This story is a response to a question from Jeff Brown who on the SC Writers Association Facebook feed asked about our favorite piece of writing. I responded:
“I have never thought of having a “favorite piece” of my writing. I write it and it has a life of its own. But, I suppose it would have to be “Story Circle,” a little known and unpublished feminist choreopoem I wrote while at Wolfpen Writers Colony in Prostpect, Kentucky.”
That residency was a month long stay awarded by the Kentucky Women’s Foundation who continues to support women, for example, with the Sallie Bingham Award. That month at Wolf Pen literally changed my life.
So, while I was busy musing on Jeff’s first question, he asked how that experience changed my life. Now, that sent me down another spiral path and here is my musing on that question.
So, other than the obvious—a month away from responsibilities and camaraderie with other writers– it was a combination of cosmic experiences that changed me. Under the dark skies of Kentucky, bonfires throughout the night, a studio far from the living quarters (where my room overlooked a spiral garden), and a library of stimulating material all played a part.
The library belonged to Sallie Bingham, the founder of Ky Women’s Foundation and an amazing writer herself. All these experiences were catalysts for the choreopoem, “Story Circle,” in the vein of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.”
“Story Circle,” my original chorepoem, is about healing & transformation, so the writing of it was healing. Though I had been an advocate for women since the 70s, I began to focus on healing and empowerment in my life, writing, and advocacy.
So when I returned to Athens where I taught at The University of Georgia for 12 years, I was driving down the road when the words “Spiral Dynamics” came to me even though I didn’t know what they meant at the time. Shortly, I founded Spiral Dynamics Women’s Resource and Cultural Exchange. In the 90s women’s studies programs were struggling to be born. Of course, I was on the steering committee for Women’s Studies courses at UGA, but wheels turn slowly in academia and I was impatient, so I founded Spiral Dynamics to promote women’s endeavors–in writing, art, music, and business. Spiral Dynamics never technically become a nonprofit but I simply did whatever I wanted to do, for example, raising money to bring the powerful Luisah Teish, Yoruban priestess to town. It was a memorable time to those who attended with Teish (as she likes to be called) leading us in healing and ceremony.
Spiral Dynamics was quite dynamic for years until it was time to transform the energy into something new. I was hired to implement an SBA grant for a women’s business center, coming full circle since the job was back in Kentucky! I was not an MBA; I was a poet and a professor, but by virtue of my work with women’s businesses through Spiral Dynamics, I was hired. I cut my ties with Georgia and headed into a completely different chapter of my life all from the vision of the spiral garden under my window at the Hopscotch House (Wolf Pen Writers Colony).
And that’s the short story! To be continued in my memoir.
Poet Voice 