Tender Possibilities on July 20
JULY 20 2025 – DEVOTION | GUILD INN PARK
Click here for more details and to sign up!
‘Unless we can restore poetry to somewhere in the center of our universe, we are going to lose a lot of stars, a lot constellations, a lot of light.’ — Kamau Brathwaite
For our upcoming session this month, we will explore devotion as attunement, as orientation, as return. A form of presence that moves through the spiritual, the political, and the intimate. Devotion shaped not only by longing and love, but by persistence and the willingness to remain in relation with what transforms us. To witness, and to offer something of ourselves in response.
Participants are invited to consider how devotion lives in the body and moves through the gestures of poetic language. Selected texts will guide our reflections as we weave poetry and movement, exploring how devotion can be expressed, felt, and reimagined through both ancestral and contemporary forms.
This session includes a performance by @windintheleavescollective, with artistic director @charlesc.smith and @ragno.44me
charles c. smith is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited twelve books and two chapbooks. He is currently working on his next book of poetry entitled Specimens which unearths the connections between western medical science and Black bodies. charles studied poetry and drama with William Packard at New York University and Herbert Berghof Studios, drama at the Frank Silvera’s Writers’ Workshop in Harlem.
Ranganathan Rajan (He/Him) is originally from India and is currently based in Tkaronto. He is a performer and choreographer in contemporary dance, working innately with ideas of stress, resilience, and strength in the body through object work, movement, and mixed media. Ranganathan graduated from the Professional Training Program at Dance Arts Institute Canada (2025) and has completed a Diploma in Movement Art and Mixed Media from Attakkalari Center of Movement Arts in Bangalore, India (2021).