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We are a tribal species, meant to live in tribes.  At this point, anything that reminds us of our connection with each other is healing, and poetry can do that, through the meter and through the language and through the imagery. The combination of those three things is literally magical, I think.  It can change energy, it can change reality.

Annie Finch is an award-winning poet, performer, editor, critic, teacher, nonfiction writer, and verse playwright. She is the author of more than twenty books and chapbooks of poetry, plays, translation, literary essays, textbooks and anthologies.  The most recent of her six books of poetry is Spells: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2013).

Annie’s poems have appeared in journals including Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Paris Review, Partisan Review, Poetry, Agni, Jacket, Fulcrum, Prairie Schooner, and Yale Review, and in anthologies such as The Norton Anthology of World Poetry, The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, and The Penguin Book of Twentieth-Century American Poetry.

Her collection Calendars (2003) was shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award, and Eve reissued in the Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporaries series in 2010. Other honors include the Robert Fitzgerald Award and the Sarasvati Award for Poetry.

Among the Goddesses:

Interactive Writing Ritual for Healing and Justice

This interactive writing ritual is designed “to provide participants with closure and catharsis as we synthesize the gifts of the 2017 ASWM program through imaginative transformation. We will open by invoking goddesses of chaos, loss, mourning, justice, transformation, and peace.”  After the invocation, participants will be guided in a three part writing ritual of naming, releasing, and healing, designed to shift our stories into narratives of power. Our final group ritual will weave sacred dance, circling, drumming, and chanting with the words we have written, offering a focused and inspiring doorway out of the symposium into the rest of the world.  Please bring writing implements and any ceremonial attire you desire.

Annie Finch is a an award-winning poet, writer, and performer. Her many books of poetry and poetics include Spells: New and Selected Poems; Eve; and Among the Goddesses, awarded the 2010 Sarasvati Award in Poetry from ASWM.  Her column on woman-centered spirituality appears regularly in The Huffington Post, and she is currently completing her next book, A Witch’s Way.  Subscriptions to Annie’s Spells and Poetry Witch Musings are available at anniefinch.com.

 

Pendle Hill is a Quaker study, retreat, and conference center located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia.

Pendle Hill was established in 1930 as a Quaker study center designed to prepare its adult students for service both in the Religious Society of Friends and in the world. The founders envisioned the new school as “a vital center of spiritual culture” and “a place for training leaders.”

Today, Pendle Hill continues to be a vibrant experiment in adult religious education, through its conferences, publications, and online resources. At the heart of its programs are the foundational principles of “equality of opportunity and respect for individuals, simplicity of the educational and material environment, harmony of inward and outward actions, community in daily life and in the seeking of the Spirit.”

 

Our 2017 symposium sessions will take place in the historic Brinton House, overlooking the woods and pond, and located a short walk from the Main House where our meals will take place. Pendle Hill is located on 23 beautiful acres of grounds. We encourage you to come early to enjoy walking the mile long woodchip trail, through “miniature ecosystems” with140 species of trees and flowering shrubs.

Pendle Hill is located just outside Philadelphia, easy to reach by car, train, or plane. It’s a Five-minute drive from Media and Swarthmore College and 20 minutes from Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges.

 

At our 2017 symposium, ASWM members will be treated to a special concert by the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir (ANNA), Philadelphia’s own feminist choir.   We will also recognize the long time work of ANNA by presenting them with the 2017 Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts. For over 40 years, the Choir has empowered, challenged and uplifted audiences with music that inspires, provokes, delights and informs.

ANNA is a premier performing arts group in the greater Philadelphia region, supporting critical causes including promoting peace, guarding reproductive rights, ending poverty, achieving gender equality, supporting the LGBTQ community, fighting rape and abuse – anywhere that music can bring a sense of empowerment.

At the same time, ANNA is committed to musical excellence and to the creation of new music by commissioning works from women composers. They have performed at such diverse venues as Carnegie Hall, the Tannenbaum Center for Interreligious Education at the United Nations, and the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, NY. Their songs unite women of all economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, ages, and racial and religious heritages.  In their own words:

We believe in using music as a force for social change. We often focus our vision on women’s issues and lives in all of our diversity. We create an open and welcoming space for people who love lifting their voices in song and who share the belief that music is the currency of hope.