"Poetry Is Not A Luxury," It's a Liberation Technology ⚡️🖋️

Friday. March 28th. You're invited! 💌

Hey people! Hope that you are savoring moments of joy whenever and wherever you are able to find them — especially given the utterly heinous chaos we’re witnessing on a day-to-day basis. 🙃

In the midst of all this bizarre-ness, I’m working to find my grounding, searching for ways to harness light and share it with our communities. Which is why I’m dropping by your inbox right now.

💌 Join us for Poetry as a Liberation Technology, a presentation//envisioned manifesto!

Next week, Friday, March 28th @ 4pm CST / 5pm EST, I’ll be hosting an event I’ve been dreaming and ruminating about for almost a year now about the power of Poetry as a tool and vessel is an electrifier of liberation.

Language melds and transforms ourselves, each other, and our futures. What happens when we recognize poetry as an intricate system of words for creation?

I’ve been a Poet for close to 20 years now (been writing lines since I was 5), so this event is truly an emblem of my lifelong learnings about how incredible, how magical, and revolutionary language can be.

You can register to attend here! Hope to see you there! 🤎

— Jasmine Lewis, The Poetic Warrior

I’ve been ruminating with the question, what does it even mean to “Practice Poetry?”

To me, it means being a Witness. It means honoring your emotions, and encouraging others to give themselves space to do the same. To find glimmers of light when the world feels bleak, and still hold those shadowed moments of sorrow. Not giving into the disillusionment, but letting it return you towards courage; taking a moment to recalibrate. To harness hope and empathy like the most prized possessions. To bear anger and love with the same breath. Prioritizing sincerity over “selling-you-a-story,”and not being ‘suaded into opposite directions just because they are “more realistic.” It’s grasping fire in your fingertips and keeping that same blaze burning in your heart as much as you do in your mind and your language.

Practicing Poetry is embodying the soulful and transforming emotion into gems of light.

I am blessed & honored to bear that responsibility, to share, and to carry it forward as I continue to be here — holding the torch as one of ‘dem new Poets.

— excerpted from my recent piece “Practice of Poetics, Jasmine’s Journey”