Where do you feel most like yourself? What parts of you have been nurtured, and what parts have learned to hide, adapt, or become smaller in order to belong?
Join poet, author, filmmaker, and educator Amber Allen-Peirson for a reflective poetry workshop exploring identity, belonging, and the places, both within ourselves and in the world around us, that allow us to bloom.
Drawing from the questions at the heart of her poetry collection The Unrooted Bloom, Amber will guide participants through writing prompts that invite them to explore their own lives: Where have I felt seen, safe, and loved? Where have I learned to adapt in order to belong? What have I inherited? What am I carrying that may no longer belong to me? And what conditions allow the most authentic parts of me to emerge?
In Amber’s work, poetry is not about finding the perfect words. It is a practice of clarity, a way of getting underneath the stories we have been told about ourselves and listening for the voice that exists beneath them.
No previous poetry or writing experience is necessary. Participants are invited to write honestly, reflect privately, and share only what they choose.
Where We Bloom asks us to imagine belonging not as fitting neatly into the spaces we are given, but as having enough room to unfold. Through poetry, we will explore what each of us needs to feel rooted in ourselves, and what becomes possible when we create those conditions for one another.
Because perhaps the question isn't simply, “Where do I belong?” but, “Where, and with whom, am I able to bloom?”
Amber Allen-Peirson is a Marin County-based writer, filmmaker, educator, and speaker whose work explores identity, belonging, race, communication, and the stories we inherit. She is the author of the poetry collection The Unrooted Bloom and co-director and subject of the feature documentary of the same name, premiering at the 49th Mill Valley Film Festival. Amber is also the creator of The Three Identities™, an educational framework examining how we understand ourselves, how others perceive us, and what we project onto one another. Through poetry, film, teaching, and facilitated conversation, she creates spaces for people to examine who they are, what they carry, and how we might better understand one another.