Our grief is an ocean of tears so hot that they have melted into one another. Only Love can swim this scalding sorrow water and reach the shore of collective human healing. Only Love activated into a cause that refuses to wilt over time and generations. Only a Love so doused in determination that its roar pierces the chrysalis and calyx of the galaxy and lets in New light and fresh wings. Only a ferocious ancestral wail can break us free. We can no longer afford to grieve timid, alone, and despairing. We must grieve bravely, boldly, and gathered in spiritual revival. We need the old songs. We need hailstorms of rebellion. We need a record harvest. We need unbrokered, feral birthwaters and delirious midwives who cannot bear the norm. We need you. Absolutely shed and shorn from your lifelong conditioning. We need you rampant and raw and lustful for freedom, standing in the center of this uncountable graveyard and braying at the sky for sanctity to pour out over each fallen, risen soul. We need you to be you in ways you have never managed to be you. We need you epiphanied and portaled and pilloried by Love's courage-dipped arrows. We need you as old as the oldest trees, pocked deep as moon, and absurd like a jungle. Yes, we
need you lush and lifelike and supernaturally alive.
- Jaiya John
Blessings, Family! I am honored to bring my poetry reading world tour, The Gathering, to Compton this Sunday.
Moonwater Farm
Compton, California
Sunday, March 3, 2024
3pm to 6pm
Adults and children ages 10+
FREE BOOK!
TICKETS ARE DONATION BASED.
PAY WHAT YOU CAN.
Tickets here (QR code), my website, and eventbrite.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/jaiya-johns-the-gathering-world-tour-tickets-846465249347
I will read mostly from my book Father to Son: Ode to Our Black Young, which is a poetic and spoken word book for the entire community, including women and daughters.
I so appreciate you spreading the word about our gathering within your community, including places of worship, youth and women's programs, schools, book clubs, and more. *This gathering is being filmed for a documentary.
*Each ticket purchased comes with a gift copy of Father to Son, courtesy of Unearth and Empower Communities.
Our poetry reading ceremony will be followed by Aftercare, which includes light food (vegan and more), drinks, fellowship, and personal visiting with Jaiya, including book collection purchasing and signing.
MENU:
Smoked meats. Blackeyed peas (vegan). Cornbread (vegan). Dessert with vegan options.
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JAIYA JOHN'S
THE GATHERING.
A WORLD TOUR.
a poetry reading ceremony and book collection signing
I am excited to join you in your community to read from my collection of published and unpublished work, bringing to life the spirit of the medicine words. I say reading, though incantation and prayer are truer. Thematically, these readings are on collective freedom, and take on the flavor of each audience from gathering to gathering. A rich weaving of cultural fabric. These gatherings are remembrance songs, bringing us back to our Indigenous ancestral ways of gathering and being together. As this tour is part of my global Soul Water Rising rehumanizing mission, we stir the soul to remember itself as we garden our collective liberation and the end of oppressive systems and ways of life.
I am also honored to include, at some of the gatherings, live Sacred Conversations with revolutionary souls who inspire me. During these gatherings, I also commune with the audience in questions and conversation. And we build into this healing experience what we are calling Aftercare. Before the afterparty, and after the reading, we care for each other as I make myself available for sacred listening, tears and laughter, sacred embraces, selfies, and book collection signing.
And as a part of Soul Water Rising's Book Angel Project, whether or not you attend a particular gathering, you have the opportunity to purchase books that we then gift to vulnerable souls with whom we gather along the tour.
The Gathering is a people's freedom movement. The tour is happening in living rooms, cafés, libraries, prisons, hospitals, shelters, community centers, women's centers, campuses, HBCU's, Indigenous reservations, art galleries, art studios, museums, parks, amphitheaters, auditoriums, theaters, and stadiums. Call us to North and West Africa, the Levantine, Southeast Asia, South and Central America, the Caribbean, and beyond. We go where we are called.
You play an organic role in this. If you desire for the tour to come your way, email us through the button below. You can help us identify aligned venues, communities, and audiences. This project is a production of Soul Water Rising.
Tour dates and locations are announced on a rolling calendar as sites are secured. This tour is a culmination, crystallizing, and new season of my life's journey, work, and calling. I am awed and enchanted to read for you and embrace you in a healing way.
We will see each other soon, in Love, at The Gathering.
Big Love,
Jaiya
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My books are available at booksellers worldwide and directly from the author at jaiyajohn.com (eBooks are exclusively at my site). Thank you for posting your copies, readings, and creative images and videos, and for sharing online reviews. It all breathes life into a book's life. I hope you will gift these books to your people.
Also at jaiyajohn.com, enjoy my books, eBooks, audiobooks, talks, sleep stories, and piano music. I also offer creative writing support phone sessions, keynote speaking, talks, and book/poetry readings.
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