Ep 192 - The Power of Poetry During Times of Crisis with Diamond Forde

Spiritual Grit

In this week's episode, I am speaking with poet, extraordinaire, Diamond Forde.

Our conversation centers around how poetry saves us. And that is not hyperbole. How poetry brings us back to our humanness. We also talk about this now moment as we bear witness to the atrocities against P@lestin!ans. How we are being pulled to publicly grieve, something that is unfamiliar to us. How do we remember to be human to each other again? How can we provide care?

Listen in as Diamond reminds us: You don't have to hold grief on your own. Listen to be in community with us. Let us steep ourselves in poetry and hold each other in grief.

I'm inviting you to join me in Create Against Destruction, a 6-week container for women / femmes / nonbinary writers of color to come together in community and process and integrate and move through the complexities of our human experience.

In those 6 weeks we'll sit with fear, anxiety, grief, joy, hope, and empowerment. Sometimes separately, sometimes together, sometimes all at once. This is an invitation to gather together in support and in witness. This is a place for co-creating, co-writing, and care for each other. To build something in the face of destruction. To insist that we are here, that we exist, that we matter, and what we have to say matters. To witness and to be seen. To be held.

We start next Thursday, Nov 9th because time is of the essence. It might not feel like we're doing anything to make change when we are writing or caring for ourselves, but I contest this belief. Our individual actions, our individual energy adds and influences the collective, even if we can't see it. HOW you are BE-ing matters. It always has.

Link in bio.

About Diamond Forde:

Diamond Forde is a Black poet and the author of Mother Body (Saturnalia Books, 2021), winner of the 2019 Saturnalia Poetry Prize. The recipient of awards and fellowships from the Furious Flower Poetry Center, the College Language Association, Great River Review, Callaloo, and Tin House, she lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

Diamond Forde Website: https://www.diamondforde.com/published-works

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PoemsAndCake/