The Grove is a reading circle for creatives and community seekers. We gather monthly to carve out a cozy space for quiet reading, intentional conversation, and connection.
As practitioners it can be difficult to find time to read and we’re often in the role of facilitating. The Grove is spacious and focused on nourishment. You are welcome to read the book before we meet, but it isn’t necessary. Our curator, Kate Creech, will select an excerpt (or a few) and we’ll take time to read quietly on our own, before transitioning into a discussion/learning space. There is ample permission to relax, receive, and surrender the pressure to say something ‘smart’!
Our featured book for October is “Poetry As Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power” by Tamiko Beyer, Destiny Hemphill, and Lisbeth White.
When Nicole and Kate were chatting about what book would be fun to do for the witchy month of October they came across “Poetry as Spellcasting”. It is a lovely book filled with poems and prompts from queer and BIPOC perspectives on ritual and reclaiming power. Monday night we will be lighting a candle and diving into reconnection with the absent presences in our lives (parts of self, or a person or place that feels far away currently).
Feel free to bring a tarot deck or small object to help you connect with yourself a bit deeper. As always there will be time to read the chapter that we will be discussing or you can simply marinate in the words (if an introverted evening is needed!) and no pressure to read it before hand or prepare anything. Simply show up and bring your lovely self! We look forward to being together.
Timing
Our gathering will loosely follow this flow:
7:00 — Arrive + get cozy
7:10 — Setting the frame
7:15 — Quiet reading
7:50 — Conversation
8:30 — Space for casual connection
Tea and chocolate will be provided. You are welcome to bring snacks, wine, or your favorite beverage to share.
Registration
$7 suggested exchange for the general public
Registration fee is included for collective members
Please RSVP by Noon the day of the gathering so we can prepare the space for you. We will also share access to the selected excerpts that we will be reading together so you can download to your favorite reading device for print copies to bring with you.
We encourage you to support the author and your favorite local bookstore by purchasing the book, before or after the circle. We love our building-mates Ardunsel Books.
Kate Creech
Psychotherapist & Circle Curator
Kate is a therapist and visual artist. She is excited to curate this circle because books offer a space for us to connect and create the space to process (or simply be) with others in the daunting questions we often face as humans/healers/creatives, etc
Learn more about Kate
Poetry As Spellcasting
From Tamiko Beyer’s website:
Poems, essays, and prompts to sing a new world into being - Queer & BIPOC perspectives on poetry as an insurgent ritual for manifesting liberation and reclaiming power.
Written for poets, spellcasters, and social justice witches, Poetry as Spellcasting reveals the ways poetry and ritual can, together, move us toward justice and transformation. It asks: If ritualized violence upholds white supremacy, what ritualized acts of liberation can be activated to subvert and reclaim power?
Learn more here.
Tamiko Beyer
Tamiko Beyer is the co-editor of Poetry as Spellcasting: Poems, Essays, and Prompts for Manifesting Liberation and Reclaiming Power.
She is a queer, mixed race (Japanese and white), cisgender woman and femme, living in on Massachusett land. A social justice communications writer and strategist, she spends her days writing truth to power.
—Learn more about Tamiko
Destiny Hemphill
Destiny Hemphill (she/her) is a ritual worker and poet based in Durham, NC. A recipient of fellowships from Naropa University’s Summer Writing Program, Callaloo, Tin House, and Kenyon’s Writers Workshop, she is the author of the poetry chapbook Oracle: a Cosmology (Honeysuckle Press, 2018).
—Learn more about Destiny
Lisbeth White
Lisbeth White (she/her) is a lover of the earth, wanderer of lands, poet, expressive arts therapist, developmental editor, elemental energy healer, listener, and ancestor celebrant.
She is certain our collective liberation is intricately tied to ancestral earth wisdom and firmly believes each of us has boundless capacity within to be our own wisest healers.
She is a co-founder of the Red Thread Writers Collective, supporting PGM writers in rural Washington state.
Learn more about Lisbeth