Last Sunday Danielle and I hosted a special Women's History Month, Feminine Principle workshop at The Hospital Club.
In celebration of this month and the people that joined us we decided to create a ritual arch for our participants to enter through, wafting some white sage overhead and encouraging them to think about why they decided to attend the workshop and what they hoped to get out of it. Danielle and I also thoroughly enjoyed that addition of the arch, and the magical touch it added to the workshop!
As usual in our workshops we started with a constructed poem exercise, providing participants with an article about a marginalised or forgotten women from history, ranging from queens, and scientists to the first Africa American women to fly a plane. We coupled these with poems celebrating women. As well as introducing the workshop content in a gentle way, this exercise provides a good amount of quiet time, generated by the 'cutting and sticking' element that offers as much enjoyment as the construction of the poem itself!
After our performances of the the constructed poems and group dialogue about our experiences with the material and exercise we moved on to our next task. We asked participants to draw a life map and annotate it with defining moments and memories. We then provided them with the structure of a Tetractys poem, in order to pull out either a single event or overall narrative of the life journey so far. We then re-created our journeys in string, joining them together to make one shared life journey and sharing our poems with each other. It was quite moving to be given an insight into the participants lives in this way.
After a short break and a re-energising movement exercise we gave instructions for the final exercise, a Jennings poem, where we provided eight positive words, drawn at random, and asked each participant to create a poem about themselves using the words.
Thank you to everyone that came and participated, it was an honour to share the workshop with you.