You’ve Entered The Clearing

How you be?

The Clearing is in devotion to poetry—reading & reciting one curated poem at a time. Twice a month, on the first & second Sunday, we gather to discuss the monthly poem. Open to Poets, non-poets, life long lovers of Poetry, & new lovers of Poetry.

Facilitated by Poetic Conductor Kay Brown (she/her).

Background video of the Combahee River recorded by Kay. 

About

The Clearing is in devotion to poetry —reading & reciting one curated poem at a time. Twice a month, on the first & second Sunday, we gather to discuss the monthly poem. For Poets, non-poets, life long lovers of Poetry, & new lovers of Poetry.

The rhetoric of poetry being difficult to engage with & being the least dedicated genre of exploration is dated. Poetry isn’t difficult to engage with, it’s sensual, & the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (bell hooks) has robbed many folks of their innate sensuality. If it has not been completely stolen, then it is in fact suppressed at every turn in our society.

When we use the language sensual or sensuality, we reference James Baldwin in “Down at the Cross” from his 1963 book entitled The Fire Next Time. James wrote, “to be sensual, I think, is to respect & rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, & to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.” Our wild sensuality is how we experience presence.

This Clearing reads poetry to explore what the art form conjures up in our trek to know ourselves & bear witness, not become experts, to the lives of others. We gather in our first Sunday Clearing Ceremonies to blind read the poem & discuss it.

We gather in our third Sunday Clearing Ceremonies to discuss how we befriended the poem & lived with the poem through guided prompts/exercises/new ways of engagement rooted in sensuality. We return, on third Sundays, washed anew in an ocean of new depths buoyed by sharing our language out loud with others. Let us move through the world as Poets & read like one together. 

If you are interested in partnering with The Clearing by Assemblage Conservatory to sponsor a Clearing Ceremony, or a specific element of it such as curation, please email [email protected] with the subject “The Clearing Partnership.” 

"How you be?”

The Clearing was also incubated by the desire to tend to a space where the rare feeling of being seen & held by others can flourish. So often, in institutional spaces quick conversational pleasantries are exchanged before diving into the work day. 

Good morning, how are you?

Good morning, I’m doing okay.

The spaces where I was formally trained to gather left no room for embodying stillness & honoring what emerges from it. Despite witnessing the fall of empire, genocides, epidemics, living under a carcial state, & other atrocities felt deep in our bones the list of expectations continues to be upheld with little to no care. The paper is still due at 11:59 p.m., you still have to clock in when your body is asking to rest, & the clock keeps ticking away at time to get as much done as possible between waking & shut eye. 

I am making the argument that Sonia Sanchez’s words, recited in her 90th Birthday Celebration by The Schomburg Center on 9/9/2024 (3:09:49-3:10:58), is a much more expansive care centered way of asking about someone that leaves room for us to feel all of what emerges from way finding through the times we are living in. How you be? This is an active question rooted in our sensual embodiment in the moment(s) we meet. How you be is representative of ever changing actions that makes up our existence—it’s a question that leaves space for a constant state of flux—which is really what Blackness is.

In The Clearing, we ask this question & honor the answers in our community & live Clearing Ceremonies. If the initial invite is how you be then the first step to entering The Clearing is Sonia’s plea to “just come out of the rain.” If you insist on feeling the rain, as is your right, the folks in The Clearing will help you playfully dance through it. You can trust that the unruly wild folks that make up The Clearing will gather you as they gather themselves—all the while softly insisting on you to just come out of the rain, just come out of the rain, we’ve all got to get out of the rain.

 [Video Below: Created by Kay Brown, the background is footage shot at the International African American Museum’s Memorial Garden on a rainy day & the central clip is cited in the text above from Sonia’s 90th Birthday Celebration]