Beyond Words: Poetry and Music as a Portal to Awakening
with Kim Rosen and Jami Sieber
Whalesong Sanctuary, Kealekekua Bay, Hawaii
March 2 – 9, 2014

“Mystics, poets and shamans have always known that in the rhythms and sounds of the soul’s language, the mind bursts open and all levels of being come into alignment.”

~Kim Rosen

For over 25 years now, Kim has gathered circles of kindred hearts in one of the most exquisitely beautiful and fierce landscapes on the planet. In this retreat she is joined by musical alchemist, Jami Sieber. The magic created by Jami’s cello and chant in oceanic resonance with the poems, songs and silence emerging from the circle is a constantly evolving creative wellspring. Poetry and song as well as deep personal inquiry and healing stream between the notes of wind, rock, dove cry and cello.

Join Kim and Jami to pioneer the frontiers of consciousness and creativity that unfold through this transformative convergence. Poems, prayers, and song speak the mystery, the silence, the ineffable joys and sorrows of the inner life. When you take them deeply into yourself and give voice to them, you cause shifts in your biochemistry, feelings, thoughts and consciousness that align you with your deepest self. You are giving voice not only to the words, but to your true being.

In these retreats we immerse in the poems we love and the words we write. They become our teachers, healers and companions. We invite the magic that unfurls as poetry intertwines with music. In addition there are sessions of breathwork, chanting and movement. We enter silence together and alone. The retreat culminates in a “mysterium”: a exploration beyond ordinary words that spans poetry and music, night and day, sound and silence, waking and sleeping, aloneness and communion…

“I feel I’ve shifted to a deeper, more ‘me’ place, and the shift feels permanent. I will never forget being held in my friend’s arms as I let the poem take me into the grief I’ve never been able to allow before. I carry the poems I learned in my heart and even more, the freedom I’ve discovered by letting them be my teachers.”
-Lyn, a university professor from Vancouver

On the Big Island of Hawaii, creation and destruction are a constant red glow on the horizon from the Volcano. The spinner dolphins leap from the sea and the mountains are threaded with the burial caves of the ancestors. Whalesong Retreat, built on sacred ground a five minute walk from Kealekekua Bay where the spinner dolphins play and whales sing their wisdom, will be the home of these retreats. Our days are planned to allow plenty of free time for hiking, exploring and swimming with the dolphins and the miraculous tropical fish which abound.

The workshop costs are as follows:
Workshop Fee: $2750, double occupancy – all expenses included except travel
Single Occupancy Lodging: $2995 (limited availability, register early)

To Register: Space is extremely limited. For information and registration contact Jen Petras (Kim’s assistant) at jpeachtree@yahoo.com. A $500 deposit will hold your place. Full payment is required by January 2, 2014. Please make your check payable to Kim Rosen and mail to Jen Petras at 4056 Granger Road, Medina, OH 44256. We will reserve spaces in the order in which we receive payments.

If you’d like to pay by PayPal, please email Jen at jpeachtree@yahoo.com and she’ll give you the information you need.

If you find that you cannot attend the workshop, let Jen know as soon as possible and we’ll try to fill your space with someone from the waiting list. If we or you can fill your space, we’ll refund your payment, minus $50 administrative fee.

Mayacamas Ranch, Calistoga, CA

I didn’t trust it for a moment
but I drank it anyway,
the wine of my own poetry.
It gave me the daring to take hold
of the darkness and tear it down
and cut it into little pieces.
~Lala, a 14th century Persian poet

Join Ellen Bass and Kim Rosen for five-days of living poetry. In this unique retreat, we will explore a combination of three elements: the inspiration of hearing poetry, the power of speaking poetry, and the craft of writing poetry.

• Hearing Poetry: Since the dawn of time, mystics, poets, and shamans have known that the rhythm, sound and meaning of spoken poetry can open the mind to creative inspiration. During this retreat, we will steep in periods of deep listening to poems from around the world interwoven with music in order to tap into the alchemical gifts of poetic language.
• Speaking Poetry:When you take a poem you love deeply into your life and speak it aloud, amazing things happen. Your thoughts, feelings, and even your biochemistry are changed–as is the mind, heart, and body of the listener. In our time together you will learn how to take a poem into your life as a teacher and healer and free your voice to give it embodiment in a way no one else can.
• Writing Poetry:This retreat is oriented toward generating new poems. To help enrich and extend your skills, there will be talks on specific aspects of the craft using model poems by contemporary poets. There will also be time to share our new poems and hear what they touch in others, as well as opportunities to receive feedback and guidance. In addition there will be periods of movement, music, silence and immersion in the extreme beauty of Mayacamas Ranch with its hidden lake, salt water swimming pool, Jacuzzi, and miles of hiking trails through chaparral, fragrant bay and madrone forests.

Who should attend:

This workshop is equally appropriate for beginning and experienced poets, from those who are new to poetry to those who have published books or chapbooks. We also recommend this workshop for teachers who could use a shot of inspiration and would like to be introduced to new methods, as well as all people who work in the helping and healing professions who would like to explore another way to reach the heart. Though we’ll focus on poetry, prose writers who want to be inspired by poetry and to enrich their language will find it a fertile environment.

The place:

Set on a hilltop ridgeline above the town of Calistoga in Napa, CA and surrounded by spectacular 360-degree views, Mayacamas Ranch provides an awe-inspiring, natural setting. With its secluded and expansive grounds, comfortable guestrooms, organic based cuisine from their garden, Mayacamas is a stunning, secluded retreat center. Mayacamas Ranch has guest units and cottages situated in various buildings on the property. All beds at Mayacamas are 100% organic and feature organic sheets in all rooms. There is also a heated salt-water pool and hot tub, hiking trails and a spring-fed lake. If a trip to Italy isn’t on your calendar this year (or even if it is), come to Mayacamas Ranch!   To see more of Mayacamas Ranch, visit www.mayacamasranch.com.

Costs and registration:

The fees are all-inclusive, including the workshop, lodging, and all meals. The workshop begins with dinner on Sunday night and ends with lunch on Friday. Double occupancy is $1700. If you’re registering with a friend and want to room together, just let us know. Single occupancy with a shared bath is $2000. Single occupancy with a private bath is $2350. If you’re registering with a friend and want to room together, just let us know.

The size of the workshop is limited to 30 participants and registration is on a first-come basis.

A $500 deposit is required to hold your place. To register or for more information, please email Jen Petras at jpeachtree@yahoo.com. Then make your check payable to Kim Rosen and mail to Jen Petras at 4056 Granger Road, Medina, OH 44256. The balance is due August 15. If you need to arrange a payment plan, just let us know. We’re flexible and we’ll do our best to accommodate your needs. If you’d like to pay by PayPal, please email Jen (jpeachtree@yahoo.com), and she’ll give you the information you need.

If you find that you cannot attend the workshop, let us know as soon as possible and we’ll try to fill your space with someone from the waiting list. If we or you can fill your space, we’ll refund your payment, minus $150 administrative fee.

Getting there:

Mayacamas Ranch is about an hour and a half north of the Golden Gate Bridge. If you’re driving or need a ride, carpooling can be arranged from the San Francisco bay area or for folks arriving at SF airport.

We hope you can join us!

Ellen Bass‘s poetry includes Like A Beggar (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), The Human Line (Copper Canyon Press, 2007), which was named a Notable Book by the San Francisco Chronicle, and Mules of Love (BOA, 2002), which won the Lambda Literary Award.  She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973). Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The New Republic, The Progressive, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Sun and many other journals. Last year she was featured on the cover of American Poetry Review. Among her awards for poetry are a Pushcart Prize, the Elliston Book Award, The Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod/Hardman, the Larry Levis Prize from Missouri Review, and the New Letters Prize. She is part of the core faculty of the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

Kim Rosen, MFA, has touched listeners around the world with poetry’s power to awaken, inspire and heal. She is the author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words (Hay House, 2009) and the co-creator of four CDs of spoken poetry and music, including Only Breath, an interweaving of spoken poems of ancient and modern poets with the music of cellist/composer Jami Sieber. A recipient of the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry, her work has been published in O Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Central Park, The Dickens, Eclipse and The Texas Review among others. Combining her devotion to poetry with her background as a spiritual teacher and therapist, she gives “Poetry Concerts”, inspirational lectures, and workshops throughout the U.S. and abroad.

“There I learned that poetry is an act, an incantation, a kiss of peace, a medicine. I learned that poetry is one of the rare, very rare things in the world which can prevail over cold and hatred. . . . A medicine, neither more nor less. An element which, communicated to the human organism, modified the vital circulation, making it slower, or more rapid. It was, in short, something whose effects were as concrete as those of a chemical substance, I was convinced of this.”
~from “Poetry in Buchenwald” by Jaques Lusseyran

A Week-Long Retreat, June 29 – July 6, 2013

This week is a deep dive into silence, sound, breath and spoken word: an immersion in intimate meeting with the poems we love and the poems we write.

We will enter the silence together and alone. The retreat will culminate in a “mysterium”: an exploration beyond ordinary words that spans poetry and music, night and day, sound and silence, waking and sleeping, aloneness and communion. Open to those who have worked with Kim, others by interview.

1090 Euros (includes room and board)

For fees, bookings, and further information contact:
Bettina Peterseil
bettina.gabriele@gmail.com
Tel: 00 353 860624634 or 00 353 949023981

Click here to see a slideshow of the County Mayo Retreat, 2010

Click here for a pdf of the County Mayo Retreat, 2011

Click here to go to the website of the retreat center, Essence of Mulranny

“The language came from the land,” Letitia intoned in her lush Welsh accent. “Remember before Christ and before and before and before when we had 13 eyes on our body, and 13 ears? We still have them but we don’t use them. We heard sounds that we don’t hear anymore. And we began to repeat them and form them into language.”

I met Letitia at the first workshop I gave on the “far” side of the Atlantic: Wales, 2006. It was my first taste of a culture – and here I include both Welsh and Irish – where poetic language seems inscribed in the marrow, where lines of Yeats or Dylan Thomas rock babies to sleep, where poets have been seen throughout the eras as the wisdom keepers and mystics.

Of course, many Irish and Welsh people have hastened to caution me against waxing rhapsodic and romanticizing a culture where just as many kids have been scared off poetry in grammar school as on my side of the Atlantic, and the adults are still in recovery. Yes, I can relate to that, and so can many who come to my workshops and concerts regardless of nationality. I give thanks that we are “in recovery,” that through some mystery each of us heard a call or felt a longing that was more compelling than the bruises left on some of our psyches by educational mishaps.

Can you relate to this story of the prodigal poem-lover? Do you remember the moment when you changed course, when whatever it was that scared you away from poetry, or bored you, or shamed you into flight was dwarfed by the call to return? What was it that called you back? A voice heard on the radio? A poem spoken at a funeral? A book gifted to you by a new friend? I’d love to hear what it was for you. Leave a comment below if you can relate to this archetypal journey. Tell me about yours.

But I digress.

Back in 2006, when I offered my first “Poetry Dive” workshop in Wales, I don’t think I had any idea that I had stepped into world that would pick me up and carry me to unimagined depths of my own work with the transformational power of poetry.

I’ve just returned from 6 weeks in Ireland and Wales where my adventures included 6 workshops, 3 concerts and several rather wet and edgy adventures, among them an attempt to swim with Fungi, the dolphin who lives in Dingle Bay and instead of meeting a cetacean, I and my comrade Emer met an ocean current that almost sent us into the Mystery! We did survive the initiation, and were able to wave to Fungi from a boat the next day.  (That dolphin is truly a miracle story: a lone bottlenose who, 30 years ago, chose to come and make contact with humans, and has been gracing the little town of Dingle ever since, bringing tourists, revitalizing the town, showing up daily to swim alongside tourist boats eye to eye with the humans on board. One little girl, maybe 7 years old, said to her mom as she waved to him, “I’m so happy right now, I can’t even find my sad place!”)

But yet again I digress.

There are a dozens of other miracle stories I could tell you, and these about humans unlocking their souls through powerful poetry dives and writing, speaking, dancing, shouting, being immersed in silence. Of all of these, the miracle I want to share right now is, drum roll please. . .

THE FIRST EVER CLASS OF THE POETRY DEPTHS MYSTERY SCHOOL GRADUATED FROM YEAR ONE!CONGRATULATIONS AND ALL BLESSINGS TO COLM, GEORG, BETTINA, GER, JOHN, IANA, SIOBHAN, RHIANNON, EMER, JULES, MARY AND MIKE (NOT IN PHOTO)!

I have not yet found words to express the profound gift that this group of pioneers has given me in their willingness to explore beyond the edges of their own “known” and mine too; in their willingness to take poems into their lives, voices, communities, workplaces, dinner parties, hospitals, therapy sessions, groups, seminars, parenting, partnerships… and on and on. As one person said,

It has been more awesome than any religious experience – being taken out of myself, into myself.  Many encounters – the angels Jacob wrestled with I have encountered in the poems – radically disturbing yet affirming also. I am now seeing myself as holding citizenship of a bigger world – and perhaps not just citizenship, but leadership.

I have discovered that a poem-as-sacred-medicine is a visceral indwelling entity and as such it transforms. It has to be voiced because the voice is a present-moment experiece – and only in the present-moment can healing happen.

And another,

Every time time I speak a poem now, my body straightens, and I am in a “sudden grace.” I feel reborn into another body, another wisdom beyond me, into something and someone I must know and yet have never before embodied.

This group is calling forth a Year Two of the Poetry Depths Mystery School. They are teaching me what I have to teach – and learn – at the deepest level. I am so grateful.

In January the first North American Poetry Depths Mystery School will begin. Even though some of the participants have suspiciously Irish sounding names, I am thrilled to feel the energies constellating for an equally transformational journey here on this side, “my” side, of the Atlantic.

Kim and friend on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana, photo by Cris Mulvey

I write to you from a delicious and rare moment in my own home. Since I last wrote I’ve breathed the wave spew of Ho’okena Bay, the antiseptic vapors of Newton-Wellesley Hospital, the scent of night jasmine on the cliffs of Esalen, and the sweet blow of horse-breath on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana (see photo by Cris Mulvey). I’m perpetually stunned and grateful for the outer journeys I take and the inner journeys — my own and others’ — that I get to serve on the way.

Today California spring worked its seduction upon me, and I managed to tear myself away from this computer screen to hike up the mountain (well, hill really) across the street from my house. Though the separation from my inbox always requires an act of will, as soon as I set foot on the path I am swooning in the feast of filtered light playing over my skin, bluebelly lizards staring me down as long as they dare, Mount Tamalpais presiding over the horizon.

These last months have found me even more on the ‘road’ than I’d planned. Like so many in my generation, I’ve entered the chapter of the autobiography in which, if the heroine happens to have parents that are not taken by disease or accident early in life, she is called to meet the blessings and heartbreak of watching the legions of incapacity make their slow march through the bodies of her loved ones. For me, it is a fierce gift to practice “The Art of Losing,” step-by-poignant step. Elizabeth Bishop says, tongue in cheek I think, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master. / So many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is not a disaster.” In Saved by a Poem, I write of how my friend Judith learned this poem by heart as she sat by the bedside of her dying husband:

As the words worked their way more and more deeply into her memory, they opened her—to the grief and, yes, even the humor of being with her partner of 40 years as he lost his capacities, one by one. She told me she clung to this poem for solace during the days just before and after John’s death. “You know, underneath those seemingly lighthearted words there is unspoken pain,” she said. “That is what made it so powerful for me.” And the beauty of the villanelle form of the poem, with its particular music of rhymes and repetitions, carried her as she lived, day by day, the poignant truth of the last stanza:

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

The day after I returned from leading the annual Beyond Words retreat with cellist Jami Sieber in Hawaii, I was called to the East Coast to help my 93-year old father through an illness. As I sat by his bedside in the hospital, researching hospices and learning the name of a new nurse every eight hours, I chose a different poem to learn. I turned to ”Relax” by Ellen Bass to help me bring humor and perspective to my predicament. After many weeks. my father had a miraculous recovery. I walked into the next pages of my life more tender, sober and in wonder at how the unfurling of the story seems to liberate, even through heartbreak.

The poem helped a lot. Here it is:

Relax by Ellen Bass

Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat –
the one you never really liked — will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours for a month.
Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
your refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up — drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice — one white, one black — scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.

Thank you for your companionship among the tigers and strawberries,

Kim

~ February 11, 2012 ~

Recently a friend pointed out that two of the major power spots for my work are the diametrically opposite islands of Ireland and Hawaii. I don’t know if there is deep inner meaning in this, but it does remind me that as a child, I had a passion for stories about far away islands where people were recognized for who they really are, their essential, radiant nature – no matter how obscured that might be. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Peter Pan, and The Island of Blue Dolphins, for instance. Usually there is a wise animal involved, like Aslan in the Dawn Treader or Nana in Peter Pan. Always they had to go through some kind of initiation: a fierce confrontation with their own defenses in which they were tossed and tempted by life until they came out radiant and humbled and ever more true to the visionary within. Most of these people were children, because – almost always – children are the only ones with the willingness to throw themselves unabashedly into mystery and possibility and be changed and reborn in the process.

Though my memory for details is not great (remembering poems is very different than remembering details!) I do recall vowing, as I hid under the covers with a flashlight and a book into the wee hours, that when I grew up I would not be like the adults who seemed to lose their magical nature to a deadness of insurance payments, grocery lists and punching a time clock. I promised myself that I would not betray this sense of inner adventure, this vision of human possibility, or the “fearless face to face awareness of now naked life”* that the children in those stories always discovered through their ordeal.

So I have recently returned from Ireland where I was not quite surrounded by dolphins or mythical lions, but – dare I say it? – even better, a circle of truly magical human beings. Together we initiated the first Poetry Depths Mystery School, a training program for those who are called to take the medicine of embodied poetry into service – through their work in the world and/or through their daily lives. It was and is a dream come true, in fact it is beyond my childhood dreams because it is a communion that is happening between real people in a real world that includes the grit of the “human catastrophe” so close to the grace of the ineffable; the grist of the unpaid mortgage or lost job so close to the sheer beauty of being that sometimes the difference between them disappears. That’s what embodying a great poem can do.

At this moment, I am packing for my retreat on the Hawaiian island where the dolphins called to me 22 years ago. Now it is music and poetry that summons me through the breaking of waves on the black rock of Pele’s island. I’m very excited to have Jami Sieber again joining me at the Beyond Words Retreat to create her shamanic brew of live music to interweave the poems. There’s still one place left so if you read this and feel an outrageous impulse to come, let me know!!!

When I got to college, the worlds of Narnia and Neverland were joined by Prospero’s magical island in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Those who were shipwrecked on that Isle were brought face to face with themselves, whether they liked it or not. A “sea-change” is foisted upon them by the wise and powerful Prospero.

Last year I went to see Julie Taymor’s new movie of The Tempest. (She has Helen Mirren playing a female Prospera!). And, guess what? It was shot almost entirely on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the wild, rough lava fields and tangled Chrismas Berry forests that I have lived in, and so deeply love.

*This is a phrase from one of my favorite poems, “Terra Incognita” by D. H. Lawrence

~ August 30, 2011 ~

Jecinta, 2007

You may remember, in the last chapter of Saved by a Poem, a girl named Jecinta challenged me to recite a poem when I was paralysed with shyness on my first day at the V-Day Safe House in Kenya. The experience of speaking Mary Oliver’s “The Journey” to a group of Maasai girls who had fled their families and communities to “save the only life [they could] save” remains one of the most powerful moments of my life. In gratitude for the gift Jecinta gave me that day, I’ve been raising funds to put her through business school for the last two years. Many of you have contributed.

This July I visited Jecinta in Nakuru, where she is a student at the Kenya Institute of Management. What a transformation! The girl I left three years ago has become a shining woman. Moving to Nakuru by herself, finding her own school and lodging, negotiating the big city and the finances of living there — all of this has been a sort of initiation for Jecinta, who grew up in Mukilit, a rural area of the Rift Valley where she lived with her parents and 9 brothers and sisters in a manyatta, a house made of mud, dung and sticks before moving to the V-Day Safe House in Narok.

Jecinta, 2011

The culmination of our time together occured when her mother surprised us by traveling on foot and matatu for 6 hours through the rain to meet and thank me. She had rarely left Mukilit, and had never seen where her daughter was living and going to school.

Later, Jecinta and I sat down and spoke about her life, her hopes and dreams, and her gratitude for all of you who have supported her. To view the video of our conversation, click here.

Jecinta will be the first young woman in her village to be educated beyond high school. Already she is an inspiration to other girls and women in her tribe, many of whom undergo FGM and are married as teens or younger to much older men. Jecinta is changing her culture by making her own choices and living her dreams. If you would like to help me support Jecinta’s education, please contact me. Even a small amount goes a long way.

Jecinta, Kim, Jecinta's mother

It’s 7:30 am at the V-Day Safe House in Narok, Kenya, and the morning symphony has begun. I am awakened by the sound of Mama Helen singing as she returns from the farm down the street with a large jug of fresh milk, which hangs on her back in a piece of colorful fabric tied across her forehead. Mama Helen is the matron of the center, and cares for the 50 or so girls who live there. Outside my door a girl hums Swahili gospel as she sweeps the walkway, bending low to make the most of the three-foot long bundle of reeds that is her broom. Other girls call to one another across the lawn as they amble between the dormitory and the dining hall, brushing their teeth in the sun, or carrying plastic tubs of water for bathing.

The V-Day Safe House, also called the Tasaru Ntonomok Rescue Center, was opened byEve Ensler and her organization, V-Day, in collaboration with Agnes Pareyio, a Maasai woman, who dedicates her life to putting an end to female genital mutilation (FGM) and early childhood marriage (ECM).

Eve met Agnes in 2000, when she was traveling the Rift Valley on foot from village to village, carrying a plastic model of a woman’s pelvis, which she used to educate her tribe about the dangers of FGM. To learn about their meeting and the profound impact each had on the other’s life and work, read “Waiting for Mr. Alligator” in Eve’s memoir, Insecure at Last. Here’s an excerpt:

I asked Agnes what V-Day could do for her, how we could support her. She said, “Eve, if V-Day buys me a jeep, I could get around a lot faster.” We bought her a jeep. The first year she had it, she was able to reach 4500 girls. So I asked what else V-Day could do for her. She said, “Eve, if you gave me money, I could build a house for girls so that when they were about to be cut they could run away to the house and  save their clitoris and go to school.” So we gave her money to build a house.

In 2002, the first V-Day Safe House was opened in Narok, Kenya. In 2007, with support from V-Day and a group of V-Day activists, Agnes began construction on a second safe house at Sakutiek, a remote district about 45 kilometers north of Narok and the village where Agnes grew up.  50 or so girls live at each Safe House at any given time. In the three years since my last visit, there are many new faces.

As soon as I open my door, Mama Helen and 5 or 6 girls pour into the little guest room where I’m staying, bringing me milky tea and a basin of warm water for bathing. I see that they’ve already traded the gifts of jewelry and clothes I gave them when I arrived last night. Ann is wearing the sandals I gave Salula, and Brenda is sporting several bracelets that other girls had chosen. I notice that Dameris is wearing the wooden frog pendant that Brenda had on last night. Ownership among these girls does not exist as we know it, and one can watch a favorite outfit or accessory make its way around the community, appearing on a different person every day.

At 10 am, Agnes arrives to welcome me. As her “V-Day Jeep” pulls through the red metal gate of the center, the cacophony of giggles, shouts and gospel music, an almost constant soundtrack at the Safe House, quiets to a subdued hum. Agnes emerges from the vehicle and several girls run to her, bowing so she can touch the top of each head in the traditional Maasai greeting of an elder to a child. She asks them how they are doing in their studies and invariably tells them to work harder.

Though her relationship with them seems formal, I am beginning to sense how deeply these girls hold her as their mother. The night I arrived, Salula sat with me in the corner of the deserted dining hall and told me about her first weeks at the safe house in 2006. I had connected with Salula on my earlier visits and we have maintained a strong bond through the years. I knew the basics of her story: that Agnes and her team had rescued her two months before her 9th birthday in the midst of a forced wedding to a 42 year old man. But I’d never heard the details.

Unlike many of the girls who consciously chose to flee to the Safe House, Salula had no idea what was happening when a woman she had never seen before, flanked by a team of policemen, arrived at the wedding. Little Salula, dressed in ceremonial clothes and layers and layers of beaded jewelry, was guided into the waiting jeep and whisked away.

“When I first arrived at the Safe House, Agnes told Ann (an older girl) to stay with me and be my teacher and sister. But I disturbed her very much at night. I would sleep for only two hours then I would cry for the rest of the night, missing my mother. When Ann heard me crying, she would start crying too. Soon I was disturbing all the girls. So Agnes brought me to live with her in her house and took care of me until I got better. She became my mother. She is mother to all of us.”

I met Salula about a year after her rescue, when, at 9 years old, she was still the youngest at the Safe House. Now, though she’s only 13, she’s a true leader for the other girls, and her joy is contagious, especially when she leads the line dancing that erupts spontaneously almost every evening.

This morning, Agnes has many tasks at the Safe House. She’s already picked up sugar, maize and laundry detergent for the girls, as well as supplies—shoe polish, soap, toothpaste, sanitary pads, etc.—for four students who are about to depart for what they call “tuition,” an additional period of intensive residential study that takes place during school vacation time. Many Kenyan children spend a lot more time in school that those in the states. Often they have classes on weekends and most of the older students go to at least a week of “tuition” during each of their three month-long holidays.

As Agnes checks in with Mama Helen about a girl who has had a bad cough for several days, Grace, dressed in her school uniform and surrounded by a group of somber friends, shyly approaches. I instantly recognized her, as I had interviewed her four years earlier on my first visit to the Safe House. We had formed a tender connection as she told me how she fled her family and village in the dark and walked for several days to get to the Safe House, spending the nights under bushes for fear of the hyenas she could hear cackling nearby.

Now she is fighting back tears. Her mother has just died, leaving her an orphan. She must travel to her village for the funeral, but this is not simple for a rescued girl. She could easily be captured by those who would force her to submit to the tribal traditions she fled. Agnes and Mama Helen telephone an older sister who is sympathetic to the mission of the Safe House. Once they are satisfied that Grace will have protection, they arrange transport for the journey.

Firmly turning off her iPhone (which rings constantly), Agnes takes me by the hand and pulls me into the guest room, shutting the door behind us. “Now, I want to welcome you. How are you? Do you have everything you need here?”

I’m stunned that Agnes can find time to sit and talk with me, given her busy schedule. I can only imagine how full her life is – especially now that she’s campaigning to be the first woman representative to the Kenya Parliament from Narok County. I also know that, besides running two Safe Houses, she’s an elected Counselor to the local government and serves as Deputy Mayor [is that accurate?] of the town. As we sit in the guest room and catch up, she tells me that she’s also building a Primary Boarding School for Girls, which has been one of her dreams for many years.

I ask her how she manages to do all this and maintain the serenity that seems to emanate from her. “I felt a little stress last year when I was in school getting my diploma in Leadership and Project Management. My teachers put pressure on me because they could see that I was a good student.”

I can hardly believe my ears. “You were in school on top of all this?”

“Yes, distance learning. My professors lectured to me on the phone as I drove from meeting to meeting. They want me to go on and get an advanced degree, but with the campaign it is difficult right now.”

She stands up, her many beaded necklaces rattling as she moves. “I want you to come with me today into the field. We’ll spend the night away, so pack what you need. Take warm clothes.” I have no idea what she means, but grab my toothbrush, sweatshirt and a few protein bars and head for the waiting SUV.

It turns out that “into the field” means that I am joining Agnes on the campaign trail. Today is Saturday, and there are two rallies where she will be the guest of honor. Over the next few days I become familiar with the pre-rally protocol of bumping along the rough road from the Safe House into town, filling the vehicle with Agnes’ friends and supporters – women and men in traditional Maasai dress – and heading out, the car bucking and thrusting like a wild horse over dusty roads riddled with potholes as big as craters.

Today, my first day joining the campaign, it is all new. I mistakenly assume the state of the road is due to the fact that we must be heading for a particularly rural area, as we are bumping along for miles without seeing another car. But suddenly, rounding a bend, there are hundreds of people in the road – women in colorful shukas (bright cotton material that they tie around their shoulders), layers of beaded necklaces, collars, bracelets, and earrings hung both from the bottom and tops of their ears; and men in red Maasai blankets tied over one shoulder and wielding beaded or polished wood sticks, called rungus. They are running to greet the car, chanting “Counselor! Counselor!” to Agnes, and singing songs in Maa (the language of the Maasai) that celebrate her achievements.

“Get out,” says Agnes, the first English words I’ve heard in the buzz of Maa and Swahili that has filled the crowded car since we left town. We all climb out and join the cheering crowd marching up the road. Joseph, Agnes’ driver, slowly follows behind us in the car.

When we get to the crest of the hill, I’m stunned to see several hundred people gathered in makeshift bandstands, all cheering. I notice that there are no cars except ours, and realize that all these people must have walked, some great distances, to get there.

A flock of women, many wearing matching shukas, surround us. Hands are extended with the Maasai greeting, “Sopa!” to Agnes and the rest of the campaign party, and, to me, “Howareyoufine!” running the English together as if it were one Maasai word. As the crowd of women clears I see an almost endless line of men in western clothes, their hands extended.

“I want the people to see me, to shake my hand, to know who I am and what I stand for,” Agnes had told me earlier. “I want them to feel a personal connection. They need to know that I want to hear their questions and concerns. It is time for the government to stop being far away and disconnected. They need to know I come from their world, their village, their neighborhood, and that I will hear them and carry their needs to Parliament. So I go out to meet the people face to face every chance I get.”

When hundreds of hands have been shaken, and “Sopa!” or “Howareyoufine!” exchanged with all, we are guided toward the house of the man sponsoring the rally. A woman pours warm water over our hands to wash them. 25 people crowd into the one room, which is about 15’ by 15’. Often, the women who came with Agnes are the only females in the room. The animated conversation is interrupted by the arrival of plates heaped with steaming food: ugali, mashed potatoes, jhapati, and meat – goat or cow, I cannot tell which. Most people eat with their hands, but I notice they’ve given me a fork, a concession to the only Mzungu (white person) in the room. Next come several huge basins of meat on bones or in strips, a second course, or perhaps a dessert. Given that I haven’t eaten red meat since the last Kenyan goat I reluctantly tasted three years earlier, I try to politely avoid this delicacy. But Agnes notices that I am not partaking, pulls off a piece of hers and cuts it up into tiny bits for me, since my teeth are not used to tearing and grinding the tough meat.

When the basins are empty, soda is distributed to all and we are taken outside where the crowd has been waiting. I am led to a seat next to Agnes in the front row on a stage area, where all the guests of honor sit, facing the audience.

The rally begins with the minister offering a prayer in Maa. Then, from a distance, the sound of singing heralds the approach of a group of women in matching shukas. Agnes whispers to me that their song is about her, about the ways she has helped the community—raising money for water tanks, getting government support for the betterment of their schools, and, of course, saving and educating the girls. This group is followed by three more, each offering two or three dances and songs. Agnes leans over to speak into my ear, “Look how young some of them are! Yet they all are married.” Several of the dancers look like they could be no more than 14 years old.

After these colorful offerings, a series of perhaps 10 or 15 men stand and speak to the crowd. I cannot understand what they are saying, but each seems to be passionately expounding on some theme, which, I assume, is in support of Agnes’ candidacy.

At this point we’ve been at the rally for about 3 hours. Finally the last speaker sits down and all eyes shift to Agnes. Yet even now she does not speak. She motions for those of us who came in her entourage to stand and say something to the crowd. When it is my turn, I greet the crowd. “Sopa!” I exclaim to the women who are sitting on the ground to the left. “Sopa!” they respond, laughing, probably at my strange accent. Then I greet the men, who are seated and standing in the bandstand to the right. I tell them I’ve come from the other side of the planet to let them know that Agnes is not only changing the lives of girls in Maasailand, their families, and communities. She is changing the lives of girls and women around the world with her work. “I would go any distance to support her leadership,” I say. “And I hope you will to.” There are shouts of solidarity. Hands reach out to shake mine.

Finally it is time for Agnes to speak. As soon as she opens her mouth, the audience, which was looking a bit gray and sleepy in spite of the vibrant colors of their dress and jewelry, is electrified. They cheer and shout back to her. They applaud whenever she pauses. The men shake their rungus in the air and the women elbow each other whispering animatedly.

Over the next few days, I will see this happen again and again. In most gatherings the format is the same: the meal while the crowd waits outside, the dances and songs by the women to celebrate Agnes, then many speeches, mostly by the male leaders of the community. These formalities can last several hours, and by the time Agnes stands to speak the eyes of many have grown dull and tired. But as soon as she lifts her voice, everyone in the room, including most of the children, are riveted.

In the car, as we leave this first rally, I asked Agnes what she said that so ignited the crowd. “I told them that my opponent is using the work that I do at the Safe House to fight me. She is saying, ‘There is a woman running for Parliament who is spoiling your culture. She is denying your girls the ceremony of the cutting to become women.’ I say to the people, ‘I am that woman! But I am not ruining the culture, I am helping us to catch up to the rest of the world. It’s true, I do stand for an end to FGM and early marriage. But a girl does not need to be cut to be a woman, she needs education so she can make her own choices. Educating girls will bring benefit to all of us. When a girl graduates and gets a job and brings leadership and financial support back to her family, she changes not only her own life, but the life of her village and the culture as a whole.” Agnes tells people that her opponents are educated women who have not been cut themselves, yet they are advocating that girls should continue to undergo this violence.

As we lurch over the road to the next rally, Agnes goes on: “When I go to these meetings I try to introduce myself by telling them who I am, where I’m coming from, and where I want to go. I tell them I’ve been a counselor in the area for a long time and I’ve tried to help the people with the funds that I get. There’s a big difference between my ward and the other wards. I have friends who have helped me to drill wells for villages, yet in other wards there is no water. V-Day has helped me to build two Safe Houses, and now there are about 50 girls in each, all going to school for free. In other wards there is nothing like this. V-Day gave money so I could build a dam so there is water for the cows. I’ve started a market where women can sell what they grow and make some small income. I feel, if elected, I will make even more of a difference in some of the issues confronting my people.”

After the second rally is over, on the way back to Narok, we drive past field after field of drooping, dried out stalks. “So much of the crop has failed this year, the people are starving, ”Agnes says to me.  All along the road are people who have walked with their donkeys for miles to find a place where they can buy maize for their families. We stop at the hut of a farmer and Agnes negotiates for several bags of the precious food.

It is already dark when we drop off Joseph, the driver, and Agnes takes the wheel. She turns off the road into what looks like a vast, pathless black space. “I do not know if I can find the way in the dark,” she says, as the jeep shutters across the dusty field. I can see no sign of a road. The darkness closes around us. Paths appear among the low bushes, but whether they are roads or the tracks of the Thompson’s Gazelles whose amber eyes glint all around us, I do not know.

Driving through this territory is so athletic, I can hardly believe Agnes is doing it after giving speeches at two four-hour rallies. Finally, out of the darkness there appears a small mud and stick house, a traditional Maasai manyatta. “Ah!” she sighs. “We found it.” In the headlights I can barely make out a pen full of sheep and goats, and several structures. A man in a shuka emerges from the dark to greet us.

This is Agnes’ herd. “It is much better than having money in the bank,” she explains. “Because sheep and goats give birth twice a year. So the herd multiplies very quickly, and each is worth at least 4,000 shillings. When you get sick and you need money for the hospital, you just sell some of them. Also, people respect you if you have a big herd. It gives me credibility in the campaign.”

We duck through the low doorway into the little hut. “This is my place of rest,” Agnes says. “I come here with friends to relax.” Nonetheless, she begins bustling about the small space, pulling out cooking utensils, finding sheets for the two single beds, building a coal fire, dousing the mud floor with water to keep down the dust, scrubbing the pots she will use to cook ugali and cabbage for dinner.

Agnes and Narikuni, a friend who has accompanied us, make dinner as I sit on a three legged stool and watch, hardly able to believe where I am. The wind whistles outside, but the fire keeps us warm. Agnes turns on the battery operated radio and a Swahili talk show overflows into the night.

In the morning, Narikuni cooks pancakes over the coal fire. Out of nowhere women start to arrive. Four women in beads and shukas appear out of nowhere and crowd into the dark hut. As they duck through the door, I can see that the sun is shining outside. But inside there are only splinters of light from the two small ventilation holes in the mud walls. Within 10 minutes, three more women arrive, one with a baby strapped to her back. All are fascinated by my camera and crowd around to see themselves in the photos I’m taking. I wonder if these women have any mirrors, or if this is a rare moment of reflection.

“Where did they come from?” I ask Agnes when we step outside. “How did they know you were here?” Agnes gestures to what seem like endless fields of dust and scrubby bushes. In the distance I can barely make out several round manyattas. “They saw my car. They want to talk to me about the campaign. And they know there will be food and tea when I am here.”

Agnes has brought supplies: salt and antibiotics for the herd, and the bags of Maize she bought yesterday for the two men who take care of the animals. This will be their food until Agnes arrives again, in a month or two. They have no car and there is no village within walking distance.

On the way back to town, we stop at the building site for the new “Tasaru PrimaryBoarding School for Girls.” Three dorms, which will house 60 girls each, a huge dining room/recreation all and kitchen, a

classroom building and several smaller constructions including apartments for teachers and the matron of the school. The site is abuzz with builders. A concrete mixer spins in the field by the classroom building. The head builder emerges to greet us.

Agnes is not satisfied with the progress of the work. She confronts the builder, reminding him that the school is to open in just over 3 months, asking him how he plans to be ready. Though she speaks English to him, his answer is in Swahili. Whatever he says seems to satisfy Agnes for the moment.

“Are you in charge of all this too? Did you design it? ” I ask, incredulous.

“I designed this. This school has been my dream for some time and finally it is happening. There will be 6 classes of 30 girls each. 20 of the girls will be paying students and 10 will be rescued girls who will go to school for free. So eventually all the girls from the Safe House who need to go to Primary School (Grades 1 – 6, in American terms) will go to school here free of charge.”

While the school is the last stop for me before being dropped back at the Safe House, Agnes’ day will continue to two different gatherings where she will be the featured speaker. I am relieved to stumble out of the jeep, exhausted, to join some of the girls on the lawn in the afternoon sun as they do beadwork, study or braid each other’s hair. There is a sweet quietude here at the Safe House, though the air is full of laughter, talk and even the pulse of gospel cds from the kitchen. Yet the peace that comes from a community of girls who know they are safe is palpable. We wave goodbye as Agnes’ jeep lurches back into the world on the other side of the Safe House gate.

WATCH A POWERFUL FILM OF V-DAY’S COLLABORATION WITH AGNES AND HER WORK TO SAVE AND EDUCATE GIRLS HERE.

Another balmy July day at the Cliffs of Moher

So here I am on my first visit to the Cliffs of Moher. It’s “another balmy July day in Ireland,” in the words of an Irish friend. While the cliffs, and imagining the jump (which is virtually impossible not to imagine!) are thrilling and beautiful, they cannot hold a candle to the thrill of working with so many Irish, German, English, Canadian and American friends who converged on that magical island to courageously dive into the life-changing power of poetry and presence over the last month. No matter how much time I spend there, I never cease to be awed at depth to which the Irish take the medicine of a poem. Even those who have what one of my students called “educational trauma” in the area of poetry, have steeped in a country that understands from the roots of its history that “poet” and “mystic” and “seer” and “shaman” are one, and celebrates its poets as a huge part of the national identity. (Watch a video from the Dublin Poetry Concert here.)

Actually the truth is that Austin Pendleton had us hurtling from the top of the Empire State Building, not the Cliffs of Moher. At the time (the seventies), we were a bunch of aspiring theatre people living on our waitressing tips in New York City. He was speaking of having the courage to look into the eyes of the audience when you’ve just bared your soul onstage.  It can feel like a headlong tumble into a kind of death – death of your control, your safe distance, your heart’s protection. The same is true of reciting or reading a poem you love to someone. So often people will shuffle pages, or rush on to the next poem, or curl into themselves, looking down or away. They seem to be simply surviving the time between poems, rushing through it as if the whole purpose of even sharing a poem was not to reach that trembling moment of communion as the last word fades into silence. “Words, after speech, reach / Into the silence,” write T. S. Eliot in  “Burnt Norton.”

As I suggest in the appendix to Saved by a Poem,

The silence just before you speak a poem, during the poem, and right after it can be the most powerful part of your offering. Yet many of us are uncomfortable with silence and rush through these moments. Practice elongating them instead. Let your partner know you are going to intentionally sink into the wordless spaces. Begin by making eye contact with your partner. Let any discomfort or other feelings come up as you silently be with each other. Now begin the poem. Maintain eye contact as much as possible and when you are moved to drop into a silence that naturally occurs in the rhythm of the lines, do. When the poem is over, stay with the eye contact without words, letting any feelings or insights show up. Then talk together about the experience and what arose for each of you in the silences.

Let me know how it goes!

Here are a few glimpses into the month in Ireland…

C.C.Carter

I received this extraordinary poem from her last month and want to share it, and her work, with you (scroll down for more information on C.C. and POW WOW):

I was saved by a poem, by a poem written on a page but
recited out loud.  A poem that begged to be spoken cause its
intention would be missed if hummed under breath silently.
I was saved by a poem, by a poem that infused the
Mississippi Mass Choir and Nikki Giovanni’s voice over
a stereo system on Sunday morning before leaving for church.
I was saved by a poem, by a poem that transformed my
grandmother from a little old lady into a sultry Harlem
Renaissance starlet reciting Langston Hughes and Paul
Laurence Dunbar while peeling white potatoes and
snapping green beans or playing dress up with clothes
from her secret trunk hidden in the attic – I, by her side
watching and mimicking every move and vocal intonation.
I was saved by a poem, a poem that was my prayer taped to
my mirror so that I could recite every night before bed and
every morning before leaving for school – my armor into the world
of petite thin girls and weight watcher recruiters who
dared to try and battle me and Maya as Phenomenal Women.
I was saved by a poem, by a choreopoem just for colored girls
like me who were raised with a myriad of etiquette and
cultural codes of conduct of shouldn’ts, couldn’ts,
wouldn’ts and don’ts. I was saved by a poem, by a poem
that I once wrote that I didn’t always believe its power,
but performed anyway – pretended grandma was right next
to me, watched women come alive from being dead inside,
start dancing and swaying big hips and ample thighs and
then I joined in, felt their testimony and was saved too,
again.  I was saved by a poem.

More about C.C…

C.C. Carter  is a Chicagoan with national prominence on the performance poetry scene. Her first book, Body Language, a collection of poetry, was nominated for a 2003 Lambda Literary Award. She is the winner of a host of poetry slams including winning the Fifth Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Competition and the First Annual Behind Our Masks Poetry Slam. She has created and maintained several traditions in the poetry community, including national and local poetry slams for people of color, and the women of color night at Mountain Moving Coffeehouse.  She has participated in hundreds of women’s music festivals, including the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, and has sold out performances on both coasts.

In 2001 she founded POW-WOW, Inc, a weekly spoken word venue that has received honors and award recognition for being a safe space for women to develop, showcase and listen to other women artists.  POW-WOW is a staple for the international and national poetry elite – having showcased Stacyann Chin, sharon bridgforth, Eve Ensler and a host of Def Poetry Jam artists who list POW-WOW as a “must do” on their tour schedules.  C.C. has produced large scale events for the Department of Cultural Affairs and the Chicago Gay Games.

As a result of her arts and activism work, she has received numerous awards and honors, including being inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame for her work as an advocate in Arts and Culture and the 2004 Trailblazer Award for her work and curation of Lesbian theatre projects.  In 2005 C.C. Carter was one of six international recipients to be dubbed the esteemed title by Eve Ensler of Vagina Warrior for her work in creating a safe space for women artists who are survivors of violence.  In  2006 she received the Model of Hope Award by Pride and Equality Magazine.

In 2008 C.C. received the Social Activist Award from the Chicago Area YWCA Domestic Violence Center for her social justice poetry and performances.

2010 marks new milestones in C.C.’s Career as she is honored as an ICON in LGBTQ African American Cultural Arts in Chicago – from Art and Soul