I’m in Boulder, Colorado, for the Naropa Summer Writing Program 2018! For the next three weeks I’ll be blessed to be exploring workshops with Tracie Morris, CA Conrad and Anne Waldman.  I’m in the company of some of the world’s most beautiful people – poets, writers & spiritual beings whose presence makes my heart sing!

Many thanks to the University of Westminster Graduate School’s Globally Engaged Research Scholarship and the Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies for granting me the funding to make this trip possible.

I’ll be posting regular reflections and poetry drafts throughout the next three weeks, but first, some pics!

Sitting by Boulder Creek in the roots of a tall willow with my feet in the cool mountain water, writing my first assignment for Tracie Morris’s workshop – a reflection on my experience of embodying my poetic voice in the workshop this morning.

Tracie’s workshop had us grounding into our bodies – connecting to every part of ourselves – and moving the energy up through our feet; connecting with our breath through deep diaphragmatic breathing; moving our voices into the space of the room to connect with one another from a place of our own deeply empowered embodiment.  Intense and transformative, vulnerable and emotional – the practice unlocked something profound inside me: bringing together a practice I understand as yogic with the rigour and discipline of embodied poetics, I understood that this is something I can not only practice but share and teach too.  Uniting my potential as a teacher of both yoga and poetry, letting go of the idea of a separation between these two aspects of myself – coming into wholeness in my being… Embodied Poetics as yogic embodiment, yogic embodiment as finding/connecting to one’s own poetic voice – This is a healing reconnection.