Hello Beautiful Creature,
This is the word nest for Niema Lightseed (she/her), poet, theorist, and teacher. Niema belongs to the soil of art. To the tall trees and still-wild rivers, and the relationship between touch, movement, creativity, and wellbeing. To the brilliance of Afrofuturist ancestors and to the dreams of a liberated, imaginative, and interconnected tomorrow. Niema is a Black, fat, queer, neurodivergent, cis-woman living with multiple sclerosis. She was born in the lands of the Neshnabé people in what is now called Chicago, Illinois. Since 2013 Niema has been a grateful guest in the lands of the Chinook, Multnomah, and Kalapuya people in so-called Portland, Oregon. Tucked in a corner where city meets forest, teasing out birdsong from machinery noise, striking the dragon heartstring forge to distill necessary nectar and metaphoric medicine from the sweet and bitter fruits of this life.
A healing artist since 2004, Niema offers poetry, paintings, classes, ceremonies, bodywork, and experiences that blend those mediums with an abiding intention to inspire marrow-gazing and the memory of interdependence. Niema is a lifelong student of liberation in an ever-deepening process of learning how to transform internalized white supremacist heteropatriarchal oppression, dismantle capitalism, and serve our collective evolution towards a restored and regenerative world, guided by creativity and radical imagination.
Why “The Body Poetic?”
These writings spring from a quest for the interstitial, the space between, the dark matter that surrounds and connects everything. In my internal practice studies as somatic cultivator and experiments as an educator I keep being drawn back to the body as living code, a holographic crystal that both connects to and gives us a frame for experiencing all the mysteries of the universe.
I have delighted in the magic of words for as long as I have wielded them, coming to understand that we are are sentenced to the spells we cast. While the idea of rightness is an illusion, much can be made write if we practice careful spellings. The Body Poetic is a nexus, a crossroads, a basket to hold and forum to express these varied yet threaded understandings: that bodies are wise and sacred teachers, that humans are the creative limbs of nature, that what cannot be explained in 10,000 words can be transmitted in a carefully crafted poem or a stroke of color on canvas, that art-making is both humanity’s purpose and a path to sanity and wholeness.
TBP encompasses several art mediums and teaching methodologies. This newsletter will share pieces related to liberation praxis, the creative process, understanding autoimmunity through an animist lens, interspecies communication, the brilliance of neurodivergence, and tools for healthy internal and interpersonal change. Some of the pieces will be drawn from my books The Wild Rebirth of Living Language, and Medicinal Poetry: Writing As A Healing Art; some poems will come from my archives, and many posts will be fresh pieces crafted with emergent understanding. The posts include theory, essay, poetry, ontology, and narrative, with invitations to be led to your own wisdom through what is asked and provoked here.
Become a node
Sporulation - the spiraling expansion of mycelial networks, how forest floors grow. We are fed by life, and in that communion joined again and always to all that lives.
Come sit under this vast canopy with me - there’s a spot for you on this mossy root (subscribe). The petals and leaves and berries will fall each weekly, free for all. If you feel moved to nourish and encourage me, you can share the posts by forwarding them to people you think might resonate with the work, or become a paid subscriber and receive additional practice-focused weekly newsletters that include writing prompts, somatic and creative cultivation exercises, ritual ideas, and classes.
“Wolfsong” 2018 Acrylic on Canvas 36”x36”
Thank you for visiting this nook. May you be inspired
photos by Sophia Wright Emigh
