Abundance and Blessings!

We are deep into the new year already... but since this is my first post of 2013 - happy new year greetings! Wishing everyone abundance, blessings, and so much love!!! 

I brought in the new year at home and since getting back state side, I continue mapping out what I want to do and bring to fruition this year. So many seeds I've planted last year are coming to life and bearing fruit this year - especially my writing! And so I am thrilled to give all the details for my first solo book (a collection of my poetry and reproduction of my literary art work, myth memoir - Saltwater Healing) that is being published with Poinciana Paper Press - and the launch is this week Sunday! I am going home for the launch and also for the book binding this weekend. 

My book - "Saltwater Healing" will be a hand-bound, letterpress printed cover, limited-edition of 100 copies, and printed in full color. Thanks to the hard work of Sonia Farmer, editor and founder of the small independent press - Poinciana Paper Press, the book will be beautiful and a piece of art! Also, many thanks to both Sonia and Margot Bethel for collaborating and designing the cover. I feel incredibly blessed to be able to share my creative work and my story in this way. And I give thanks to this space of conscious vibration where I have shared so much of my work and my self over the years. 

In my tradition of archiving accomplishments and progress in my writing life, here are the highlights and details for the release of "Saltwater Healing":

Here is the official announcement from Poinciana Paper Press:

FEBRUARY 2013 "Saltwater Healing" by Angelique V. Nixon

Doongalik Studios

February 3, 3-5 p.m

Nassau, The Bahamas 

Poinciana Paper Press is pleased to announce the launch of "Saltwater Healing" by Bahamian poet, scholar and community worker Angelique V. Nixon. This myth memoir and poetry collection use the Bahamian landscape to explore difficult personal stories as a way to heal. 

My vision for this work grew out of the ways I engage with home as a Black mixed-race queer Bahamian woman living abroad. It grew out of troubled women's stories (herstories) too often left out of our "history" books. It grew out of messiness—the stuff we don't often speak about--poverty, domestic violence, drug abuse, disease, mental health, sexual trauma, sexuality, race and color, class and privilege, and environmental crisis. It grew out of my desire to speak and share hard stories through a visual medium, using a story-telling poetic form and collage of materials and found objects. And it grew out of my visits home over the years to reconnect with homespace, and this not only involved spending time with my loved ones, but also going to the sea, laying in sand, breathing in salty air, and soaking in the ocean’s healing embrace. It grew out of all the stories my grandmother told me as a young child - many which centered on the healing powers of our land and seascape. It grew out of me depending on my visits for rejuvenation, but also experiencing the difficult memories of my childhood. 

-Angelique V. Nixon

And for a sneak peek at Saltwater Healing and the process, check out photos on Poinciana Paper Press here!

*~*~*

Here is the press release about "Saltwater Healing" written by Sonia Farmer - and featuring my responses to several of her questions inquiring about my process. This was published on Saturday in The Nassau Guardian, and I wanted to share it here as well. 

*~*~*~*

Poinciana Paper Press launches “Saltwater Healing”

Published in The Nassau Guardian, Arts and Culture Section, 26 January 2013

Sonia Farmer, Poinciana Paper Press 

How do we tell the stories that are too painful to recall? In what language can we bring these hidden realities, often loaded with shame, to light and let the retelling hold witness to and ultimately heal our stories?

In “Saltwater Healing,” the latest book being launched next month by local independent fine press, Poinciana Paper Press, Bahamian poet Angelique V. Nixon finds the path to healing and empowerment lies in both language and image.

In eighteen snapshots, she collages photographs, drawings, and actual pieces from the Bahamian landscape—silk cotton tree cotton, woman’s tongue pods, sand and shells, dried leaves and seeds—and uses them alongside handwritten poetry to explore and understand difficult stories through the lens of the natural world.

Along with a selection of her own poems, the book finds beauty and strength in even the darkest of places—like letting the ocean’s tide wash your sorrow out to sea, “Saltwater Healing” moves the reader through to a refreshing and more inspired place.

“Through my collection, I hope readers feel inspired to tell their own stories in whatever ways that make sense to them. And I hope to encourage readers to share and speak their truth,” she says. “I am working in the tradition of Black women writers who insist upon our need to create our own stories out of what we know and what we don't know -- because so much of our histories/herstories are unknown.”

Inspired by Audre Lorde’s Zami, Angelique calls the work a “myth memoir” for its seamless combination of stories, experiences, memories, dreams and mystical elements in the narrative of poetry in the artwork, ultimately working to defy literary boundaries and create new ways of telling stories.

“I think it’s important for artists to cross and play with boundaries,” she says. “Poetry and writing generally help us to create images in our minds, and so I wanted to push myself as a word artist further into the visual realm.”

“Language is as fluid as other mediums of art, yet it is so often fixed in space,” she adds. “I love word art, mixed media, collage, recycled art, and photography. And so I found myself using a variety of objects to compliment and complicate my words and the stories I wanted to share.”

“Saltwater Healing” happened organically though a workshop and came to completion as she created an installation for last year’s Transforming Spaces art tour under the theme of “Fibre”. The powerful piece resisted any definitive literary genre, making it a perfect fit for the local independent press, Poinciana Paper Press.

“It's really important for my book to be published by this press because I believe in small independent publishing, and I want to support local businesses as much as I can in our economy,” says Nixon. “Also for me, its an honor to be published, recognized, and supported by a local Bahamian press because my work is about home - and no matter how long I have lived away - The Bahamas is always my home.”

Specializing making Caribbean stories into limited-edition and hand-made works of art, Poinciana Paper Press recognizes that the book form is an active part of the reading experience. Founded in 2007 by Sonia Farmer, the press was a nomad entity for several years while she completed her training in book-binding, printmaking, papermaking and letterpress printing abroad in New York City and London, the U.K. In 2012, Poinciana Paper Press finally gained a home in Nassau and is presently growing into a center for book arts, letterpress and papermaking—the first of its kind in the Caribbean.

Angelique V. Nixon is a writer, scholar, teacher, community worker, and poet born and raised in The Bahamas. She earned her Ph.D. in English specializing in Caribbean literature and culture at the University of Florida in 2008. Currently, she is a professor in the Department of English and Creative Writing at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.

“Saltwater Healing” is hand bound with a letterpress-printed cover in a limited edition of one hundred copies, which will be available for purchase at the launch on February 3^rd, 3 p.m. at Doongalik Studios on Village Road. Angelique will read from her collection and guests will be able to see the original panels of “Saltwater Healing” on display in the gallery space.

For more about Poinciana Paper Press, visit www.poincianapaperpress.blogspot.com. 

Invite for the launch in Nassau, The Bahamas! 

I hope to also have a launch in New York sometime this Spring - so for all my NY peeps, look out for details soon! And also for my friends/family outside of Nassau, let me know if you want your very own copy of "Saltwater Healing" - and I can make arrangements with you! 

Email me at angeliquevnixon@gmail.com for more info!

with peace, light & conscious wibes dem,
Angelique 

Love Moon Healing

In honor of the full moon in Cancer - December Love Moon - and the powerful emotional vibrations surrounding this intense end of 2012, I wanted to share musings and inspirations from one of my favorite astrology blog sites:

The astrological sign of Cancer is a water element, a cardinal mode of energy. When Cancer is being expressed at its potential, it is powerful, dynamic and highly tenacious sign. Things will get done. And any obstacles on the path, water tends to flow over, around it and in the end move past it. This is how the sign of Cancer has the potential to handle difficulty. Though this sign is a touch sensitive and thus under a full moon, every emotion may feel even more intense. 

What could be the key themes or issues surfacing now? They will be around family, roots or belonging, rejection, abandonment, emotional security, financial or professional security as well as death, dying, letting go of the past and moving past old comfort zones. 

The exquisite potential of the Full Moon in Cancer is re-establishing emotional purity and strength. Allowing one to be confident and free to express feelings and flow with life. Learn to honor your feelings and attune to the Sacred Feminine. Be receptive to healing and also remain open to allowing things to wash away and prepare your inner container for new beginnings by being in the present moment. Let the raw emotion of rejection, abandonment and emotional betrayal heal. Allow love to caress you and nourish you on every level. 

- Depali Desai, Celestial Space Astrology Blog

Full Moon * 27 Dec 2012 * Yoga Retreat, Paradise Island, The Bahamas 

And so I am in deep reflection about what healing and transformation mean for me in the present moment and into the new year. It's been so good to be home and re-connect with my people and homespace in the Bahamas. It helps me feel rooted yet it also fills me with anxiety and hard memories. But these too keep me spirited. I am really feeling this full moon deeply and all the planetary shifts that are culminating into the new year. So many of my projects, my creations, are coming to fruition in 2013 - because of the work and intensity of this year - my water dragon year - in which I invested so much of my time and energy planting, sowing the seeds of long time visions... and they are emerging! One of those projects is all about healing and transformation - and I am thrilled that it will be published soon soon! More to come on that - (Saltwater Healing, Poinciana Paper Press, Forthcoming 2013) there will be a book launch an' ting in the new year :)  So this time for me has really been about letting go and listening to the universe and focusing on radical self care. I am as we all are - a work in progress - continuing to grow, heal, and change.

I focus during this full moon on healing - my own healing but also praying for healing for all of us and our planet - continuing to envision and believe in this time of change - the time is now for us to embrace the Sacred Feminine and love ourselves and this earth.

So in wrapping up my end of year musings on conscious vibration, I wanted share the music that has kept me going these past few months - as I've been deep in the throws of writing, teaching, deadlines, and the day to day. This past fall, I spent much of my time alone (outside of teaching and meetings and a few weekends in New York) and it was really a time of affirming my rituals of self care - especially after my dynamic and beautiful summer of travels and spending much time at home. The fall was really about me and alone time - and work - and creative recovery - nurturing my artistic self. And music was a big part of this work for me - and so I share my top three songs of 2012:

Grace Jones, This is...

Emeli Sande, Wonder

Jose James - Black Magic

And finally here are some pics of art pieces I created while listening to these songs:

Happy New Year!!! more musings soon come on conscious vibration...

peace & radiant light,

Angelique

Activate + Manifest = Transformation

*** 21 December 2012 ***

Happy Winter Solstice!  I'm meditating on new beginnings, awakenings, and change on this powerful day! Here's a little something I'm reflecting on as we all embark on a new year during this time of change:

"From ancient times, the Solstice was considered to be a power point or portal of Spiritual energies flowing in onto the planet. In astrology, the Solstice is a marker or turning point in the astrological calendar. This year, December 21st, 2012 we are standing on the edge of something big in Collective Consciousness. Whether you notice it or not it is happening all across the world. Life is changing and it is helpful to move along with it, which makes this Solstice point unique in nature.  Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we celebrate the “Winter Solstice” a time of celebrating and time of introspection. 

The solstice of 2012 is bringing things to a completion in one way. Old way of life is ending and dissolving before everyone’s eyes. Walking through this symbolic doorway within Consciousness is important and beneficial. If you do so, consciously and with the appropriate alignment you can ignite the New Year 2013 with different approach."

- Dipali Desai, Celestial Space Astrology Blog

I'm at home in the Bahamas for the holidays - grateful for this time with my friends and family - feeling blessed to bring in the new year here. It has been a vibrant, dynamic, and powerful year - filled with healing, self-care, and change. We are all in the midst of shifting consciousness and transformation. I have been feeling it all year with so much gratitude to be alive and to be doing what I love to do - writing, teaching, meaningful community work, and creating art and poetry. 

I'm still flying high from a beautiful experience earlier this month. I had the great opportunity to share my work as a scholar, poet, and community worker during a keynote address at Oberlin College for the Students of Caribbean Ancestry annual 2012 banquet. I was asked to speak about Caribbean independence and what it means for queer Caribbean people inside and outside the region. The title of my talk was "Sexual Freedom and Citizenship in the Post Independence Anglophone Caribbean Or A Queer Postcolonial Subject Reflecting Transnational Space(s)" - and I shared much of my work with the Caribbean IRN and highlights of our collection Theorizing Homophobias, and I also talked about my scholarly work and research in Caribbean Sexuality Studies. I ended the presentation with a poetry reading. It was a beautiful experience - and it really made me feel affirmed and appreciated! The students there were so brilliant! And I felt so blessed and grateful being able to be my full self - writer, scholar, teacher, activist, and poet. This experience made my year! 

SOCA Banquet, Oberlin College, 8 December 2012

***

Activate + Manifest = Transformation

Meditating on conscious vibration - time to activate and manifest our intentions and stay rooted in radical self care - as we prepare and open ourselves for the coming changes and shifts with the end of this dynamic year.

wishing everyone peace & love for the holidays,
Angelique

Turbulence

"Disgust at the obscenity, compounded with guilt: it is within our power to bring the suffering to an end and allow the Samidin to enjoy the lives of peace and dignity that they deserve." 

- Noam Chomsky on his visit to the Gaza Strip, October 25-30, 2012.

“The Palestinian people want to be free of the occupation”

- Award-winning Israeli journalist Gideon Levy

I wrote a prayer for Palestine on the third day of the recent horrific and unspeakable attacks. Reflecting on the long years of occupation and war, I was compelled by spirit to speak out and use my words and knowledge to share and search for deeper understanding. 

To the people of Palestine

Unrecognized, Occupied and Terrorized

the civilians, the children, the workers, the parents, 

the journalists, the artists, the peacemakers, the healers, 

the freedom fighters,

I sit here in the privilege of never having lived in the fear of bombs and rockets

splintering humanity and community.

I sit here with a pain from my chest

to my heart and stomach

worried with helplessness

of what can I do…

except expand my own awareness

and those of my friends, family, students, online community.

I sit in the stark reality of being an activist far from these front lines 

of the heaviest, most intense battles of our time, extending beyond this time

so far back... but these histories and conflicts still rage beneath and through us.

Sure I have been on the frontlines of other battles – poverty, abuse, lack, despair, healing work in the face of grave suffering – I have worked and lived and survived front lines…  but none like this…  no war… no battles with rockets under terror colonization.

I sit with my pen wanting to craft words, carve an urgent response

calling for peace and praying for change

praying for the children and future of Palestine

praying for a sense of humanity and dignity for a people

being crushed yet and still fighting to live

in the face of our collective blindness and willful ignorance.

I remember June Jordan’s words from the film A Place of Rage –

What are we prepared to do for the people of Palestine?

How her words still resonate 20 years later...

Where is our collective rage?

Prayers and meditations today and everyday for peace and dignity for the people of Palestine. Our humanity depends on how we discuss and respond to this crisis. Some of us may feel unaffected and far away, but we do not live in a vacuum - we affect and are affected - and if one lives in the United States and pays taxes, then we are implicated. And we do have a voice - keep ourselves informed, speak from a place of love, and let us all "think peace and believe in change."

Noam Chomsky said the following about what gives him hope in Gaza after his visit: "people’s resilience. They just don’t give up. Under the worst conditions, horrendous conditions, people still, you know, fight for their rights and don’t just succumb. And, you know, it’s a lesson for people from the West. I mean, you know, we talk about repression, but, you know, undetectable by comparison with what most people in the world face. And if they can struggle on under really harsh and brutal conditions, tells us we ought to be doing a lot more."

Yesterday the United Nations voted overwhelmingly in favor of recognizing the statehood of Palestine. Perhaps this is our collective global first step in doing something.

I continue to trust in the future and that change (the great cosmic shift of our time) is surely coming... and that we can and must create change even with and through the most difficulty of situations and the hardest of addictions. But we are reflections of each other. Bound to histories that don't make sense... and to the present of tumbling into an abyss of climate change, continued wars and occupations, troubled conflicts, control over minds and bodies, mass consumption, excessive greed, extreme poverty, too much extraction, too much violence at greater and greater costs to our bodies and our planet. 

We have little to spare and too much work to do. The time is now to think beyond ourselves and rage more. Change is coming. Resist. Rethink. Rework. Remember. Rememory. Reclaim. Rebuild. Rage Power.

31st October 2012 * reflections at midnight *

Peace and blessings on this last day of October, the day we call halloween or samhain... this is the night that can bring us closer to the spirit world should we so choose... this is the night that reminds us of our connections to the after life, if we want/can see them... This day has been one of my favorite holidays since I was a child growing up in the Bahamas - enjoying the very idea of being able to be anyone and dress up and play...  to escape and become something else. Since my early 20s, it has marked a beginning for me - the day I take stock of self, change, transformation, and spiritual growth.

This year is a tough one... it feels surreal to write on this day just days after the massive superstorm sandy has devastated so many places and people - starting as a strong and strange hurricane last week and moving slowly across the Caribbean - Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Jamaica, and the Bahamas. And then up the eastern coast of the United States to grow into what scientists have called the "perfect storm" of a jet stream winter low pulled into a hurricane tropical storm low pressure. We are without a doubt experiencing the drastic effects of climate change because of our relentless use/abuse of fossil fuels. These extreme weather patterns are telling us something. It is time to end the silence and take responsibility for our planet. The time is now to demand the end of silence about climate change and the unnatural disasters happening across the planet. There are too many silences and cover ups. There is too much fear. 

I sit and mediate on this eve and focus my energies on what I can do to hold our leaders, our governments, our communities, and ourselves accountable. How can we create change? How can we build better with each other and with the planet? How can we re-make our relationships with the earth? How will we start over? What will we tell our children and future generations when they ask what happened to the earth, to our communities, to us? How can we use the energies of 2012 - planetary shifts in consciousness - and the power of this day, this time of transformation, to enact, envision, and create the changes we see and imagine? What will you do tomorrow and the next day? What will I do? And what can we do together? 

with peace, love & conscious wibes 

Cosmic Warrior Blessings

I've been on a serious hiatus from sharing on conscious vibration. The summer was super intense - filled with travel and journeys for work, for spirit, for family, for healing. I spent lots of time at home in Nassau (Bahamas), and it was really beautiful and necessary. I also went to Guadaloupe for the Caribbean Studies Association conference, to Washington D.C. for my annual writers and artists collective S.P.A.C.E. writing retreat, and also to Detroit for the Allied Media Conference and a work retreat for curriculum building with the Hurricane Season team. Detroit was powerful and ushered in some major changes for me - cutting my locs and letting go of so much...  still processing all of that... yet and still...  My 36th year started with me knowing that it was time to let go, and it was in Detroit that I made the decision, with the help of my chosen family sistren goddesses and especially my fellow Cosmic Warrior Naima - we cut it off! What a week!  

And then I spent the rest of summer from early July to mid August at home. I feel so grateful and blessed for the time, the journeys, the learning, the sharing, the space to write and grow... and the quality time with my loved ones. Spending time at home was really affirming, rejuvenating, and healing - I soaked in the sunshine and saltwater, exfoliated in the sand, played with my nieces, spent much needed time with my family and friends, and really relaxed. There is much more to share...  But for now, I'm sharing just a taste of my many summer blessings -- some mini-reflections and successes during my dragon '12 summer. 

So two major things I'm thrilled to share that I finished this summer: 

1) my "Saltwater Healing: Myth-Memoir" literary artwork piece is being published as a chapbook with Poinciana Press and editor Sonia Farmer (hopefully by December 2012). And I also worked on the art piece some more and moved it to The Lignum Vitae Foundation on Bay Street, Downtown Nassau - where it will be featured for a while.

2) and I finished my scholarly book Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora and Sexuality in Caribbean Literature and Culture - and successfully found an academic publisher! I will be working on revisions for the next year or so - and the book should be out in 2014. I'm thrilled to have finished and be in the process of finishing these two major projects that reflect my work as a writer-activist-poet-scholar-community worker-teacher - and more specifically the two aspects of my writing life - creative work and academic work - all coming to being and fruition in this dynamic, vibrant, yet challenging year.  

I've been back stateside since mid-August - in the throws of teaching, writing, and deadlines. I got really sick my first two weeks back, and so I had to establish new rituals of self-care and healing, as I embrace more fully the solitude where I live and work. And so it may be a while before I get back to my monthly intent of sharing on the blog. I hope to get back to this public space of sharing soon, but I'm not sure when or how it will look. I have embarked on a journey of creative recovery as a full mind-body-spirit-emotional healing. And so there is much work to do, while also staying present and focused on my day to day and the work and grind of teaching and writing. 

It's now Fall time, and in the northeast the leaves are starting to change into the most beautiful colors of red, brown, orange and everything in between. I am enjoying these moments of transition that reflect spirits of change, the urgency to prepare for what lies ahead, and being open to where the universe guides me. Celebrating the harvest full moon in Aries last night with meditation and setting intentions, I focused on manifesting productivity, abundance, healing light, and completion. This full moon brings together the energies of Aries and its opposite Libra - or the "me" and the "we" - reflecting both the Warrior and the Goddess within - seeking balance between being selfish and self-less. Thinking about my own struggle with this made my full moon meditation even more striking. I celebrate my warrior self and all she has carried me through even as I embrace and move closer to my spirit calling. 

And so wanna share one of my poems - just published in the new WomanSpeak journal - issue 6 (it's a beautiful collection - get your copy through Lulu Press). 

Warrior

Angelique V. Nixon

I remember her saying that she wanted to paint

a portrait of my stretch marks

these stretch marks tell the story of long days

and longer nights

I remember the revelation of her

breath on my skin

as she mapped out her portrait

tracing each line with her tongue

we inhaled and exhaled as our bodies

came together in synergy

after, she painted each line, of my story

with reddish brown charcoal and fingers

blending and weaving, slow and high pitched moans

and the stories in between

Cover Art by Chantel E. Y. Bethel