative Writing from New York University and her BA in Creative Writing from Agnes Scott College.
She is also a blind woman advocating for disability justice in collaboration with a diverse community of disabled activists in Greensboro, NC and a Mobile Homecoming superstar.
Her areas of interest include: African American Literature and Oral Traditions; Twentieth Century American Poetry; The Poetics of Resistance in African American Poetry; Spoken Word and the poetics of Performance; Poetic Entrepreneurship; E-Texts and Publication; Women’s Voices; Social Justice and Disability Rights Advocacy
She has written two books of poetry, is published widely in journals and has won numerous awards. She teaches writing classes at North Carolina A&T State University where she is also Director of Creative Writing. In 2010, she has used her depth of writing knowledge and experience in working with writers to found The Fractured Writer: A Creative Resource for Writers (http://www.thefracturedwriter.com). She also leads writing and publishing workshops and sees clients in her home office in Greensboro, North Carolina where she offers training, coaching, consulting, and mentorship to groups and individuals of all ages.
As Artistic Director of The Fractured Writer aka The Loving Boot Camp for Writers, she leads writers through the Sunday 5-Week Writing Intensives, a year-long, workshop series designed to support writers through the completion of a writing project.  In her unique approach to creative writing, she offers a blend of spirituality and creative pragmatism to writers seeking to transform their creative ideas  and aspirations into work suitable for publication and performance.
This workshop is free for one-on-one and cohort coaching clients.  Other geniuses are free to sign up for the lecture with an email about your interests to brillianceremastered@gmail.com by April 14th and a donation of $20-50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind

4/4/13 Durham: Black Feminist Film School Presents Experimental Shorts

 Join Black Feminist Film School as we present some of our favorite experimental shorts including select shorts by Black Feminist Film School co-founder Julia Roxanne Wallace!!!

General Info: http://blackfeministfilmschool.wordpress.com/

What: Black Feminist Film School Presents Experimental Shorts

Who: Black Feminist Film School (and you hopefully)
When: Thursday, April 4th - 6pm
Where: Duke University FHI Garage Smith Warehouse Bay 4
114 S. Buchanan Blvd., Durham, NC 27708-0403
General Info: http://blackfeministfilmschool.wordpress.com/
Films will include:

still from Water Ritual #1

Water Ritual #1 (1979)
Directed by Barbara McCullough
Vanilla Sex (1992)
Directed by Cheryl Dunye
Hairpiece (1984)
Directed by Ayoka Chenzira
and select shorts Directed by Julia Roxanne Wallace
including No Legacy Let Go: A Ritual of Remembrance and Healing (2012)

QBG Monthly Google Hangout #2

Calling all QBGs! We love you and we want to see your faces! After a beautiful hangout during the Oscars last month we are doing it again! Participate in our second monthly casual virtual QBG gathering via Google+Hangout. This is a space to affirm each other and remind ourselves how awesome a force we are on the planet. There is no agenda...just open space to be together and be ourselves, and support each other, specifically for self-identified QBGs (aka Quirky Black Girls and Quirky Black Genderqueers).

Join us at 7pm-8:30 pm EDT on Sunday March 31st (also Easter Sunday) for our second session. Email alexispauline at gmail dot com or almah.alchemy at gmail dot com on Google+ to get linked in and we will send you an invite to the chat when we open it on Sunday evening!

Love,
Almah and Lex

Locally Grown: One on One Genius Conversations in Durham!

Another part of the Brilliance Remastered Durham Advantage!   It is SPRING!!!!  I am celebrating my favorite season in Durham, focusing my energy on the community I love!!!!!  Are you or someone you know someone who could benefit from a personalized Brilliance Remastered Conversation this Spring?
Maybe you are about to graduate from something or about to embark on your own social justice minded project.  Maybe you are ready to have a breakthrough around making your creative or intellectual work more community accountable.  Maybe you are hoping to launch an art project that will make our world a better place.  Maybe you need to quit your job and are looking for a way to transition out.  Maybe you want to make your side project the center of your life.  Maybe you just know a walk and conversation with Sista Docta Lex about your passionate work would increase its value for our whole community.  If that is you or someone you love you should sign up for a garden walk!  (Also if your accessibility or allergy needs call for it we can certainly sit in a garden or walk near a river or do something else.)
So here is how it works!
1.  Sign up for one of only 7 available one hour walks (Monday and Wednesday afternoons from April 1-22)
2.  Send an email to Lex at brillianceremastered@gmail.com about what you are up to right now and your hopes and dreams for our conversation.
3.  Recirculate the love!  Donate $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind (the same donation that folks not lucky enough to live in or near Durham pay for a phone consultation) OR donate $25 and a delicious healthy vegetarian meal that can feed Lex and her partner Julia!
That's it!!!!  Looking forward to your locally growing brilliance!!!
Love,
Lex

Black Feminist Film School Fieldtrip: A Place of Rage at UNC Greensboro

Date: Wednesday, March 27
Time: 7:30p
Place:UNC Greensboro Campus, Curry Building, Room 225 (Curry Auditorium)
Black Feminist Film School co-founder Alexis Pauline Gumbs is thrilled to lead a discussion after a screening of Pratibha Parmar's film  "A Place of Rage" at UNC-Greensboro.
"This exuberant celebration of African American women and their achievements features interviews with Angela Davis, June Jordan and Alice Walker. Within the context of the civil rights, Black power and feminist movements, the trio reassess how women such as Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer revolutionized American society. A stirring chapter in African American history, highlighted by music from Prince, Janet Jackson, the Neville Brothers and the Staple Singers."
This event is brought to you by Women & Gender Studies Program of UNCG

We Are the Open We Need: The Need Ensemble Opens Up

The brilliant and brave Brilliance Remastered Need Ensemble has me wide open, reaching into my dreams and the dreams of my ancestors.   Last night after working with Audre Lorde's Coal and my brother Seneca's teachings about the relationships between dreams, wisdom and nightmares we wrote this poem together.   May you be as open to it as you need to be.


We Are the Open We Need

“Love is a word, another kind of open.”
-Audre Lorde “Coal”

ancestors screaming in my ear: open
headache in the center of my forehead open
fears open. hate open. terrors open. light open
pain i can use, open
i been here before, open

got my heart and ears ready to hear whatever you have to say open
remembering grandmothers with cleansing tears open
got my door open come in any time type open
mountains open with wisdom and protection open
rocks under pillows open

letting the light in open
magic portals open
sky open

hitting the ground so that i CAN open
breathing so my breathing can breathe open
alchemizing wasted-blood-into-lifeblood open

spirit emerging through this physical body open
legs open mouth open nostrils flaring open
arms stretched wide ready to receive open
water rum juice and tea bladders open
shamefully open. embrassingly open.
listening to my body, open
ecstatic womb open
birth open

hands open
hands reached out to hold other hands open
hands up to the computer open

heart open
heart mind body break-through open
breaking down emotional walls open

sleeping under the stars open
dancing in the rain open
rural night sky open
tired, good tired open
fed souls--open
chest crackingly open
belly laughing out loud open

eyes open with clarity open
knowing i'm noteworthy open
nobody can see me who i can't see open
dr. g arms open open
building community open
faith open


bars open
asylum open
borders open
church open
temples open
mosque open
altars open
mounds open
heaven open

consent open
lovers open
words open
need that tastes like love open
futures open
past open
now open
love open
faith open
ritual open
mothering ourselves open

in love with the souls making up this webinar open
seeing my reflection in you, open
saying your name in my prayers, open
seeing your smile open
universe open
we are the open we've been waiting for open
we are the open we need
open

We Know What We Need!: The Brilliance Remastered Need Ensemble Convenes!

Last night was the first session of the Brilliance Remastered  weeklong digital performance intensive honoring Audre Lorde's "Need: A Chorale for Black Women's Voices" as a resource for community accountable artist/intellectuals.  Inspired by Omi Osun/Joni L. Jones and the Jazz Aesthetic Manifesto we created this group poem as a performance, practice and primer on what we need in order to be present in our lives and in this intimate work together across time zones and geographical borders.  Here is one arrangement of our poem:





 We Know What We Need

i know
i need love
i know
i need to know that
i am loved

i know that
(i need hugs on hugs on hugs)

i know
we need water
i know
we need art
i know
we need our imaginations
i know
we need trust
i know
we need to breathe deeply
i know
we need LIFE
i know
we need to trust the miracles
yes! i know
we need miracles

i know
I’m needing
dancing

i know i
need to forgive
i know i
need to let go
i know i
need to accept that
I exist.

i know we
need to stop being shamed of our natural smells shapes ideas loves
i know we
need to remember what we hid
i know we
need to forgive ourselves
i know we
need to be courageous
i know we
need our ancestors breathing
i know we
need to continue learning
i know we
need to surrender to freedom
i know we
need to cry
i know we
need to work it all out
i know we
need to exhale
i know we
need to laugh... belly laughs...
i know we
need to mother ourselves
I know we
need to (continue to) connect
i know we
need to reach out for support when the terrors begin
i know we
need to hold hands
i know we
need to practice self love


i know
we need each other
we know
we need one another
i know
we need to heal
i know
we need to speak each others names
i know
we need to speak each others names in prayer
i know
we need sacred space
i know
we need ritual
i know
we need space to dream
i know
i need this space
this space!!!!

I know
i needed to come here tonight... this week.
i know
i need this life because i am here
i know
i need to overcome fear of the unknown
i know
it takes presence to perceive the miracles
i know
that i can always find this space when
i need it

yessss
!!!!!!!

Concrete Ritual: Happy Birthday Audre Lorde..and Sign up for the NEED Performance Webinar

Concrete Ritual: For Audre Lorde's 79th Birthday from Alexis Pauline Gumbs on Vimeo.

Check out this poetry/video collaboration between Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Julia Roxanne Wallace and then sign up for our performance intensive honoring Audre Lorde ASAP!

Join the Brilliance Remastered community the first week of March for an interactive webinar investigation of performance and online ritual in relationship to community accountable intellectual work.  Participants will learn about performance practices from Audre Lorde’s Chorale Need, a classic text designed to end violence against black women and the shared experience of creating a healing multi-media cyber performance for our community about who we are and what we need as community accountable intellectuals.

Registration Due by Feb. 22, 2013

*the ensemble will be limited to 9 participants

Intensive dates: March 4,5,6,7,8  2012   (9pm Eastern Time)
Fee: Sliding Scale $150-250
Required Reading:

• “Need” “Coal” “Power” and “Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde,
• One Campus Guide to Performing “Need” edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• Excerpts from Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic by Omi Osun
• (all readings available via pdf and snail mail to registered participants)

To Register:

• Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your contact info (INCLUDING SNAIL MAIL ADDRESS) and what you hope to get out of the course.
• Send registration deposit of $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind via paypal:
• https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=3VHV86GHPK56J
• Full registration fee is due by March 1, 2013
• webinar will take place over google hangout. participants will have to register (for free) for google plus.

http://www.alexispauline.com/brillianceremastered/2012/10/23/need-a-cyber-performance-ritual-for-community-accountable-scholars/