Brilliance Remastered May 2013 Updates

Greetings Bright Thunder!

This is the season of transition that every species participates in!  Everything around us is growing pollinating and responding with unbelievably bright enthusiasm to grey skies and rain.  And what about us? This life-changing May Brilliance Remastered has a number of ways to honor transition and to prepare for the best summer ever! Scroll down or click on the links below to learn more about:

Locally Grown Garden Walks Continue

Special Online Office Hours in May

Community is Not A Luxury Summer Cohort Sign Up

Summer Lovin’ Custom Organizational Retreats in NC

Remastered Tools 101 Downloadable Course

Garden Walks Continue!!!

I enjoyed April’s Garden Walks so much that I am continuing to  celebrate my favorite season in Durham, focusing my energy on the community I love!!!!!  Are you or someone you know someone who could benefit from a personalized Brilliance Remastered Conversation this Spring?

Maybe you are about to graduate from something or about to embark on your own social justice minded project.  Maybe you are ready to have a breakthrough around making your creative or intellectual work more community accountable.  Maybe you are hoping to launch an art project that will make our world a better place.  Maybe you need to quit your job and are looking for a way to transition out.  Maybe you want to make your side project the center of your life.  Maybe you just know a walk and conversation with Sista Docta Lex about your passionate work would increase its value for our whole community.  If that is you or someone you love you should sign up for a garden walk!  (Also if your accessibility or allergy needs call for it we can certainly sit in a garden or walk near a river or do something else.)

So here is how it works!

1.  Sign up for one of only 6 available one hour walks (Monday and Wednesday afternoons from May 8-27)

2.  Send an email to Lex at brillianceremastered@gmail.com about what you are up to right now and your hopes and dreams for our conversation.

3.  Recirculate the love!  Donate $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind (the same donation that folks not lucky enough to live in or near Durham pay for a phone consultation) OR donate $25 and a delicious healthy vegetarian meal that can feed Lex and Julia!

Talk with Lex During Transition Time: Special May Office Hours

Since May is a time of major transition for many intellectuals, during May 2013 I will be conducting special online office hours on Wednesdays 10am-2pm EST free for existing participants and at the regular hourly ($50) rate for new folks!

The theme for May’s office hours is transition.  Has Spring outside shown you how much you have grown inside this season?  Have you outgrown a previous intellectual/activist role and into something new?   Are you starting a new organization? Are you graduating from a program and thinking about how to prepare for what is next?  Are you simply determined for next semester to be significantly more sustainable and community accountable than this semester has been.   Holler at your girl

Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com with the subject heading “office hours” to sign up.

Community is Not a Luxury Summer Cohort:

It is about time to sign up for the Community is Not A Luxury Summer Cohort!!!!

“Look how you print yourself on my heart.” -Audre Lorde

This intermediate stage of the coaching curriculum trains you to implement and build a community of accountability outside of the limits of your university setting.  Community accountability is what distinguishes meaningful intellectual labor from elitist word games.  This coaching module is for scholars who are committed to making a difference in the lives of the communities that inspire them and also activates community as a superpower to sustain your wholeness and to support and celebrate you in your degree process.

The cohort model allows a set of aligned visionaries to experience the life-changing curricula and to benefit from one-on-one attention from Sista Docta Lex while building community with each other.   Doing it together also allows Brilliance Remastered to provide this service at a lower rate.  (However the one-on-one version of this curriculum is still available for those of you who want me all to yourself!

Cohort Participants Commit to a 3-Month Experience with:

• weekly transformative assignments
• bi-weekly google-hangout discussion sessions with fellow cohort members facilitated by Lex
• weekly email check-ins with Lex
• access to Lex’s online office hours
• song dedications and motivation

all for $750 per participant.  Payment plans are available.  I am committed to making this accessible to you!

Participants join the cohort through a phone assessment conversation where we will determine the best way to engage the curriculum.  Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com to schedule a phone assessment for $25.  More on phone assessments here.

Summer Lovin’ Organizational Retreats in NC

Another part of the Brilliance Remastered Durham Advantage!  Summer 2012 is all about the brilliance of deepening and strengthening relationships.   As part of my long-term investment in the important and experimental community institutions in and around Durham, NC  I am offering custom organizational retreats focused on relationship building for shared leadership and long-term victory.

Drawing on a unique curriculum based on Audre Lorde’s body of work these retreats will be customized to the emergent breakthroughs of your organization or group and will use embodied, creative techniques that will allow your group to access many dimensions and generations of wisdom.  These retreats are an especially timely opportunity for organizations transferring leadership, working through conflict, changing structures or just getting started.

To see if your organization is a good match for some Summer Lovin’ and to start a conversation about designing a retreat set up a phone consultation.

Remastered Tools 101 Available for Do It Yourself Download!!!!

After the major success of the Remastered Tools Webinar Series,  I am offering them as downloadable courses that you can do anytime with my love and support at about half the rate of actually taking the webinar.  Get started now with Remastered Tools 101 with special audio support, brilliant poems and mantras by the Remastered Tools 101 graduates and full access to my online office hours included!

Remastered Tools 101 is an opportunity to examine our relationship to knowledge and our theories of change as they relate to the work we do as scholars and the work we empower with our scholarship.   We will investigate how dependence on systems that are NOT community accountable are cultivated even in the most seemingly radical fields and support each other in creating visions for our own community accountability.

Click below to preview the course:

Remastered Tools 101 Course for Community Accountable Intellectuals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

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I also have a couple coaching slots so if you want to set up one on one coaching set up a phone consultation so we can see if we are a perfect match and as always if you want specialized feedback on your thesis, dissertation, statement of purpose or syllabus hit me up for a PhDoula belly blessing!

Love,
Lex

Combahee Pilgrimage May 31-June 3rd! Registration Open Now! Scholarships Available!

“The Combahee River Collective was a Black feminist group in Boston whose name came from the guerrilla action conceptualized and led by Harriet Tubman on June 2, 1863, in the Port Royal region of South Carolina.  This action freed more than 750 slaves and is the only military campaign in American history planned and led by a woman.”

What and Why

June 2, 2013 will be the 150th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s successful uprising where 750 enslaved Africans freed themselves and each other at the Combahee River.  This uprising was also the inspiration for the Combahee River Collective a Black lesbian feminist socialist collective founded in Boston in 1977 who created an analysis of interconnected liberation centered on the lived experiences of Black women and designed to free us all.

In the spirit of the Combahee River Collective, Harriet Tubman and all the people who stood for their freedom that day the Mobile Homecoming Project and Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind will be coordinating a pilgrimage to the Harriet Tubman Bridge on the Combahee River for a weekend of celebration, clarification, community building and ritual.   Special invited guests include Combahee River Collective Statement co-authors Barbara Smith, Beverly Smith and Demita Frazier, and Black Feminist Retreat Attendee and Mobile Homecoming Interviewee Cessie Alfonso.

Who

This journey is for self-identified queer, LGBTQ or queer affirming Black people who are committed to fulfilling our freedom legacies in our daily lives and our communities.

(Allies who share this commitment are welcome to contribute financial or in-kind donations, to spread the word to loved ones in the core constituency, to contribute organizational scholarships and to support their loved ones in being able to attend.  Thank you for your love!)

Why name it after one person? … I think if we had called ourselves the Harriet Tubman Collective, there wouldn’t have been any problems, because she stood for so much.  But why not name it after a liberation, a very specific instance of a liberation struggle and liberating action? That’s how the name came about.

Combahee River Collective co-founder Barbara Smith in an interview with Alexis Pauline Gumbs in 2011

Where:

Mobile Homecoming and Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind will be leaving from Durham, NC on Friday May 31st and caravaning to the Penn Center on St. Helena Island in South Carolina where we will be together until Monday Morning (June 3rd) when we will return to Durham, NC to bring the liberation energy to the Eno River.   Participants are free to fly in to Charleston and meet us at the Penn Center or to attend whatever part of the events speak to your soul and resonate with your schedule.

A rough idea of the daily breakdown is

Friday: arriving by evening and settling in

Saturday: liberation workshops at Penn Center and community connections with Sea Island Black Farmers

Sunday: dance, ritual, music, celebration  at the Combahee River

Monday: travel to NC and celebration at Eno River with Durham community

Location:

Harriet Tubman Bridge is located on Highway 17 over the Combahee River

32.652406, -80.683246‎     +32° 39′ 8.66″, -80° 40′ 59.69″

How:

Online sliding scale registration will open on May 1st.  There is limited housing which will be reserved on a first come first serve registration basis.  Registration options are available that include transportation (from Durham), housing, food and all events OR just housing, food and participation in SC OR just day passes for folks local to SC or who can provide their own housing.

Our funding model is characterized by grassroots partnerships.   Individual registrations will pay for logistics, housing, facilitation, documentation and transportations for our esteemed Combahee River inspired Black feminist lesbian elders.  We encourage participants to fundraise and we will help spread the word about individual or group fundraising campaigns.  We are also working with our favorite Combahee inspired organizations to provide scholarships for participants.

Register Here:
https://www.artful.ly/store/events/1212

email mobilehomecoming@gmail.com for scholarship/subsidy info or to make a payment plan.

Co-sponsors can provide scholarships at 3 levels

$500 for one participant
$375 each for two participants ($750 total)
$300 each for 3 or more participants

Co-sponsors can choose to use their scholarships to send LGBTQ or LGBTQ affirming Black participants in their own organizations or to make participation available for participants seeking support directly from Mobile Homecoming/Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind.

Individuals who are not attending can also provide scholarships named after loved ones who they want to honor by supporting this work.

Location of the Harriet Tubman Bridge on Highway 17 over the Combahee River:

https://www.google.com/maps/ms?msid=216283980164012257864.0004db9d2365d247f474a&msa=0

View Harriet Tubman Bridge in a larger map

Finding Poems: A Creative Writing Retreat Series by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Finding Poems: A Creative Writing Retreat Series by Alexis Pauline Gumbs*

 This set of 6 one-day community writing retreats over a six month period is designed to offer writers at all levels an opportunity to find the poems speaking to them everywhere and to deepen their poetic practice by drawing inspiration from black feminist poets.  Each retreat will be all day on a Saturday in Durham, NC and will include meals, inspiration, nerdy contextualization and loving support from an exuberant educator who has been creating transformative writing space for over 15 years.

 

1. The Lorde Concordance and Oracle Building (inspired by Audre Lorde)

This first retreat is about queerly finding poems in the alphabet.  Drawing on Alexis’s Lorde Concordance practice, this retreat consists of activities that re-alphabetize poems in order to find new messages, and sometimes the same messages and some times silliness.   Every poem we love is a possible oracle.  Each participant should bring a favorite poem.

 

2.  A Thousand Words (inspired by Evie Shockley)

In her Half-Red Sea Evie Shockley has a powerful thousand word poem that performs the never equal relationship between words and imagery.  In this retreat drawing on our own photographs and some chosen by the facilitator we will make our own thousand word poems in conversation with an image that we find meaningful, impossible, sacred or something.

3. Walking Into Poems (inspired by Alice Walker)

Alice Walker writes everyday planetary poems.  As one of the most explicitly political nature poets ever, the simplicity of her poems has a lot to teach any poet about the relationship between writing about nature, as such, and writing about the healing potential “human nature.”  This retreat will consist of a series of guided walks searching for everyday poems offered by the planet.

 

4. Poems as Architecture (inspired by June Jordan)

Did you know that acclaimed black feminist poet June Jordan was an architect?   Not only that, she won the Prix de Rome in architecture in the 1970s.    This retreat asks us to find the poems in the built environment around us in conversation with the poems that June Jordan wrote while in Rome (some of her less studied work).  For more by Alexis on June Jordan and the poetics of architecture see: http://pluraletantum.com/2012/03/21/june-jordan-and-a-black-feminist-poetics-of-architecture-site-1/

5.  Lucille Clifton and the Poems of our Past Lives

Many people do not know that the great poet Lucille Clifton was also in communication with other worlds.  In her archived papers there are several proposed manuscripts of books that talk about her communication with the dead. Based on Lucille Clifton’s dream poems and past life poems this retreat is about looking for the poems in our own dreams, memories and inklings and maybe even our conversations with folks who are no longer on this plane.

6. Finding Poems Underwater (inspired by Marlene Nourbese Philip)

Drawing on excerpts from Marlene Nourbese Philip’s epic, orchestral, heteroglossaic book length poem Zong, written in honor of captured Africans who were intentionally drowned off the coast of Jamaica so a slaver could collect insurance money for their deaths, this retreat is about finding poems underwater, in deep inner space, behind trauma and the unsayable.

Logistics:

In order to make this rare and priceless opportunity accessible and sustainable it will be community funded.  All workshops will take place in Durham, NC.   Community members interested in participating can help with a process through which Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind gains new monthly sustainers of 750 per month (15 sustainers at $50 each, 150 sustainers at $5 or any combination).  People who participate in the sustainer-raiser have first priority in any or all of the 6 retreats. Dates will be set after the success of the community sustainer raiser.  If there is space in any of the retreats community members who have not participated in that process can sign up with a deposit two weeks in advance of the retreat and an offering of something they can afford.   If you would like to be part of the sustainer/raiser project email writerwk1 at mac dot com.

ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, a prayer poet priestess and has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University.  Alexis was the first scholar to research in the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University and is currently on tour with her interactive oracle project “The Lorde Concordance” a series of ritual mobilizing the life and work of Audre Lorde as a dynamic sacred text. Alexis has also published widely on Caribbean Women’s Literature with a special interest in Dionne Brand. Her scholarly work is published in Obsidian, Symbiosis, Macomere, The Routledge Companion to Anglophone Literature, SIGNS, Feminist Collections, The Black Imagination, Mothering and Hip Hop Culture, The Business of Black Power and more. Alexis is the author of an acclaimed collection of poems 101 Things That Are Not True About the Most Famous Black Women Alive and poetic work published in Kweli, Vinyl, Backbone, Everyday Genius, Turning Wheel, UNFold, Makeshift and more. She has several books in progress including a book of poems Good Hair Gone Forever, a scholarly monograph on diaspora and the maternal and an educational resource called the School of Our Lorde. She is also the co-editor of a forthcoming edited collection on legacies of radical mothering called This Bridge Called My Baby.

Alexis has been living in Durham, NC for almost a decade and has been transformed and enriched by holistic organizing to end gendered violence and to replace it with sustaining transformative love.  Locally she is a founding member of UBUNTU a women of color and survivor-led coalition to end sexual violence, of the Earthseed Collective a black and brown land and spirit reclamation project and the Warrior Healers Organizing Trust, a community accountable foundation practicing organic reparations and transforming blood money into blood relations.  Nationally Alexis is co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Project, an experiential archive project amplifying generations of black LGBTQ brilliance, and intergalactically she is the instigator of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, a multi-media all ages community school based in the wisdom of black feminist literary practice.   Alexis is also a literary scholar with a PhD in English, Africana Studies and Women’s Studies from Duke University and a widely published poet and essayist.   Alexis likes to pray by walking, dancing, remembering poems and talking and playing with loved ones.

Alexis was named one of UTNE Reader’s 50 Visionaries Transforming the World in 2009, was awarded a Too Sexy for 501-C3 trophy in 2011 and is one of the Advocate’s top 40 under 40 features in 2012.

*This idea was made possible by conversations with two of my favorite poets: Samiya Bashir and Faith Holseart.

We Are the Open We Need: The Brilliance Remastered Need Ensemble Opens Up!

The brilliant and brave Brilliance Remastered Need Ensemble has me wide open, reaching into my dreams and the dreams of my ancestors.   Last night after working with Audre Lorde’s Coal and my brother Seneca’s teachings about the relationships between dreams, wisdom and nightmares we wrote this poem together.   May you be as open to it as you need to be.

 

 

 

We Are the Open We Need

 

“Love is a word, another kind of open.”

-Audre Lorde “Coal”

 

ancestors screaming in my ear: open

headache in the center of my forehead open

fears open. hate open. terrors open. light open

pain i can use, open

i been here before, open

 

got my heart and ears ready to hear whatever you have to say open

remembering grandmothers with cleansing tears open

got my door open come in any time type open

mountains open with wisdom and protection open

rocks under pillows open

 

letting the light in open

magic portals open

sky open

 

hitting the ground so that i CAN open

breathing so my breathing can breathe open

alchemizing wasted-blood-into-lifeblood open

 

spirit emerging through this physical body open

legs open mouth open nostrils flaring open

arms stretched wide ready to receive open

water rum juice and tea bladders open

shamefully open. embrassingly open.

listening to my body, open

ecstatic womb open

birth open

 

hands open

hands reached out to hold other hands open

hands up to the computer open

 

heart open

heart mind body break-through open

breaking down emotional walls open

 

sleeping under the stars open

dancing in the rain open

rural night sky open

tired, good tired open

fed souls–open

chest crackingly open

belly laughing out loud open

 

eyes open with clarity open

knowing i’m noteworthy open

nobody can see me who i can’t see open

dr. g arms open open

building community open

faith open

 

 

bars open

asylum open

borders open

church open

temples open

mosque open

altars open

mounds open

heaven open

 

consent open

lovers open

words open

need that tastes like love open

futures open

past open

now open

love open

faith open

ritual open

mothering ourselves open

 

in love with the souls making up this webinar open

seeing my reflection in you, open

saying your name in my prayers, open

seeing your smile open

universe open

we are the open we’ve been waiting for open

we are the open we need

open

We Know What We Need: Brilliance Remastered Need Ensemble Convenes!

Last night was the first session of the Brilliance Remastered  weeklong digital performance intensive honoring Audre Lorde’s “Need: A Chorale for Black Women’s Voices” as a resource for community accountable artist/intellectuals.  Inspired by Omi Osun/Joni L. Jones and the Jazz Aesthetic Manifesto we created this group poem as a performance, practice and primer on what we need in order to be present in our lives and in this intimate work together across time zones and geographical borders.  Here is one arrangement of our poem:

 

 

 

 

 We Know What We Need

 

i know

i need love

i know

i need to know that

i am loved

 

i know that

(i need hugs on hugs on hugs)

 

i know

we need water

i know

we need art

i know

we need our imaginations

i know

we need trust

i know

we need to breathe deeply

i know

we need LIFE

i know

we need to trust the miracles

yes! i know

we need miracles

 

i know

I’m needing

dancing

 

i know i

need to forgive

i know i

need to let go

i know i

need to accept that

I exist.

 

i know we

need to stop being shamed of our natural smells shapes ideas loves

i know we

need to remember what we hid

i know we

need to forgive ourselves

i know we

need to be courageous

i know we

need our ancestors breathing

i know we

need to continue learning

i know we

need to surrender to freedom

i know we

need to cry

i know we

need to work it all out

i know we

need to exhale

i know we

need to laugh… belly laughs…

i know we

need to mother ourselves

I know we

need to (continue to) connect

i know we

need to reach out for support when the terrors begin

i know we

need to hold hands

i know we

need to practice self love

 

 

i know

we need each other

we know

we need one another

i know

we need to heal

i know

we need to speak each others names

i know

we need to speak each others names in prayer

i know

we need sacred space

i know

we need ritual

i know

we need space to dream

i know

i need this space

this space!!!!

 

I know

i needed to come here tonight… this week.

i know

i need this life because i am here

i know

i need to overcome fear of the unknown

i know

it takes presence to perceive the miracles

i know

that i can always find this space when

i need it

 

yessss

!!!!!!!

Concrete Ritual: Honor Audre Lorde on her Birthday by signing up for the NEED Webinar!

Check out this poetry/video collaboration between Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Julia Roxanne Wallace and then sign up for our performance intensive honoring Audre Lorde ASAP!

Join the Brilliance Remastered community the first week of March for an interactive webinar investigation of performance and online ritual in relationship to community accountable intellectual work.  Participants will learn about performance practices from Audre Lorde’s Chorale Need, a classic text designed to end violence against black women and the shared experience of creating a healing multi-media cyber performance for our community about who we are and what we need as community accountable intellectuals.

Registration Due by Feb. 22, 2013

*the ensemble will be limited to 9 participants

Intensive dates: March 4,5,6,7,8  2012   (9pm Eastern Time)

Fee: Sliding Scale $150-250

Required Reading:

• “Need” “Coal” “Power” and “Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde,
• One Campus Guide to Performing “Need” edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• Excerpts from Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic by Omi Osun
• (all readings available via pdf and snail mail to registered participants)

To Register:

• Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your contact info (INCLUDING SNAIL MAIL ADDRESS) and what you hope to get out of the course.
• Send registration deposit of $50 to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind via paypal:
• https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=3VHV86GHPK56J
• Full registration fee is due by March 1, 2013
• webinar will take place over google hangout. participants will have to register (for free) for google plus.

http://www.alexispauline.com/brillianceremastered/2012/10/23/need-a-cyber-performance-ritual-for-community-accountable-scholars/

Better Together!!! Sign up for the Spring 2013 Brilliance Remastered Cohort by Feb. 10th!

After the successful launch of the three course Brilliance Remastered One-on-One coaching curriculum in 2012 we are expanding the brilliance by offering the courses to distinguished passionate cohorts of visionaries in 2013!

The cohort model allows a set of aligned visionaries to experience the life-changing curricula and to benefit from one-on-one attention from Sista Docta Lex while building community with each other.   Doing it together also allows Brilliance Remastered to provide this service at a lower rate.  (However the one-on-one version of this curriculum is still available for those of you who want me all to yourself!

Cohort Participants Commit to a 3-Month Experience with:

• weekly transformative assignments
• bi-weekly google-hangout discussion sessions with fellow cohort members facilitated by Lex
• weekly email check-ins with Lex
• access to Lex’s super-secret online office hours
• song dedications and motivation

all for $500 per participant.  Payment plans are available.  I am committed to making this accessible to you!

Participants join the cohort through a phone assessment conversation where we will determine the best way to engage the curriculum.  Email brillianceremastered@gmail.com to schedule a phone assessment for $25.  More on phone assessments here.

Here are this year’s offerings! Looking forward to working together!

Semester that Changed Your Life Coaching Modules:

Spring 2013 “Doing What I Came to Do”: Activating Your Purpose*

*Email brillianceremastered to set up a phone assessment by Feb 10th.

“I am who I am doing what I came to do.”-Audre Lorde

This is the first and most crucial coaching module in the Brilliance Remastered curriculum.  In this coaching process also known as the “purpose-keeper,” I will facilitate and support you in remembering/crafting and supporting an intentional, generative, empowering and energizing greater purpose for your degree work.   This process will give you a touchstone for every step of your degree work giving you consistent access to the superpower of PURPOSE which will provide energy and perspective when the going gets tough.  More info here.

Summer 2013 Community is Not a Luxury: Necessary Praxis for Degree Survival*

“Look how you print yourself on my heart.” -Audre Lorde

This intermediate stage of the coaching curriculum trains you to implement and build a community of accountability outside of the limits of your university setting.  Community accountability is what distinguishes meaningful intellectual labor from elitist word games.  This coaching module is for scholars who are committed to making a difference in the lives of the communities that inspire them and also activates community as a superpower to sustain your wholeness and to support and celebrate you in your degree process.  More info here.

Fall 2013 “My Words Will Be There”:  Eternal Strategies for Sustainable Community Accountable Scholarship

This advanced stage of the coaching curriculum is exclusively for graduates of the Doing What I Came to Do and Community is Not a Luxury coaching curricula or scholars who have defended their dissertations or already have PhD’s and are at a transition point in their careers.  This coaching process will provide you with the tools to build a sustainable ecology for your own scholarship that does not depend on the economy of the university.  This is a crucial tool-set for scholars who want their work to live in community organizing, to be interdependent with educational institutions, or to create their own educational/activist institutions.  More info here.