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Imagine an entire school – students, teachers, and administrators – taking time each morning to turn inward together, and listen to a brief mindfulness prompt and world-class music.
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We love collaborating with local, national and international community partners and peoples in a variety of arts programming and mindfulness practices.
We are a small yet mighty team, dedicated to making a big difference with what we have. Your support means the world to us.
The Well, a Cincinnati-based nonprofit, marks the 5th anniversary of Mindful Poetry Moments (MPM), bringing poetry and meditation to schools, individuals, and social service organizations for free during April for National Poetry Month. Mindful Poetry Moments was incubated with the national On Being Project in 2019.
Each week in April, participants of all ages receive recordings of creative listening prompts and poems curated around this year’s theme of Ways of Loving, Ways of Giving — poems that center around languages of love and the quiet sacrifices and small gestures done for one another.
This year’s curator is Haleh Liza Gafori. Gafori is a translator, vocalist, composer, poet, and educator. Her latest collection, GOLD (New York Review Books Classics/Penguin Random House, 2022), features translations of poetry by Rumi, the 13th-century sage and mystic.
Haleh has expressed excitement in selecting the poems for this year’s Mindful Poetry Moments, allowing her to share her own love of poetry and its ability to connect us with others. “Poetry invites us to receive, re-feel, relive moments from our own lives…[and] to inhale moments from other people’s lives: to discover things we didn’t even know were there,” she stated in The Well’s announcement video for the Mindful Poetry Moments 2024 curator.
Selections for this year’s Mindful Poetry Moments include poems by Adrienne Rich, Robert Hayden, Danusha Laméris, and Samyak Shertok, with each week including 5 days of audio resources and worksheets that combine mindful prompts to write poetry in response to and meaning-making questions for students and individuals to contemplate. All of this year’s Mindful Poetry Moments content is available for free.
In addition to the Mindful Poetry Moments content, The Well will host weekly virtual gatherings for poets and poetry lovers of all ages to listen, contemplate, and respond in writing to each featured poem. Each free virtual gathering, hosted from 3:00 to 4:00pm every Wednesday throughout April, has a simple format for regular Mindful Poetry Moments participants and newcomers to enjoy. Each meeting begins with a meditation led by a mindfulness facilitator, then a reading of a poem selected by this year’s curator, after which a poetry facilitator provides a prompt for participants to respond, write to, and then share with the group.
The poems generated during these sessions can then be submitted for publication in The Well’s Mindful Poetry Moments anthology. For those unable to attend these gatherings but still want to write, The Well also posts each session on YouTube to ensure everyone has access to the meditation and prompt. The Well will also be hosting a virtual writing workshop for those who want a space to experiment with and edit their work before submitting to the publication.
After all the poetry is collected, The Well will host a book launch and poetry reading of the 5th anthology in its Camp Washington headquarters, where participants will be able to read their newly-published poetry to one another and to virtual participants.
Poetry invites us to receive, re-feel, relive moments from our own lives....to inhale moments from other people’s lives: to discover things we didn’t even know were there.
Haleh Liza Gafori, Mindful Poetry Moments 2024 Curator
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Patrick Raneses
Content & Event Coordinator, The Well
patrick@thewell.world
513-748-9694
For Access to Media Folder, please contact us.
Mindful Poetry Moments 2024 collage by Julia O. Bianco
Haleh Liza Gafori, translator, vocalist, composer, poet, and educator serving as curator for MPM 2024
Poetry lovers of all ages brought together on Zoom during a Mindful Poetry Moments Virtual Gathering
April 10th Gathering
Mindfulness Facilitator:
Poetry Facilitator:
April 17th Gathering
Mindfulness Facilitator:
Poetry Facilitator:
April 24th Gathering
Mindfulness Facilitator:
Poetry Facilitator:
Providing programs, practices and connection at the intersection of arts and wellness.
In different forms, The Well programs have been nourishing the Greater Cincinnati community since 2005. In 2019 we became the non-profit, A Mindful Moment. A Mindful Moment's mission is to improve the mental and emotional well-being, connectedness, and effectiveness of all citizens through arts integration, mindfulness, music, movement, and healing-centered practices.
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Our programs have been nourishing the community since 2005. In 2019, we became the non-profit, A Mindful Moment.
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We are a small yet mighty team, dedicated to making a big difference with what we have. Your support means the world to us.
