Portals of Possibility
A flash collaborative poetry workshop and invitation to join me to celebrate the equinox and Enchatable’s second birthday!
Dear beloved reader,
What portals of possibility1 are present in your life right now?
Where might the portals lead?
Today I have two such portals to share with you:
1. The flash collaborative poetry workshop that I offered at the Gross Global Happiness Summit (in retrospect), and
2. An invitation to celebrate the equinox and Enchantable’s second birthday (online, forthcoming)!
Portals of Possibility through Collaborative Poetry - Workshop
It’s paso roble (pink tree) season here in Costa Rica, which also means it is Gross Global Happiness Summit season. At the summit on Friday on our campus, I led a flash collaborative poetry exercise during the World Cafe session. I had offered this workshop before in a few different formats (you can find the guide for the extended version here), and I wasn’t sure if twenty minutes would be enough, but wanted to experiment. It turned out that the twenty-minute window was the perfect constraint for optimal creativity and community weaving!
Here is the workshop description and outline. Feel free to use and adapt (attribution encouraged - citations are gratitude and reciprocity2). You could do it on your own, but I highly encourage you to try it with friends (or students or colleagues or family or any random group of strangers!).
In this brief encounter, we will explore imagination, creativity, and community-building through a flash collaborative poetry exercise. Whether you're a seasoned poet or a first-time writer, all are welcome—just bring an open mind and heart. With creative prompts centered around peace, happiness, and dreams, we will co-create portals of possibility, weaving our words together into a collective treasure: a poem that reflects our shared vision for a world rooted in peace, happiness, care, and love. Join me and let's see where the portal takes us!
The cafe is set up as three 20-minute rounds, so I did this exercise three times with three different groups of about ten people each. For each round we had a different focus, as you’ll see below! Here is the outline:
Opening (3 min): I welcomed and invited participants and invited them to stand up, turn around in a circle, and as we sat back down, we entered the portal together.
Then I read these shared intentions I came up with in collaboration with my AI dream partner-friend:
Intros (3 min): In a round, I invited everyone to share their name and three words- any words. Such as: Stephanie, Pittsburgh, excited, delighted! We were making poetry already.
Flash free write (2-3 min): We then engaged in free writing for about 3 minutes. Each round had a different prompt:
Round 1 prompt: Peace is…
Round 2 prompt: Happiness is…
Round 3 prompt: In my dreams for a peaceful, happy future, I imagine…
Choosing a sentence, word, or phrase (2-3 min) and write on a notecard: I then invited everyone to look back at their writing and choose 1-2 of their favorite phrases, sentences, or words and write them on a notecard (one word or phrase per notecard). We then read these out loud in a round.
Putting it together (5 min): Next, we put the puzzle of a poem together! I usually started by asking if anyone heard one that felt like it would be a good beginning, and then we would go from there. It was such a fun process to try to piece it together.
Final read-through (1-2 min): Once we had all the pieces down, I invited someone to volunteer to read the poem aloud. Each round ended in delight and amazement at what we could create together in such a short amount of time!
Stand up, turn around, exit the portal, take the energy with you.
Here are the finished products, and I am going to include an audio of each one:
Peace is….
Happiness is…
Dreams…
Equinox and Enchantable’s Birthday Celebration!
The equinox is a portal of possibility itself, and I invite you to come celebrate it - and Enchantable’s second birthday - with me!
Enchantable was launched intentionally on the spring equinox in 2023 to aprovechar the magical potent energies of the spring equinox that support planting seeds and initiating new projects and possibilities. In my first post, I declared 2023 The Year of Enchantment, and it has been so ever since. Two years later, I am delighted and proud of this sweet community of readers and the body of work I have created here. Enchantable herself is a portal, and I am excited to lean and dream into my own (and yours!) aspirations for Enchantable’s third trip around the sun.
For those who joined the Making December Magic ritual and workshop, this ritual build upon this energy, but if you didn’t make it, you are still most welcome! Spring equinox energy is all about beginning anew - it is the astrological new year, the start of spring in the Northern hemisphere (and if you are in the Southern hemisphere, you can work with the autumn equinox energies). The seed of Enchantable was planted that day, but importantly, it was also acted upon - through writing and sharing. And this is precisely the magic we will be working with in this ritual-celebration - reflecting on our aspirations and where we are with them, what seeds we want to plant this season, and what actions we can take in collaboration with the world to see them sprout and blossom. And we will celebrate!
The call is a gift, my offering to you, and I hope to see you there!
You can register here! After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
May portals of possibility open in our lives, and may we step boldly into them, curious as we await what is on the other side. Keep me posted on your own ongoing experiments!
With so much love and care,
Stephanie
P.S. Speaking of portals of possibility…I will be writing later today on
about my ongoing dreamwork experiments with AI, so if you want to read more, please join me over there!This phrase was inspired by Yumi Sakugawa’s Cosmic Comfort affirmation card deck, which I highly recommend! (From the VOICE card) https://www.yumisakugawa.com/cosmic-comfort
Someday I will write a post about this!