Join MoAD's 2024 Poets-in-Residence, reelaviolette botts-ward and Reggie Edmonds-Vasquez, for a writing workshop inspired by the current exhibitions at MoAD.

‍

sanctuaries of the self 

black interiors, home interiors, and the ancestral legacies of longing 

‍

dear beloved community, we invite you to join the 2024 MoAD Poets-in-Residence for a sacred exploration of black interiors. 

‍

part one of our offering features a poetry workshop with Reggie Edmonds, and part two features an art journaling workshop with reelaviolette botts-ward.

‍

we invite you to spend the day at the museum, writing with us and thinking with us alongside the art on view. 

‍

PART ONE: HEART ROOMS 

1:00 PM -2:30 PM

Workshop Description: “Heart Rooms: This poetry workshop explores how our interior sense of safety is expressed in the physical spaces we cultivate, inspired by MoAD’s current exhibits. Participants will reflect on the ways personal sanctuaries—whether emotional or physical—are shaped by history, culture, and identity, particularly within the African diaspora.

‍

Through guided writing exercises, we will craft poems that explore the connection between our inner need for safety and the external environments we create for comfort and protection. Using the museum’s artwork as inspiration, this workshop offers a space for writers of all levels to delve into themes of resilience, belonging, and the sanctuaries we carry within. Join us as we explore the poetry of both inner and outer safe spaces.

materials to bring - 

Something to write with (pen an notebook/ paper/phone or other device)

‍

. . .

‍

 *there will be a 30-minute break between sessions

‍

. . .

‍

PART TWO: MOTHER WOUNDS 

3:00 PM - 4:30 PM 

‍

i ask myself questions about places that raised me and people that raised me and homes and healings and heartbreak and harm.  the ways that so many women who i love in my lineage are still stuck seeking and longing for home as descendants of the African enslaved. 

‍

the city. the south. the homes we made. the homes we still stuck reaching for. the migratory medicine passed down each generation, across every Black geography. 

‍

South Carolina. Gullah Geechee. Georgia. ‘Bama. Mississippi. Creole. Hoodoo. Kentucky. Detroit. Atlanta. Philly. Oakland. 

‍

Louisiana. Louisiana. Louisiana. 

‍

the ongoing wounding of diasporic displacement. the never quite at home and yet always making home and yet always reaching for home and for home. and makin’ home and makin’ home and makin’ home.

‍

i ask myself these questions -- 

‍

if a birthplace is a mother, then what might it mean to mourn her? if the womb is the “first home we knew,” then what might it mean to tend to those wounds?

‍

if home is a mother, and a mother is kin, and kin is akin to heartbreak, then what might it mean to catch ourselves in the weight of all that falling and failing?

‍

the mother essence energy of my lineage. she “adorned with flowers whatever shabby house she was forced to live in.” (Walker, 239) she brought “beauty into that house in every way that she could.” (Sharpe, 4) she was a woman who “worked at joy.. [who] made livable moments, spaces, and places in the midst of all that was unlivable there.” (Sharpe, 4)

‍

i ask myself these questions and i tell myself these answers as i trace the layered lineage of ancestral seeking for home.

‍

i invite you to ask and answer your own version of these questions alongside me as we journey to and through the homes that raised us. 

‍

this interactive art journaling workshop invites you to reflect alongside my poetic reflections of home in response to Jessica Monette’s exhibit on view, entitled Unveiling Histories: a Fabricated Archive. we will use a mixed media approach to art journaling, and merge poetry writing with doodling, stamping, and sticker collage. it will be a brave space for self expression around these layered themes of home.

‍

materials to bring:

your journal, markers, crayons, stickers, stamps, and any other art supplies you love to use for self expression, and any pictures of home and healing that might help inspire your creative process ✨

‍

— citations — 

‍

Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens 

‍

Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: on Blackness and Being 

‍

About the Poets

‍reelaviolette botts-ward, PhD, (@dr.reelaviolette) is a homegirl, artist, and community curator from Philadelphia, PA. ree is a poet, a professor, a lover of life, a writer, and a dreamer.

‍

She is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with the REPAIR Project at the University of California, San Francisco, and will begin a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship there in the fall. At UCSF, ree brings radical Black feminist healing arts to healthcare and medical science spaces. She is also the founder of blackwomxnhealing, where she curates courses, exhibits, publications, and performances for and by Black womxn.

‍

Her first book, mourning my inner[blackgirl]child, was published with Nomadic Press in 2021, and she has published articles, book chapters, and creative works with the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, Routledge Press, and Medical Anthropology Quarterly, among others. She also serves as a Contributor in Residence for Columbia University’s Synapsis: a Journal for Health Humanities, where she writes about art, spirituality, and healing for practitioners and community audiences.

‍

ree received her PhD in African Diaspora Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, her MA in African American studies from UCLA, and her BA in Sociology and Anthropology from Spelman College. She has also taught courses in the African American Studies department at Merritt Community College in Oakland, California, and a course called #BlackFeministHealingArts in UCSF’s Medical Anthropology department. For more on ree’s work, visit blackwomxnhealing.com / @blackwomxnhealing / @dr.reelaviolette on instagram.

‍

‍

Reggie Edmonds-Vasquez (They/Them) (@reggiepoetry) is a poet, educator, and cultural curator from Richmond, CA. Their work, which examines the intersection of Black, Queer, and Gender diverse identities intersect, has been selected for fellowships and awards from Nomadic Press, the Afro Urban Society, Shuffle Collective and others. Their poem, Aerodynamics of the American Negro, was a finalist for the 2022 Red Wheel Barrow Poetry Prize. They currently can be found as the Program Director of Rich Oak Events and the 2024 Co-Champion of the Berkeley Poetry Slam.

‍

‍

About the Poets-in-Residence Program

The Museum of the African Diaspora Poets-in-Residence program was founded in 2018. The program provides writers with opportunities to respond to contemporary art of the African Diaspora and extend the reach of the museum through programming and educational workshops with local high school students. The residency welcomes writers to pursue their own writing projects in addition to responding to the current exhibitions on view at MoAD. As part of the residency, writers implement a school-based writing program in partnership with high school students in the Spoken Arts Department at Ruth Asawa School of the Arts.

‍

‍

This program is presented in conjunction with Thrive@MoAD sponsored by Kaiser Permanente

‍