The story depends upon every one of us to come into being. It needs us all, needs our remembering, understanding, and creating what we have heard together to keep on coming into being. The story of a people. Of us, peoples.”

—Trinh T. Minh-ha, Grandma’s Story

A Brief History

In 2020, I began a letter-writing practice to my ancestors. I had suddenly moved back to my childhood home and the land where my people have been for centuries. These letters helped me accept that I had come home, and eventually, I realized I had always been returning. I needed to remember them to accept myself and my life.

In 2021, I began to offer international workshops based on this practice. First, I called it “Poetry & Ancestry Workshop”. Then it was “SOUL: An Ancestor Workshop”. Now, my baby has grown into “Letters from Before: Poetry, Ancestry, & the Internal Field”. Based in memory and letter writing, I feel "Letters from Before: Poetry, Ancestry, & the Internal Field” is appropriate and can hold all that this space carries.

Participants arrive believing they need inspiration. They leave having experienced a repeatable process for generating vivid, emotionally resonant writing from memory, even if they haven't written in years. Often, participants don’t realize they need this space until they are experiencing it.

If you're looking for a writing workshop that helps people write with surprising depth and generosity, here's exactly how I lead it.

Step One

As participant-writers arrive, I offer “Peace”, “Welcome”, and “Thank you for being here”, encouraging people to get a cup of water that they don’t need to drink. I ask people to place the water somewhere near them. If someone cannot access water, that is okay. I allow the Welcome to deepen by prioritizing Care:

“Do what you need to take care of yourself while logged on (if virtual). If you need to black out your screen, do so. If you need to walk away, eat a snack, leave, please do so (if in-person).”

I reflect on Care as a practice for myself and others, reminding us to be kind, not nice, as we co-create this space together.

While this is a writing workshop, everyone writes differently. Some people may want to record themselves speaking, others may type, and some will write longhand. Longhand writing is encouraged for the prompts but not required. All ways are welcome. I offer a brief overview of what is to come: poems, intentional breathing, memory work to access internal heritage, writing prompts, and group reflection.

Step Two

Alongside participation in writing workshops and my MFA experience, reading books across genres has been a great teacher for me. There are four poems I love to read during this workshop. I’ve included the links and audio of me reading each poem below:

“My Mama moved among the days” by Lucille Clifton

“I Was Once A Child” by Victoria Chang

“Have You Prayed?” by Li-Young Lee

“The Idea of Ancestry” by Etheridge Knight

I also share other poets that explore memory, lineage, ancestry, and land. I encourage participants to share others that they know of as well. The names begin to fill the room: Natalie Diaz, Layli Long Soldier, Jericho Brown… I am so grateful we never run out of names.

Step Three

Now, we make a space for remembering.

I encourage participant-writers to dim or close their eyes. If it feels safer, I encourage them to find a place to focus their eyes. I lead a breathing exercise similar to the one recorded here. As a licensed social worker and former therapist, I am trauma-informed and lead this process with great care and attention.

I’ve included the breathing exercise below:

• Breathe into your stomach deeply. Hold the breath for 4 seconds. Release the breath slowly. Hold for 4 seconds. Breathe in again and repeat 4 times.

• As you breathe deeply, bring to mind the land around where you grew up, including the ground, dirt, cement, brick, sand, water, rivers, oceans, lakes, ponds, creeks, trees, mountains, deserts, prairies. Study what comes to mind.

• As you breathe deeply, bring to mind a real or imagined ancestor that is important to you. This can be a familial person or a literary figure, a chosen family member, etc. Someone who has passed on from this realm. Bring their face to mind. Study their face. Breathe. Be with them. Look at their hands if you can. Study them. There is nothing to do. Just be with them. It’s okay if nothing comes to mind. Be there, too. When you are done, thank them for joining you and let them know you will visit again soon.

• As you breathe deeply, bring to mind an object that is important to you and this ancestor. Anything. It could be very small or something you can set down on a table. Bring to mind an object that is important to you and the ancestor you were with. Continue to breathe deeply.

• Return to your normal way of breathing. Gently open your eyes. Grab your pencil or pen and paper, your computer, or your recording device. We are going to write.

Step Four

I talk about freewriting and automatic writing, encouraging participants to write to the following prompt without editing. If they have nothing to write, write that down too. In the prompt below, the Ancestor they are writing to is whoever appeared in the memory exercise. If no one appeared, they can choose a real, imagined, or literary ancestor. I set a timer for 7-9 minutes and tell them “go”.

After 7-9 minutes, I encourage participant-writers to stretch their fingers, hands, arms, or to stand. Whatever their bodies can do, I encourage them to do it. I inform them that we have one more writing prompt. This prompt will last one minute less than the first, so it is for 6-8 minutes. The Ancestor they wrote will now write back. This is where participant-writers express excitement and curiosity. I encourage the same freewriting or automatic writing. The goal is for the writer to get out of the way.

Once time is up, I express the importance of closing the container we have created through somatic movement.

Here’s what we do together:

• Somatic Shaking

• Grounding Exercise

  • Identify 5 things you can see (e.g., a specific object, a lamp, the sky)

  • Identify 4 things you can touch or feel (e.g., the texture of your shirt, the ground under your feet, a table)

  • Identify 3 things you can hear (e.g., traffic, humming of an appliance, wind)

  • Identify 2 things you can smell (e.g., coffee, soap, a faint scent in the air)

  • Identify 1 thing you can taste (e.g., taking a sip of water, toothpaste, or the inside of your mouth)

• Somatic Hug

Step Five

For interested groups, I share about why I use the epistolary form, or letter writing, in this exercise and why I found it helpful.

• I can explore and create closeness or intimacy with ancestors who’ve transitioned, their objects, and their stories.

• I love a strong “I” in poems. This form:

  • helps develop multiple voices within a larger narrative chorus,

  • can be deeply transformative when working with documents that have information gaps, found objects, and for encouraging imagination,

  • and it provides a kind of freedom to create personas, express love, ache, longing, and social critique, and to do so through many perspectives. If using fictional characters in a novel or short story, letters can help the writer consider: What would your character have to tell you?

Critical fabulation is “a methodology combining archival research, critical theory, and narrative storytelling to redress the silence of enslaved people in historical records.”

—Saidiya Hartman, “Venus in Two Acts”

Through this lens, I was able to excavate lines for poems and make meaning from a history I could not read about.

Step Six

I invite participant-writers to reflect aloud about their experience. Participant-writers read excerpts of what they wrote. Together, we make a shared reading list. I encourage participants to hide what they wrote from themselves for three weeks and to set a calendar reminder to return to it, circling what stands out. If they choose to, they can make something from those lines.

Host This Workshop

I’ve led “Letters from Before” as an in-person and virtual workshop with 10 organizations and universities and hundreds of people from all walks of life, including individuals who were adopted or taken from their family of origin. I’d love to bring this workshop to your community if it is aligned.

I can offer it in person or on Zoom as a 90-minute session. If you’re curious whether it’s a fit for your organization, reply to this post or contact me at mdekine@gmail.com.

Interested in bringing this workshop to you? Learn more here.

Some Participant Feedback:

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Book A Workshop

I have four new poems forthcoming in three journals and magazines this year, and while they’re still under first-publication agreements, I’ve been reflecting on the worlds that made them possible.

These poems were shaped by questions around ancestry, Southern Black spiritual traditions, queerness, memory, protection, nature, and the ways we survive what history tried to narrow inside us.

A few books that deeply influenced this season of writing:

— Ours by Phillip B. Williams
— loveconjure/blues by sharon bridgforth
— Liberation and the Cosmos by Barbara Ann Holmes
— The Way of the Mystics by Howard Thurman
— Let the Dead In by saidi agostini

I keep noticing hawks lately, especially young ones in flight. I don’t fully know what to make of that yet, but they’ve entered the poems, too.

I’ve also been revisiting memories from childhood, including the loss of a friend when I was very young, and thinking about the images the mind creates to help us survive grief, fear, and becoming.

At the center of my current work is a growing belief that memory, lineage, spirituality, and imagination are always speaking to one another.

For those wanting to stay close to the unfolding work, I’ve been sharing drafts, reflections, and conversations over on Patreon.

Subscribe to Patreon

I’m currently building toward the next manuscript. I am about 60 pages in while continuing to offer a lineage and ancestry-based writing workshop called Letters from Before: Poetry, Ancestry, & the Internal Field.

On Patreon this week, I shared:
• writing fragments from the forthcoming poems
• journal reflections and reading notes
• ancestry-based writing prompts
• a guided visualization excerpt from Letters from Before
• thoughts on protection, memory, and spiritual inheritance in the poems

If you want deeper access to the creative process, drafts, workshop material, and the evolving manuscript, I’d love for you to join me there.

Enter the Studio on Patreon

I have immense gratitude for those reading alongside me. I am grateful for anyone reading everywhere and in all the places. On Saturday, The Long Reading will gather for one hour to read and discuss Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology edited by Michael Walsh. Don’t worry! If you cannot make it, there are more opportunities to discuss other books all year.

Thank you for being here.

The Book List

Until soon,
Marlanda

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