Somatic Exercise: Put on a shirt with a tag backwards and inside out, so the tag is under your chin. Then put on a pair of pans with a tag inside out and backwards, with the back pockets on your thighs. Run around the block like this and try to read the words on either one of the tags. When you finish the run, write down the words you remember vertically down the page (if you’ve remember most, you can choose a few). Then, write an acrostic about the experience using these letters.

conrad's somatic exercise #4

Take a red magic marker and draw a 9 on your naked chest. Draw the 9 from the bottom up. Start the tip of its tail at your naval and sweep UP to have the round circle of its head in the middle of your breasts. Put on a shirt that conceals the 9 from other eyes. Go out to the corner and quickly choose a direction. At the next corner choose another direction. Don't think about where you are going, instead spend the time between corners looking carefully at the world. Finally come to a complete stop at the 9th corner. Look across the street and focus on four different objects. Draw a line to connect them, looking carefully at what's inside this square you've just made. What's outside it? What's half-in? Imagine you string lights to make the square. Imagine its contents at night, dimly lit. Imagine this square a year from now. Ten years from now. Now go somewhere quickly and write, run, run to a place where you can write. Suddenly the city, your city, is a place where places to write come to mind, you must always know those places at all times. 

Come for the flavour, stay for the pills
Get your fill
Fill up and ride
Sidle up and make a choice
Talk about something wild
Felt some cold on my blue legs
Can't imagine never seeing it again
It'll all outlive me
Keeping me alive, a sustenance, a market
Of pleasure and pain and necessity
Needs me less than I need it
Next time I come back for you
I'll get another sandwich and watch another merry band
Enjoy whatever it is they do these days
Not the same days, but all days all the same
Happy thoughts, chin up,
Slog your way back through your personal fog
And rely on it, it'll be here the tomorrow after you

Karen's Somatic Exercise

Somatic Exercise:

Imagine yourself into the bottom of a ten foot pit. No light, no sound, nothing-- just you and a clean dark pit. It's your pit. It's all for you. Lay down (literally or not, whichever-- if possible, go somewhere you might identify as your ten foot pit) and imagine its full experience-- how does it smell, what does it feel like, are you warm or cold, do you feel safe or afraid down here? Now you're going to write your way out of the pit. Write the things you need to to get out of this place, or to write yourself anywhere else. Write the things you love about your pit and the things you hate about it. Write about your footholds, about the rope connecting you from that bottom to those who love you and want you back. Write about what it's like coming back out. Is it easier to stay down there, in the end, or not? Who knows? Are you ok?

Thanks, everyone, for the semester. Hope you're all well :)

Somatic Exercise

Somatic Exercise (Conrad)

2.) In your home alone. Take a bucket or basin of room-temperature water to your front door and strip naked. Put a piece of paper or thin notepad under the bucket and lay a pen nearby. Stand in the water. Get used to being naked while standing in water at the front door. Look through the peephole. Look for a long time at the world out there. Then look above you, and at the door, the walls, and make note of something you hadn't seen before -- maybe a cobweb or crack in the paint. Every once in a while stretch your arms over your head stretch as high as you can stretch stretch stretch then relax in your bucket. If someone knocks or rings the bell it's your good fortune! Look at them through the peep hole while saying nothing. Maybe have a friend come over at a certain time to knock and say, "Are you naked in your bucket of water?" Don't answer, you're a poet, this isn't time for idle chit chat, besides that you can warn them ahead of time that you won't be answering them. Stretch, and be quiet. Step out of the bucket and sit your poet ass on the floor, get the paper from under the bucket and whistle short, loud bursts of whistle four times. Then write. When you feel the need for more whistles, pause, whistle, then write some more.

"The Result"

What a waste of water

Was there ever such a waster of water

Will the water waster waste her

Water once more? Or

Mni?

When she wants it turns the tap

And looks at

The roof ceiling hook—LOOK!

The ceiling hook  she couldn’t hang herself from but

A plant could hang there. A plant that needs water.

And there are three windows where the water evaporates thanks

To the sun.

And the ceiling hook hangs nothing, and hangs there kinetically full of potential.

And the boyfriend walks in on this poet ass, bare-assed and laughs and laughs

And the poet ass jiggles as the poet laughs.

Let them think it’s crazy. Stretch out in your bucket and let yourself say fuck it.

My Somatic Exercise

Go into your bathroom and clean your tub for this one first. Now.

Go to your kitchen and fill your biggest cup, glass, or mug with water. Bring that drinking implement to your bath tub and pour it into the bathtub making sure that the stopper will stop that precious water from going down the drain. In whatever you happen to be wearing at the time, get in the tub. Lie down and try to relax in the small amount of water around you. Let it soak into your clothes if you’re wearing clothes. Try to wash your hair. Imagine how you would live your life differently if that amount of water in the tub is the amount of water you were allotted daily for a month. Write a the first half of a poem about what you would do during that month, and the second half of the poem about what you would do the first day of the next month (with access to as much water as you have access to presently). 

turn ear : for rita (in reponse to Rebecca)

how to live with oursleves 
& the rest of us

     turn ear
     near rut
     tae tea tu
     true tun
ut  at ra re
ut  na ret
     un
     art near true
     turn ear near
     nut near ear
     eat ren; an
     ear rent
     ut true ta
     ret en un
     tre rat turnt art urn rat earn
                        tru   turnt
     tu nature

Rengas

Today, I was asked to be in an educational space where I did not understand the trajectory of the questions, nor the language that was at the center of the lesson. And I was unthreatened; I was safe; I learned.
Safe is a space where I can fall asleep without fear of being reprimanded or made to feel ashame.
There is a generosity in Reuben's way of being that immediately puts people at ease. It makes me wish I had better questions and ways of expressing myself
 Sometimes a moment of silence speaks the loudest truth
safe here in the spirit markers and the abnormal normal love directions
His talk on love made me think of the way my granddaughter looked at her mom when she was only a few months old. the expression on her face was indescribable.
I love your image of his talk as a door. A door to history that was untold and voices that were silenced.
I recall the look on my dying father's face, when I told him his wife of 60 years had died. That is what love looks like.
Love is looking for your in the eagles and in the clouds
love is hopeful just like the eagles and it disregards how difficult and hard it can be.
The speaker Reuben opened a door for me to look through. I felt blessed to hear what he had to say; to see what he had to draw. His stories about his life and the life of his grandfather gave me knowledge of events in this area where I live. His explanation of those times clarified the injustice done towards his people.
Lost
I am lost without direction
Four directions
The number of ribs are embedded right here
their ribs pashwa mostos
can a law be composed of ribs?
I don't think a law can be composed
I think you can decompose it
I love the gifts of our grandparents.
I learned that buffalo have sixteen ribs
I thank God that he has given me a long life. A chance to meet different people of this earth (world). To build an understanding of his will and the diversity of this precious world which he has made and put us here to enjoy.
I am encouraged by your faith, and your ability to continue learning
This class is truly an example of living in the now by absorbing each second as if it was your last sip of water.
The people you have met are also grateful to have met you.
The world will meet us all, all we need to do is meet the world.
I really enjoyed learning about the native people and their language they are very special people to me and I believe in them and I know there medicine works and there dream catchers work. They are awesome people.
I agree 100% completely in this presentation
We have certainly learned a lot "? is love"
The learning has not finished
The creative consciousness awaits you, just sit still closing your eyes.
Grandmothers in their directions powering me home.
Grandmothers in their directions
Remembering not remembering
the sounds, the words
That we say when we first come out of our mothers womb
then the last words we say before we die. Getting some air in thats why they call it
Think of this as an opportunity to breath, learn and share.
I learned the word me heo.
very funny person. I never seen in conversation, comedian, and good leader sense of humour.  Interesting time with went by pretty fast. I wish he will come back again to learn more about his history.
The learning has not finished. You may learn more on your own.
Be still and know your spirit guide will take you to a learning place

Amanda's Somatic Exercises

Conrad Somatic Exercise Number 1:

Gut Wrenching

Insatiable hunger

Not for food, but for freedom

To escape the cages

Of the mind

The city

The police

Race

Gender

Economy

What is freedom? Is writing freedom? is resisting conventional language an act of freedom? Is not writing, freedom?

Perhaps there is freedom in community-

When you replace the Capitalist I, with a Collective We.

When we come together in love, suffering, messy, chaotic, scary, dancing,

We form unexpected connective tissues that

Would surprise some

But mean everything to us.

I am not writing.

Amanda's Somatic Exercise:

Find a quiet space, and leave your cellphone and electronics in another room.

Turn off the lights, and lay on the ground.

Close your eyes.

Clench your fists extremely tight for ten seconds- then release.

Clench your abdominal muscles very tightly for ten seconds- then release.

Clench your feet very tightly for ten seconds- then release.

By this point you should be feeling relaxed and tranquil.

Now start to think about the cages in your life. Those that constrain you, or the people you love.

Realizing that the peace you felt was manufactured and an illusion in comparison to the very real issues that plague the world. This should immediately ignite some tension, but it is important to sit with this tension, because it is productive.

Remember, it was all good, it was all fucked.

Write a poem about what is all fucked

Late-night somatic inspiration

CHOOSE ONE: grow out or shave off all the hair on your legs, whichever is opposite from your usual practices. (Of course the former option will take a bit more time than the latter.)

How do your legs feel? Are you colder? Warmer? Itchy? Sexy? How does the air feel against your skin? How does it feel moving through this extra layer of YOU?

TAKE OFF YOUR PANTS and go outdoors. 
Go for a run. Walk into the wind. Sit in the sun (wear sunscreen!)

GO TO A STORE. Do people look at your legs? Do you get treated differently? Does no one notice? 

TELL SOMEONE what you've done. Preferably a stranger. 

Write 5 words down describing their reaction. Keep these words on your person.
TRACE these words with your fingertips along your legs, through the layer of hair or across your newly exposed skin. 

Write a poem about these words. Your legs. Your life with new legs. Do you also have new eyes?

Context, in Avoidance of Rupture // Language Towards Stone and River

context is what is most important to me - d.b.

This is poetics as abstraction.

What is the context

of active amnesia:

the state. Funded

poetry as erasure.

How do we read

with sensitivity here?

A field of stone

is parking lot;

The invisibility of hills

named fallow ground.

Skies changing with accumulation

of both the potential (read:

capital, read: hotel, read: poetry

on sidewalks) and the effects (read: debris

read: the dialectics of development).

A field of stone is a building site

or a giant fucking hole.

I heard no one

asked any one

about much

especially the network

of old coal shafts

that run beneath the city

and if disrupted

would collapse

the whole

armature.

so much can be passed over

in avoidance of the rupture🔺 - l.r.

Gloria Neapetung

designed the street

sign for Okisikow

way. “during and prior

to treaty making

it would have been the

okihcitawiskewak

who would have

been consulted

regarding the land,

because the authority

and jurisdiction to speak

about the land

resides with the women🔻.” (55)

What life ways

weaved here? What

ruptures suture?

What protocols

attend the denial

of presence - what

laws might honour

its persistence?

I listen here

but I do not pretend

to know.

I stumble

through

language

towards stone

and river. ______________________________ 🔻McAdam, Sylvia. Nationhood Interrupted: Revitalizing neyihaw Legal Systems. Purich, 2015 🔺Robertson, Lisa. 3 Summers. Coach House, 2016.

LOITER (IN TWO PARTS) : FOR CA

I
grievous

Armed

   connect

repair

exchange

    Kwayaskwâtisiwin

sneeze

II

repair kwayaskwâtisiwin

armed grievous exchange
sneeze connect