Back Porch Reading Series with Art Goodtimes: Passing the Gourd
In-person reading at Jules’ Poetry Playhouse, Placitas, NM
Outdoor back porch small group seating - reserved ticketed seats (max 12 people)
Doors open 6 pm, Mountain time, reading starts 6:30 pm, followed by the passing of the gourd. Bring a poem, short story or something to share during the circle.
Hosted by Jules Nyquist and John Roche
Books for sale by Art Goodtimes
Ticket price of $10 includes a reserved seat, locally sourced vegetarian pizza from our neighbor Placitas Pizza, beverages including wine, and light refreshments. Free parking on site.
Jules’ Poetry Playhouse bookstore and gallery will be open, in addition to our Little Free Library..
Art Goodtimes
A fourth-generation Californio conceived in New Mexico, Art Goodtimes ran with San Francisco’s Union of Street Poets in the Sixties, moved to the San Juan Mountains of Colorado (Nuche homelands) after they shot Harvey Milk, serving five terms as San Miguel County commissioner, one term as Western Slope Poet Laureate and continues as the Telluride Mushroom Festival steward & poet-in-residence (since 1981). His books include As If the World Really Mattered (La Alameda Press, New Mexico, 2007), Looking South to Lone Cone: the Cloud Acre poems (Western Eye Press, Arizona, 2013) and Dancing on Edge: The McRedeye Poems (Lithic Press, Colorado, 2019). He writes a monthly column for the Four Corners Free Press, op-ed poems for the Colorado Times Recorder and co-directs the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds poetry program.
Art was featured via Zoom on April 26, 2023. Watch the recording HERE. We welcome him in-person for this Back Porch reading, followed by passing of the gourd!
What is a gourd circle or “passing of the gourd?”
Talking Gourds was founded in celebration of bardic poetry, as explained in
Dolores LaChapelle’s master work, Sacred Land Sacred Sex Rapture of the
Deep: Concerning Deep Ecology and Celebrating Life (Kivaki Press, 1992).
Passing the Gourd is a sharing circle practice meant to be an emotionally safe
and secure platform for the creative performance of, and listening to, the spoken
word.
A Gourd Circle restructures the traditional “open mic” poetry reading into a peer-
to-peer interaction in lieu of the more traditional top-down performer-audience
relationship.
Modeled after the Talking Stick tradition that LaChapelle identifies as one of the
pathways to help our koyaanisqatsi society return our species to a reciprocal
relationship with the natural world, a Gourd Circle marries her championing of
bardic poetry, poetry that speaks for place, with the passing of a gourd – one of
the earliest tools of human culture, according to Claude Levi-Strauss.
Unlike the talking stick, a talking gourd represents what Riane Eisler calls
“partnership culture” rather than structures of patriarchy. Uniquely the gourd
displays both the phallic shape of the masculine, as well as the cupped bowl of
the feminine. In using this partnership totem to pass around the circle, we mirror
the partnership culture of a society back in social and environmental balance.
Some of the guiding principles of a Gourd Circle are: All voices are to be heard.
All artistic expressions are welcome: stories, raps, rants, poems, or songs. We
learn best not from criticism but from listening. Trust what really moves us.
Although every Gourd Circle is rooted its own unique moment, ideally a facilitator
speaks to open a circle and then lets each person in the circle go on
uninterrupted (their being aware of time, company and other social constraints) --
using a gourd as the group’s visible symbol of “having the floor.” At the end the
facilitator closes the circle’s ritual space.
If during the session the gourd-holder wishes to simply make a statement, reflect
on some passing thought, or just be silent and pass the gourd, that is their
prerogative. They can also refer back to something they heard previously, or
something that happened to them, or to the group, as part of a larger event in
which a Gourd Circle may be embedded.