Time: Wednesday, 3 May, 10-12 am BST
Location: 2S10, DMB, Faculty of Education.
Join Online: Meeting ID 924 2922 8002 Password 428271
A question to reflect on:
If mourning is an outwardly expression of our grief, and grief is ubiquitous from personal, cultural, collective, social traumas from bereavement, state violence, educational neglect, climate, pandemic and labour crises, what are the creative and ordinary acts, rituals and embodied or otherwise practices that you cultivate to mourn loss?
If you feel comfortable please consider sharing some of these in the interactive part of the session.
The session will start with Dita introducing us into the topic. The introduction will give examples of some somatic-sonic and digital-creative works as feminist morning rituals including the new short spoken word film ‘Making Peace to a Song’ celebrating the relationship of the Spoken Word and the body’s response.
The film was created as part of the Creative Partnership, Cambridge Creative Encounters. Theatre practitioner Rachel Ellis and her students at CSVPA created a film “Making Peace to a Song”, weaving movement, poetry & soundscape in response to education research and poetry by Dr Dita N. Love. The project highlights the healing power of creative community based on mutually transformative education research with imprisoned young men. The partnership also includes CSVPA MA graduates Lois Fordham and Razaq Bolarinwa (filmmaker/photographer). The poetic choreography brings to life the ‘truth of the body’ to honour the truth of experience, resist stigma, and inspire loving care for young lives.
Some pre-reading to reflect on:
Kofod, E. H. (2021). The grieving killjoy: Bereavement, alienation and cultural critique. Culture & Psychology, 27(3), 434-450.
Olufemi, L. (2021) ‘The girl who wished to be anything but a bird’ in Experiments in Imagining Otherwise, UK: Hajar Press. (pp. 108-115).
Sharma, D. (2019). Being alive with poetry: Sustaining the self by writing poetry. Journal of Poetry Therapy, 32(1), 22-36.
Further Reading:
Go, C. O. (2017). “WALANG-WALA”(“Nothing is left”): Rituals for Collective Grieving, Disaster Memory, and Social Repair. GeoHumanities, 3(2), 292-306.
Kirckpatrick D. S. (2020) ‘Embodied absence and evoking the ancestors: A collabo-rative encounter’, Art/Research International: A Transdisciplinary Journal, 5(1): 129–148.
Pearce, C., & Komaromy, C. (2022). Recovering the body in grief: Physical absence and embodied presence. Health, 26(4), 393-410.
Steele, C. (2016). We heal from memory: Sexton, Corde, Anzaldua, and the poetry of witness. Springer. Chapter 2: “We are sisters and Our Survival is Mutual”: Audre Lorde and the Connections between Individual and Collective Trauma Chapter 4: “This Kind of Hope” Anne Sexton and the Language of Survival
Tsai L. J. (2021) Remnants as an Articulation, interview with Bhanu Kapil, Poetry London. Available at: https://poetrylondon.co.uk/remnants-as-an-articulation/
KNOWLEDGE, POWER, AND POLITICS 