Soul Retrieval exhibition: Art of Transformation & Healing

 

An exhibition of art-poetry-dance

  paintings by Ashley Dull and Julian Coffman,

  poetry scrolls by Wendy Brown-Báez and Athena Kildegaard,

and Sacred Dance by Amy Sabrina

March 9 – April 6

Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts

6666 E River Road, Fridley 55432

(763) 574-1850/ info@banfill-locke.org

 

Opening night Saturday March 9

Artist reception 6—8 with dance performances by Amy Sabrina

Sunday March 10

Moving into Wholeness workshop with Amy Sabrina 1-3 pm

Panel: Art That Heals 3:30 -5 pm with Amy Sabrina,
Julian Coffman, Michael Kiesow Moore, Wendy Brown-Báez

Saturday March 16

Natural Art: Drawing from Intuition with Julian Coffman1-3 pm

Writing for Healing*** with Wendy Brown-Baez 3-5 pm

Workshops: $7 each or all three for $15

**This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota State Legislature from the State’s art and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the  people of Minnesota on Nov, 4, 2008

Friday March 15 @ 7:30 pm

                                        Poetry reading

with Athena Kildegaard and Wendy Brown-Báez

Books available for purchase

Group Artistic Statement: Art is part of our personal journeys to find healing and wholeness. We have discovered that art transforms us as it transforms our experiences with creative insight. As a group, our purpose is to share that journey through diverse techniques so that the audience may find resonance and insight, inspiration and harmony.

 

 The Artists:

Ashley Dull

Growing up on a small farm in picturesque Northeast Iowa, Ashley has had a desire to create since she can remember. Ashley earned her Bachelors of Arts degree in Fine Arts from Luther College in Decorah, IA. Working today as a young and emerging artist, Ashley is located in the Twin Cities area. She is currently showing her art at local and out of state galleries, Kelley Galleries, Hudson, WI and Woodbury, MN; Wilcock Gallery, Excelsior, MN; Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, Chanhassen, MN; Tamarack Gallery, Stillwater, MN; and gave her first solo art show Fall 2007. www.artbyashleydull.com

 

Julius Coffman is a self-taught freelance artist who has been creating professional illustrations for over 20 years. Julius is the author and illustrator of the book When a Grizzly Bear Comes to Babysit and collaborated on the poem for the Red Bird Broadside series “Sunday Afternoon.”  A student of Normandale College where he studies theology and psychology, he lives in Minnesota with his wife Heidi, two dogs and a wallaby named Roo.

The Poets:

Athena Kildegaard grew up in the Minnesota River valley. She has since lived in Sydney Australia, Chicago, Austin, Texas, Oxford Mississippi, New Orleans, Guanajuato Mexico, Roskilde Denmark, and now she lives in Morris, Minnesota. Athena is a part-time lecturer at the UMN, Morris, teaching college writing and creative writing, and team-teaching environmental ethics. She also free lances as a script writer for Pioneer Public Television. Athena has received grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Lake Region Arts Council. Her poems have appeared in several anthologies and one high school text book.Her poetry collections are Rare Momentum and Bodies of Light (Red Dragonfly Press), winner of the Minnesota Book Award, and new release Cloves and Honey (Nodin Press). www.athenakildegaard.com

 

Wendy Brown-Báez is a writer, teacher, performance poet and installation artist.  A transplant to the Twin Cities from Santa Fe, NM, she has lived in Mexico, Spain and Israel. She has published poetry and prose in numerous literary journals and she is the author of the full length poetry collection Ceremonies of the Spirit (Plain View Press) and chapbook transparencies of light (Finishing Line Press). Wendy is the creator of Writing Circles for Healing and received 2008 and 2009 McKnight grants to teach writing workshops for at risk youth which developed into an art installation called In the Shelter of Words. Her 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant enabled her to bring writing workshops into a series of non-profits. She is the after school writing instructor at Face to Face Academy and is a member of the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Wendy has performed from Minneapolis to Mexico, in bars, cabarets, cafés, galleries, bookstores and cultural centers. www.wendybrownbaez.com

 

Dancer:

Amy Sabrina has delighted in creative expression her whole life. She attended Rhode Island School of Design and graduated with a B.F.A. from the University of Minnesota. Amy has received Minnesota State Arts Board grants, A McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship, and an East Central Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. Her painted pottery can be found in museum and private collections throughout the world. A teacher, dancer, and healer, Amy lives at Sweetgrass Farm in Dalbo, Minnesota. Since 1995, Amy has been involved in dance as an instructor, producer, and performer. Dance performances in Minnesota include Wyoming Area Giese Memorial Library, Unity Christ Church (Golden Valley), and the St. Paul Public Library.  For Amy, dance has been a primary doorway to healing, transformation, and ecstasy. www.amysabrina.com

 

 

Crossroads

She is blinded by the light, the sword of truth, how it cuts her heart into pieces. The sea bellows a song of twilight, the moon above her as simple as a cut fingernail. Decision curves around rocks of despair. The fight is over. The winner is triumphant, the swords clattered to the ground. Of course it is blinding to realize what she must do to bring this quarrel to a conclusion. Like the second of a joust already fought, she must step away quietly. Let go of the need to make a point, make him see she is right.

You can choose happiness or drama. This dicho echoes in her head. How she loves telenovelas, the women weeping while in the background, the heroes dash off to another fight for justice. The odd characters on the periphery, comic relief. The tables set with spicy, delicious foods with bowls of chilis and limes, just like their own table, the maids flinging their aprons over their heads to wail, the mothers cursing fiercely when their children are threatened, the dashing boyfriends. But for her, it is time to let go of the drama and reach for sanity. Put down the sword. Walk away. Pay the check and say good-bye. You don't even have to explain why you're not coming back.

She curls her fist around the sodden napkin. She knows the truth is freeing her and the pain can not get any worse. But still she hesitates. Still she hopes for a reprieve. Still she wants the solution to be completely different.

She lifts the glass, afraid to meet his eyes, afraid she will no longer see a reflection of her own desire, that she will see his cynical appraisal instead of tenderness. She feels broken and betrayed. She doesn't know how they have come to this. How the sweet blossoming that made her body into a  garden has withered into a  winter of contempt. But she hasn't let go. Neither has he and she holds onto that. Whispers it to herself, trying to convince herself that it means something more than habit of need. And yet, she has reached a juncture, a turning point. Imagines Hecate, goddess of crossroads, sitting before her with a glint in her eye of warning.

She lifts the glass and he lifts his and they clink together while she intones that simple toast he taught her: Paz y amor. Dinero y tiempo para disfrutarlas. Peace and love, money and time to enjoy them. He has told her that if you don't meet the eyes of the person you are toasting, you will be celibate for seven years. Such a silly superstition, but at the last minute, she meets his eyes. Their eyes lock, the words echoing like a curse, like a blessing. Which, she could no longer say.

Elegy for Newtown

Elegy for Newtown

  —-Wendy Brown-Báez

I

this is the moment

before it

begins.

this is the moment

before.

this is the moment.

this is—

 

breathe

 

II

children. elementary school.

classroom. dead children.

these words puncture the air

when my room-mate tells me

to turn on the TV. children,

shooter, these words shriek

and pound bloody fists

 

on my heart.

 

III

cannot be, unimaginable.

assault weapon, carnage

horror, lockdown,

escape, dead dead dead

 

light a candle

 

IV

survivors at the firehouse.

parents converge, breathless, and then the

brutal wait. crime scene.

the unimaginable has happened

in the safest town of all

the safest place

 

ruined

 

V

instant news—we are glued

to the screen, CNN,

all day the unbearable

flashed in our living rooms

heart break

 

and horror

 

VI

the coverage comes to a halt as they announce there will be a

special report, a message from the president of the

United States. President Obama steps up to microphones to

 tell us what has happened.

the president, a man and a father, wipes back his tears.

I am drowning in

 

rivers of tears.

 

VII

photos scroll across the screen

parents collapsing in

anguish and I scream:

What have you done, my fellow

Americans?

allowing guns

allowing violence

allowing this nightmare

 

Wake up!

 

VIII

the names of the dead

are posted. their bodies cannot be moved,

cannot be claimed until the investigation

is completed: crime scene.

the voices of the Angels, God Himself

 

silent.

 

VIX

out-pouring of grief, memorials

spontaneously bloom,

flowers—candles—teddies—angels—

26 Christmas trees decorated with

pieces of our broken

 

hearts. We know how many

now.

X

the parents who did not lose

a child are shattered by what

could have

been.

 

 

XI

the teacher who hid her children,

protected them,  kept them calm,

weeps as she tells Diane Sawyer

“I said I love you…I wanted

my voice to be the last thing

they heard…”

 

her class survived

 

XII

sobbing through the gathering

of prayers, candlelit vigils, messages

from NYC to Oregon,

from Brazil to Germany,

united in

 

bereavement.

 

XIII

prayer vigil:

Jewish & Muslim &

Lutheran & Catholic &

Bahai & then President Obama:

Hebrew prayers, Arabic prayers:

a mournful wail, the 23^rd Psalm,

the way he says

We will not tolerate it—

 

and how we still have faith.

 

XIV

even the newscasters

seem shaken, even they

admit it is time

to go home and let

Newtown  bind up

its wounds

 

find strength to go on.

 

XV

a father speaks to the press,

says what an honor it is

to be her dad.

they said I love you before she left

for school that day,

lucky to have at

least that

 

XVI

her sisters wear her clothes,

angels pinned on green ribbons,

speaks of her dedication

to children. A life of teaching

 

gone. 

 

XVII

they arrived to school in anticipation of gingerbread house making:

      wearing cowgirl boots or

           a brand new pink dress:

                   playing an angel in the nativity:

in three minutes destroyed

by bullets ricocheting from a madman’s fury.

stunned in front of our tv sets,

we are not able to 

 

turn away.

 

 

XVIII

life is a leaf

floating

down a stream

to the sea.

 

XIX

can you hear the crackling

of my heart

into shards?

 

 

 

XX

dance of Kali, rattling skulls

around her neck as She

reminds us that life is birth

is death is destruction

is life.  we ask her

 

forgiveness.

 

XXI

because we forgot, ignored,

turned our backs

to the shadow.

the culture of violence—blowing up—video games—

fascination with death

yet denial

that it is real and leaves a

 

permanent mark.

 

XXII

this is not a country

I believe in: a run on

buying guns, a fear of

losing control

 

an addiction to fear.

 

XXIII

Awaken, arise, bury your

dead, open your eyes. the time is now

to make

 

peace.

 

XXIV

I can not imagine

Christmas in Newtown.

I can not imagine

the empty seat

at the table, the unopened gifts.

Newtown called them to her.

It was safe haven,

model school, then

chosen to be sacrificed

so we can

 

wake up.

 

XXV

Charlotte Bacon
Daniel Barden
Olivia Engel
Josephine Gay

Ana Marquez-Greene
Dylan Hockley
Madeleine  Hsu
Catherine Hubbard
Chase Kowalski
Jesse Lewis
James Mattioli  
Grace McDonnell
Emilie Parker
Jack Pinto
Noah Pozner

Caroline Previdi
Jessica Rekos
Avielle Richman
Benjamin Wheeler

Allison Wyatt

Rachel Davino

Dawn Hochsprung
Anne Marie Murphy
Lauren Rousseau

Mary Sherlach
Victoria Soto

 

XXVI

this is the moment

when it

begins.

every possibility.

wreathe of mourning

woven into

ribbons of hope.

angelic guidance while

 

the candles continue to burn.

 

Writing Class in Prison

Friday night was our third writing class at Stillwater prison. We are working with offenders at Level 4, one step down from lifers, although we don’t know what they have done and we don’t ask. The group consists of nine men, only two born and raised in Minnesota. Two are Mexican, two are Hmong and one is black. Their ages are hard for me to gauge,  nowadays almost everyone seems younger than I, but some are in their twenties and one has grey hair. Four have previously taken writing classes and come to class with folders full of poems and stories that they have written.

We are locked in a classroom, with a dry erase board, and tables formed into a square, but there is a glass window so the guards can watch and we are given “squealers”, small gadgets that fit into our pockets. If we pull the pin, they will emit a high pitched squeal to bring guards running. The outside world disappears, though, as we read, write, and listen. Even shouting in the halls outside our door is tuned out as we concentrate on the magic of creative writing. Their desire to improve their writing is tangible. The first class amazed us with the honesty, self-awareness, and quality of some of the writing. We continue to be amazed with every class.

We can’t meet the third Friday of the month, so I gave them homework. Their assignment was to read an interview by Michael Meade, author of Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul and write on “How to move from Fate to Destiny”. I asked them to write about their backgrounds: their ancestors, family, community, neighborhood, and cultures.

Xee, a young Hmong man and beginner writer, admitted that he struggled with the assignment. He said he asked about 12 men in his cell block what they thought it meant and some told him that they don’t believe in either. He continued, “I got a lot of help in writing this.” before reading his piece. He started with describing his parents fleeing the Laotian war to become refugees.  Tears came into my eyes as he described their terror as they fled for their lives. Then he described the culture shock of living in the states, the challenges for the Hmong community as gangs were formed, and how he got swept up in it. He described his transformation while in prison to change and to choose peace. It was a hand written story of eight pages, coherent, articulate, and moving. He shyly smiled while we applauded.

The next piece read was also by a beginner, the other Hmong man, and he wrote about the ceremonies and beliefs around death, mourning and burial of one’s ancestors before tackling the cultural shock of being a refugee. He had us laughing at his shock of being hugged by a little blond girl when he was a child. Again, I was astounded.

And the black writer, with writing experience and a deep melodious voice, wrote a piece that had us on the edge of our seats as he described an ordinary outing for ice cream with his family. The word “nigger” was shouted at them from a moving car, the first time he had ever heard that word, and then he heard a loud popping sound. His mother managed to hustle them home before he realized that she had been shot.

Around the circle, we heard things that are beautiful, moving, terrible, and thoughtful. I told them that I knew this was a hard assignment, and I admired them for tackling it, and tackling it well.

The homework assignment for this week is what it means to be a man: what they were told and what they have since realized. Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Crying Poem is the prompt. I can’t wait to hear what they write.

The teaching assistant and I walk out of the prison shaking our heads at how such bright, articulate men could have ended up here. We know that for some, it was under the influence and youthful arrogance and we also realize we are working with the men who want to change, who want to grow and find meaning in their experience.

The walls dissolve, around us and between us, as we celebrate the power of words to express what is deepest within us: our fears and desires, our longing for circumstances to be different, our realizations that we have to work with what we have, our awareness that we are on a journey, a journey of self-discovery. I feel privileged to be a small part of their journey, as they are part of mine.

Ann Fisher-Wirth: Ecopoetry to Honor the Earth

After a successful National Poetry Month of interviews and guest blogging to bring poets together via cyberspace, Upper Rubber Boots is hosting Intermittent Visitors. To read more interviews: http://www.upperrubberboot.com/

I interviewed Ann Fisher-Wirth who writes deeply about nature. We live at opposite ends of the Mississippi River, living waters that connect us. Her poetry reminds us all that we are connected and sustained via our beautiful Home, Planet Earth.

Ann Fisher-Wirth's interest in ecopoetry began while living on a 600-acre farm and is rooted in her awareness of the fragile and damaged state of the planet. Ann Fisher-Wirth’s fourth book of poems, Dream Cabinet, was published by Wings Press in 2012. Her other books of poems are Carta Marina, Blue Window, and Five Terraces; also she has published the chapbook Slide Shows. She is coediting Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology, forthcoming from Trinity University Press in February 2013. Her poems appear widely and have received numerous awards. She has had senior Fulbrights to Switzerland and Sweden, and has served as President of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. She teaches at the University of Mississippi, where she also directs the minor in Environmental Studies. And she teaches yoga at Southern Star Yoga Studio in Oxford, MS.

Her latest book Dream Cabinet has been described as “poetry of great beauty and searing honesty, poetry responsive to compelling personal, political, and environmental issues of our times, and--aware of the evanescence, the ‘dream cabinet’ quality, of all mortal experience.”

Q: How much is your poetry influenced by the Mississippi River?

Ann: I live sixty miles from the Mississippi River, in the North Mississippi hill country. I can’t say the river affects my writing, but Mississippi itself certainly does. The prose poems I’m working on now are part of a collection called “First, Earth”; many of them are set in Mississippi and are a kind of vexed homage to the beauty and rigors of this place. We live in a wonderful old house with a lot of soul but no central heat or air conditioning. Though we live in the center of Oxford, there’s a little forest behind our house with deer, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, snakes, and all sorts of insects and birds. It’s a tough and teeming climate—especially in the summer, which is hot and humid. Living here has taught me a lot about human embodiment and fleshly vulnerability in an other-than-human world.

Q: How does poetry impact your own life…yours and others that you love: your time, your family, your social networks, your journey spiritually or politically?

Ann: I’ve always read and loved poetry, and I’ve written it seriously for the past twenty years. I teach in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, so poetry is right at the center of my professional life. It’s prominent in my family life, as well. My husband teaches English, including various poetry courses, at the University of Mississippi, and he knows about 1000 poems by heart. One of my daughters is a poet whose second book has just been published, and one of my sons sometimes writes poems too. I’d say that poetry both affects and is affected by my spiritual and political concerns; all three—poetry, politics, spiritual concerns (which, for me, are primarily expressed through my practice and teaching of yoga)—are intertwined modes of awareness. Poetry is so much a part of my life, and has been for so long, that the strands would be impossible to separate and tease out.

Q: How can your poetry help us to make better choices in caring for Mother Earth?

Ann: William Carlos Williams writes in Spring and All, “Poetry does not tamper with the world, but moves it.” This is how poetry, including my own, can teach us to care for the earth. It can break through our dulled disregard, our carelessness, our despair, reawakening our sense of the vitality and beauty of nature. With that awareness, we are more likely to take actions that will preserve it. 

Q: What advice can you give about editing poems? How do you know when a poem is finished?
Ann: I don’t always know when a poem is finished, but luckily I am in a terrific online workshop, the members of which give me good—and sometimes repeated—feedback as I write and revise. I also have colleagues and sometimes family members or students who read what I write and respond to it helpfully. I do not, of course, always take any given advice. Sometimes, poems never get finished; sometimes they come easily—but I do know that if I can read one of my poems aloud, repeatedly, in front of an audience, and assent to it intellectually and imaginatively every time, it is probably as good as I can make it.

Here is my advice about editing poems: 1) Learn to love to cut and revise; 2) Don’t confuse yourself with your poem, getting your ego tied up with it; 3) Sometimes the editing process will continue for years; 4) The real joy of writing comes in the act of writing, the process of discovery and rediscovery; 5) Absolutely every element of a poem is important.

Q: Do you write in other genres as well?

Ann: I have been writing prose poems recently, for a manuscript called “First, Earth” that I am working on. Also I’ve been working on some short essays which will be introductory material for The Ecopoetry Anthology, forthcoming early in 2013, on which I’ve been working as a coeditor for the past five years. I used to write academic literary criticism; my first book was a critical book, William Carlos Williams and Autobiography: The Woods of His Own Nature, and I’ve written numerous essays on other writers. But mostly I focus on poetry.

Q: What are your thoughts about epublishing and on-line journals?

Ann: I have become increasingly fond of online poetry journals during the past few years, as the quality of some of them has vastly improved. My publisher, Bryce Milligan at Wings Press, likes for me to be reviewed in online journals because then the reviews are easily disseminated via the internet. But I am also still in love with print journals and definitely with books. I deplore the fact that they are in danger.

Q: Can you share a favorite poem from your new book Dream Cabinet?

Ann: You asked me about the role that poetry plays in my life. I think this poem from Dream Cabinet will speak to that.

Rain Stick

                                   I have watched you,

first in the sunny room in Charlottesville

as you were learning Yeats’s “Long-Legged Fly,”

and I have lain beside you as you stilled

to remember just how a line turned, the actual adjective.

I’ve touched your hip as you said me “Tintern Abbey”

or Hardy’s “Afterwards,” in the dark I’ve felt that joy,

seen that hedgehog, those white moths.

When I sprained my knee, trying to learn to ski,

I tossed in the bottom bunk of our hut

as your voice at three a.m. floated down above me,

murmuring “Fern Hill,” the horses “walking warm

out of the whinnying green stable,”

because I begged you, “Tell me something beautiful.”

I slept on our wedding night

as you drove for hours through the Blue Ridge Mountains,

waked and slept again, hypnotized by your tenderness

as you said me the whole Rubaiyyat—

one of the thousand poems you know by heart.

For more than twenty years,

I have heard your husky voice reciting poetry.

*

We were talking on the phone, I in California,  

you back home in Mississippi.

You said, “The poems we love are vanishing.”

I had nothing to reply. Then after some moments

you brought the rain stick to the phone,

the gourd we bought at a concert long ago,

when Robin Williamson played thirty-five instruments—

the lute, the rebeck, the psaltery, and the harp—

and sang and recited Bardic tales and mysteries.

You tipped the gourd so I could hear

the hidden seeds running down its length,

still making the sound of rain.

© Ann Fisher-Wirth

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The Lord Have Mercy Show

A Mother's Grief.
A Mother's Love.
The healing power of words. 

After performing poems for 10 years in places as spread apart as Berkeley and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and in venues as varied as Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts in Fridley, Chicago's Green Mill Jazz Club, Borders Bookstores and BarB hiphop club  in Santa Fe,  I felt that it was time to take an artistic risk. I perform my poems by asking myself how the poem wants to be performed. I memorize it while considering the character I am portraying: is she feisty and bold, subdued with grief, bowed or uplifted by fate, moving and transformed, sensual and yearning, questioning, questing, affirming, contemplative, remembering? I accentuate the rhythm of the lines and language with movement, ritual, shawls, long skirts, aprons, and jewelry to bring attention to my hands as they gesture. There are the times when my ideas didn't work: the time the shawl wrapped around me and the mic, incapacitating my movements; the time I totally went blank even though I had performed the same poem to the previous English class; the awkwardness of my steps and my balance after hip surgery that was very different for me after being accustomed to heels, a passion for dance that led to late nights at the disco in my youth, and even rooftop bars in Puerto Vallarta in 2006.

But the nervous sensation of my stomach doing flips with worry that I will get it right, that I will connect with my audience, are no longer noticeable. Of course I still feel nervous, especially in a new venue and I still wonder if I will grab their attention but I know where the poems will take me. To the magic and the joy of communication. I will survive any mistakes, I do know how to create intimacy. I do land in my own skin.

I want to try something I have never done before and I want to finally transmute my deepest grief, my long journey to the underworld of despair and back. The Lord Have Mercy Show arose from a simple litany I find on my lips often: "Lord, have mercy!" This simple phrase had been a mantra as I moved four times in the past 6 years, from Santa Fe to Puerto Vallarta, from PV to Fridley, from Fridley to North Minneapolis to live with a dear friend, then when her job ended and she moved to Madeline Island, to Saint Louis Park with a housemate whom I didn't know. From the healing after my partner's death through the shattering of my son's, then the deaths of my Mexican husband and my sister, grown children of friends, my son's fiancee, dear friends and poetry peers. "Lord, have mercy" is simply a natural cry of anguish and a cry for help, while at the same time, a cry of fatalism mixed with irony. Life and death are part of the cycles of life and we can't avoid them. I want to allude to the contradictions, the mosaic, the understanding coupled with emotional incomprehensibility. I believe that Death comes to all of us and the anguish of losing someone is a measure of our love and their meaning in our life, that life is eternal and love never ends, yet healing is sometimes only "scotch-taped" over the "fissures of the heart" and the heart is permanently scarred. We never emerge unscathed. We can't stop the desire to keep our loved ones alive and near. We have to let them go and we have to face our own mortality.

There is also the irony or the black humor: What, again? Another time you are calling out to the Lord?
And what is His answer this time?

The Lord Have Mercy Show is a multi-media monologue, with poetry, story telling, dance, music, visuals, video, shadow play and audience interaction which I hope to develop as time goes on with grant funding. (I am thinking of several grants and will also post a kickstarter or USAprojects campaign later this year.) But why wait, why not begin with an excerpt? This is a work in progress and I will present an excerpt as a way to judge audience interest and get moving. 

I am not trained as an actress but I have acted as I performed poetry. I am not a playwright but I have interconnecting poems and a story to tell. Soloist Rachealann Haasken and dancer Linda Lundquist will accompany me at Patricks' Cabaret next month to present a 15 minute excerpt of poetry with music and dance. If you live in the Twin Cities, I hope you will come and ask questions after the show. Let me know what you think and if you believe in the power of words to heal and transform our stories of painful memories into stories of courage, hope, resiliency and love.

The Lord Have Mercy Show upcoming in July

I will be performing an excerpt from 
The Lord Have Mercy Show

with soloist Rachaelann Haasken and 
dancer Linda Lunquist
We will guide you through the valley of grief 
to the healing of transformation

Friday July 20 & Saturday July 21 
@ 7:30 pm

Patricks’ Cabaret 3010 Minnehaha

(Lake & Minnehaha) 55406

Tickets $8 – 10 www.patrickscabaret.org

For more info: www.wendybrownbaez.com

from the poem: Solstice Child

bright light the winter night you came into my life, the times 
we went tumbling down

tumbling down, baby in the basket 
and love on the wing

magical snow globe, miniature world, babes in the woods, 
glow in the dark, you came to us during solstice night

and the blood I paid for your birth an honest payment, not what I 
chose but what I survived. so cold we could not venture outside, 
it was mountains and moose

and down coats and tucked into blankets before the fire 
drowsy and sweet. I did

not know about darkness then, how it could burn 
my heart into ash.