Tonight, the first session of a new writing group gathers in my studio. In the quiet anticipation leading up to it, a question arose that gets to the very heart of the endeavor: “Is it possible to attend without presenting a poem?”
The easy answers are traps. A hard ‘no’ enforces a logic of production, penalizing vulnerability and undermining relational courage. A simple ‘yes’ risks creating a passive audience, splitting the room into producers and consumers. Neither serves a praxis of creative non-domination.
My answer is to trust the protocol. The structure holds.
A person who comes “empty-handed” still gets a turn to present. They can present what they brought: their silence, their fatigue from a week of work, their anxiety about writing, their simple, courageous act of showing up. These, too, are texts. The group’s task, then, is to attend to that—to witness that presence without demanding it be anything other than what it is.
This practice is also an experiment in structure. It is not a naive rejection of all hierarchy—a facilitator’s role is different from a participant’s. But it is a deep resistance to the pathologies of power, to the perverse incentives that turn spaces of potential connection into zero-sum games. It is an attempt to build a system where the only prerequisite is presence, and every presence is met with attention.
This is how we build a small shelter from a world that demands constant, performative output. It’s where we practice attending to what is, not just what is made.
A turn that holds.
A poem that is not written—but still arrives.
The door is open. The chairs are waiting.
return relation;Also, let silence have its say.
