When the months get cold, my wrists start to hurt. This is troublesome for me, having a 9 to 5 day job, because the winter months are when I have the most amount of time off of work and if I’m in pain, I cannot make the amount of art I aspire to accomplish. An ancient Scottish myth tells a tale of Cailleach the hag imprisoning the maiden bride Brighid in the cold winter months until Angus, the God of Love, can free her in the spring. The connection between the Cailleach and Brighid implies that they are one in the same, two faces of the same Goddess at different states. As am I both the body in pain and the artist.

As Brighid is the goddess of smithing, healing, and poetry, I want to embody this myth as a way to heal and rest toward poetic inspiration while my hands are prisoner to my inner Cailleach. This workshop aims to build a practice of ‘composting,’ as Natalie Goldberg calls it in Writing Down the Bones, with the concept of imbas forosnai, the old Irish word for poetic clairvoyance and visionary inspiration. We will utilize poetic ways to consume media, ritual, altar building, dreamwork, divination, and celtic meditative practice to build a grain silo to store inspiration until the spring comes and we are rested and well enough to become the artist bride again. I highly recommend coming to this workshop to take down ideas in ways that are most kind to your wrists and hands. If writing by hand makes you sore, type instead. If any work with the hands hurts right now, perhaps use a voice recording. Whatever you feel will care for your art making body.

Some related reading:

“Composting” by Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones