Mother's Day Tarot

Photo by Robyn Beattie

I’ll be celebrating Mother’s Day by inviting my children to join me first in the yoga studio, followed by breakfast after, the present their presence. It’s been two years since I lost my own mother and I’m feeling like the Tarot Angel in the Temperance card, well--like I’m floating between her two cups, the streams of joy and sorrow passing through the filament of my body. Joy for my daughter graduating high school this summer and sorrow I can’t share that moment with my mother. But the truth is, we are surrounded by mothers and there’s an abundance of love, my mother-in-law and family members and friends coming from near and far to celebrate with us, and truly, my mother in spirit. I think also of the Empress, that beautiful card for mothering and nurturing, asking us to consider where in our lives we can honor the mother in ourselves, the mothers who mothered us, and the environments of beauty, harmony, in nature, or of our making, in which we thrive. 

Luna and the Butterfly Lantern

I’ll spend this Mother's Day afternoon (May 12) reading Tarot cards at Yoga with Shawna. Come play with me in Imperial Beach if you need to either spoil yourself or spoil your mother with some Tarot love. Sessions on Sundays are the 20 minute shorter readings. If you live far away, you can always book through my main site's Consult Page for virtual Tarot love. Tarot consults come with a Butterfly Lantern postcard bearing a personalized prompt for journaling and meditation based on your reading. Here's Luna, preparing to drink from my daughter's blue paint water, the famous disturber of art projects, this cat, famous dumper over of flower and paintbrush bouquet vases. 

And for my daughter, for the honor of being her mother, a paragraph I wrote with my Poetry Read and Critique class this spring:

Alice in Flames by Robyn Beattie

"Will you braid my hair," she asks, when we are late, ten minutes past when we should have left, all of us trained, her brother carrying her backpack...I've got her coffee and mine plus her second cup of yogurt and granola. We'll pull up at the curb in front of school where she'll have forgotten her shoes, ask to be driven around to the side gate. But that she ever asks--I am stunned--my daughter, did she just say, "Mom, braid my hair?" The very teen, averts the goodbye kiss, the one you can hug but no, no kiss on cheek, not even top of head, the very teen, at Christmas, will land all eighteen years of legs into your lap, always on her terms... always, always braid your daughter's hair when she asks.

Back in 2013 I compiled a pastiche of past Feral Mom Mother’s Day posts; very nostalgic as the kids get older and I look back to the time before the boys were taller than sunflowers, near taller than my husband (taller certainly than yours truly). Here’s a link to that post: A Modest Bouquet: Ten Mother’s Day Posts.

And here’s a more recent grief post at Tarot for Two about saying goodbye to my mother through the lens of Reversal, or The Hanged One.

Poetry Read and Critique, SDWI

Second Saturdays Poetry Read and Critique meets this coming Saturday, May 11 at Liberty Station from 10-12. We are a happy, lively, heart-open and passionate group of poets. Walk-ins welcome. We are playing with writing list poems and looking at fairytale themes and apologues this weekend; to that end we have poems by Maggie Smith, Ruth Thompson, Rebecca Chamaa, Shel Silverstein and more on our worksheet. I hope to see you there.

Photos by Robyn Beattie, with the exception of Luna (by yours truly).

April Abundance: San Diego Writer's Festival and Tarot on the Balcony

Calling all writers and lovers of words! I’m honored to be teaching tomorrow, Saturday April 13, 2019, for the inaugural San Diego Writer’s Festival, a beautiful 100% free and open to the public event with over 60 make that 80 presenters offering workshops, panels and more such as: Highlights from the Memoir Showcase, Black Stories Matter, Stories from the Veteran Writers Division of So Say We All, Roustabouts Theater, Paul-Klee inspired WordArt Project for children, Children’s Face Painting, Spirituality and The Writer, Poetry Karaoke, and more. Whether you write poetry, memoir, romance, epic fantasy, fiction, ghost stories, children’s literature, or have a book or manuscript to pitch, or perhaps you have a child eager to write poetry and participate in the Children’s Poetry Slam, come on out tomorrow to the San Diego Central Library. Again, the program is free, every event! Here’s the link to check out all San Diego Writer's Festival events; come hear keynote speaker Piper Kerman (author of Orange Is the New Black) speaks from Noon-1, or catch her Q and A with Festival Founder Marni Freedman from 3:00-4 pm in the Neil Morgan Auditorium.

My workshop runs from 10 am-11 on the 5^th floor, Room 563, so come and write with me! Here's the course:

The Bold Poet - Finding Your Muse

Where do you find inspiration? Under a full moon or beneath a blazing sun in the desert? Out quietly paddling by canoe down the middle of the misty river? As writers, we draw on the wonders of the natural world around us, we use our five senses, and we let our imaginations run wild. In this workshop, we will explore the sources of wonder that surround us in nature, that we experience through the body’s fives senses, and that we follow by traveling the imaginary landscapes of the mind’s eye. Where have you been, what have you seen, and where will you take us? Join this poetry workshop to write your own five senses adventure poem. All level of writer welcome. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to order copies of my first poetry book, November Butterfly in time for the festival, but I will be bringing giveaway writing exercises to our class from my latest writing project, The Heart's Compass Tarot and Writing Workbook. Here's a link to a poem from one of my working poetry manuscripts; this one is from The Fool in the Corn (about an Illinois commune I lived on as a child) and was published by Tweetspeak Poetry and reposted here: Cooking Class, Mid 70s, Illinois.

Poetry Read and Critique

If you can’t make it to Saturday’s writing extravaganza, join me on Sunday April 14, 2019 for my monthly Poetry Read and Critique class from 10-12 at San Diego Writers, Ink at Liberty Station. I’ll be sharing poems from chapbooks and books from Portland’s AWP 2019. Bring a poem to share with us, a pencil, paper, and an open heart. Walk-ins welcome, or register ahead of time. 

Tarot on the Balcony at Yoga with Shawna

Question of the heart? A tarot reading provides sacred conversation and an overview of your present situation in which we look for possible next steps towards your highest joy. Together we formulate the core of your question and seek solutions in a loving, compassionate dialogue. I’m next in session in Imperial Beach at Yoga with Shawna during Reiki Clinic this coming Sunday, April 14, from 3:30-6:30. I'd love to work with you. Learn more about my approach to the tarot here.

Tarot at AWP Portland 2019

Calling Your Writer's Block Bluff: Three Card Draws (Mini Tarot Readings)

AWP, Portland 2019
Oregon Convention Center

Drop by the Saddle Road Press Booth to sign up for a free mini tarot reading in celebration of the Heart's Compass Tarot and Writing Workbook, forthcoming soon from Saddle Road Press.

I will be giving ten minute readings on Thursday March 28, 2019 from 9-4 and Friday March 29 from 2-5. These three cards draws will be based on your writing project at hand or any other question of the heart.

You can also pick up a sample chapter from the tarot workbook that gives you an exercise for using tarot principles to write a cento (poem compromised of lines by other poets).

Here's a list of Saddle Road Press authors and the books you will find at our table:

• Dane Cervine, The Gateless Gate and Polishing the Moon Sword
• Erika Howsare, How Is Travel A Folded Form? 
• Stefan Kiesbye, The Staked Plains 
• Ire’ne Lara Silva, Blood Sugar Canto
• Ire’ne Lara Silva, Cuicacalli: House of Song
• Don Mitchell, A Red Woman Was Crying (2019 edition)
• Tania Pryputniewicz, November Butterfly
• Jessamyn Smyth, The Inugami Mochi 
• Ruth Thompson, Whale Fall & Black Sage
• Rolf Yngve, Dog Watches

Unmasked: Women Write About Sex and Intimacy After 50. Join us also on Thursday evening from 5-7 p.m. for an off-site reading from Unmasked featuring eight poets and essayists who contributed to the anthology. They include Debbie Brosten, Roberta Feins, Ellaraine Lockie, Tanya Ko-Hong, Bernadette Murphy, Lisa Rizzo , yours truly, and Cathie Sandstrom. The event will be at the offices of Nurture Realty, 1100 SE Division Street, Suite 120, Portland, 97202.

Heart's Compass Tarot News and Joy

Happy March! How can it be, that my firstborn trammels towards graduation? Monumental for this Feral Mom, Feral Writer, to have one of three children at graduation's threshold. In honor of that passage of time, I'm posting a link to my very first post, The Desk, all of two paragraphs long, about, you guessed it, what it takes to get to the Desk: 

The Desk

How far things have  moved since then, though I still keep Emily's #1263 in my typewriter pencil sharpener on my desk, and that little half wing of a framed butterfly turned into my poetry collection November Butterfly. 

Tarot Fun

I am super-charged about a new tarot workbook I am writing as we speak. I'll be bringing an excerpt from the workbook to pass out for free at AWP in Portland at the end of March where I'll be manning the Saddle Road Press table. Do stop by and take advantage of the free ten minute tarot readings I'll be giving on writer's block, latest writing project, or whatever is weighing on your heart that day. Here is a post at my main website about my Heart's Compass workbook and and why I'm changing the name of my tarot work and Facebook page to Heart's Compass Tarot and Writing.

I had a beautiful weekend reading tarot cards at the San Diego Yoga Festival. Kalli volunteered with me; we are so in love with yoga time through Yoga with Shawna in Imperial Beach. Here's a new post at Tarot for Two about the return of yoga and its impact on my well-being, how it is helping me shed the past and integrate spiritual studies:

Tarot for Two: The Nine of Wands, the Hierophant and the Star card. 

Mary and I haven't blogged for awhile together--we both had good reasons, and we write about them in the post. I connect the Hierophant to a family memoir I'm writing and Mary connects the Star card to a novel about the afterlife she is writing.

Poetry Fun

Second Saturdays Poetry Read and Critique meets this coming Saturday March 9,  from 10-12 at San Diego Writers, Ink. We are a lovely, open-hearted group of devoted poets coming together to write, read, and offer suggestions on one another's poems. Drop-ins always welcome; I hope you'll join us.

America We Call Your Name: February 8 Poetry Reading at Beyond Baroque

I'll be reading in Los Angeles from the anthology, America We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2017) along with featured readers Martin Ott, Murray Silverstein, David St. John, and Eliot Schain.

Friday, February 8, 2019 at 8 p.m.

Beyond Baroque

681 N. Venice Blvd.

Venice, CA 90291

Link to Beyond Baroque Facebook Event page

The anthology, born in response to the 2016 Presidential election, combines voices of poets from across America–from red states and blue states, high schools and nursing homes, big cities and small towns–with the voices of poets from other countries and other times. From Virgil and Dante to Claudia Rankine and Mai Der Vang, from Milton to Merwin, from Po-Chiu to Robin Coste Lewis, these voices, now raucous, not muted, now lyric, now plain–join together in dissent and in praise, in grief and alarm, in vision and hope.

What a fertile collection--beautifully organized, powerful in the classroom (I loved sharing it with my poetry students and using it to help us seed new work). I'll even admit I printed out the list of contributors and taped it beside my writing desk just for the joy of seeing the name-field, so diverse, so rich, and so numinous with the energy of the poems in the anthology.

Heres a partial list of other contributors included in the anthology: Elizabeth Alexander, Ellen Bass, Lucille Clifton, Natalie Diaz, Molly Fisk, Terrance Hayes, Robinson Jeffers, Yusef Komunyakaa, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, Czeslaw Milosz, Pablo Neruda, Sharon Olds, Irma Pineda, Adrienne Rich, Evie Shockley, Wislawa Szymborska, Susan Terris, Ocean Vuong, William Carlos Williams, Joseph Zaccardi and more...

If you are unable to attend the reading, but would like to order a copy of the anthology, visit Sixteen Rivers Press.

Here's a link to a post about the process of writing the cento chosen for inclusion in the anthology:

Poetry Meets Tarot Synchronicity: Crafting Centos and Leaning on Your Beloveds