This workshop will consider grief as the ending of worlds and employ the Black feminist tradition of world making in order to plot/scheme on how to write with loss to make anew.

We will imagine grieving as time travel, grief as ‘unwieldy object’, mourning as a practice of ends (and we will end up there repeatedly), ghost writing, preoccupation, repetition, and recovery.

This workshop will employ free writing, collective writing and collective reading.

Participants will be invited to submit work started in this workshop to the call&response x Black Feminist Bookshop zine.

This workshop is funded by the Civic House Dream Fund.

Register here

NB: This is a closed workshop for women, femmes and non-binary people who are Black/of African descent, including people of mixed heritage. Please be mindful while booking.

About the facilitator:

Rhoda Boateng (she/her) is a Croydon born, Ghanaian poet and archivist (Black Cultural Archives) based in London. She is currently working under the moniker trusting mechanic writing through cycles of preservation, maintenance, destruction and freedom.

About the organisers:

call&response is an emergent writing community for black women, femmes and non-binary people.

The Black Feminist Bookshop is a collective project to open a radical space of resistance, sisterhood and community. We centre Black women, femmes, girls and non-binary people, and create spaces where they can draw on the works and legacies of Black feminist writers to generate strategies for self and collective care and liberation. Look out for popups, events and collaborations.

Content Warning: Grief and possible mentions of racial trauma.

Header image: The Coloured Women’s Club, who coined the term ‘self help’, by Naomi Moyer, mixed media artist.