Photograph by Francis Augusto
This collective poem, created by participants of The Gathering 2024 and curated by Evie Muir, serves as a manifesto for Radical Rest, an invocation to centre rest as an intentional practice.
Drawing inspiration from Evie’s debut book Radical Rest: Notes on Burnout, Healing and Hopeful Futures, the participants engaged with nature writing prompts and took part in a walkshop, an experimental and experiential space where they move through personal and collective relationships with rest. Through the process, the participants have co-created a manifesto rooted in Black Feminist, abolitionist and nature-allied principles, reclaiming rest as a radical, restorative act.
Photograph by Francis Augusto
A Black Feminist Manifesto for Radical Rest
A collective poem created at The Gathering and curated by Evie Muir
In a leafy enclave along the banks of the River Thames, Evie Muir held The Gathering community in an embodied nature writing walkshop. Through writing prompts and embodied invocations inspired by Evie’s debut book ‘Radical Rest: Notes on Burnout, Healing and Hopeful Futures’, together they built a Manifesto for Radical Rest. Rooted in Black Feminist, abolitionist and nature-allied principles we hope this manifesto serves as a collective tool which will support us to ground our artistic and activist practices in intentional rest.
Photo by Francis Augusto
In this moment we are the…
Interconnected, interwoven, still weaving
Waves.
Held by our ancestors.
Photograph by Francis Augusto
We are the stillness, the change, the branches that claw at the new day,
The running minds in unrested bodies,
Fully present,
We are presence.
In the here, now
We are the guardians of the soil,
The vibrations underfoot,
The compost, striving to be rich enough for radical futures to grow from,
We are the hope.
Navigating Landscapes which…
Are colonised, and cry for love.
Craving energy and connection,the wind screams like crashing waves,
And trees shed leaves like silent tears.
Landscapes which create boundaries to protect, not limit,
Yet continue to hum with life, twitching in response to our being,
Landscapes which hold space for empathy,
That call on us to bear witness and dance with the chimes of our souls,
For these lands are guardians too.
They ebb and flow,
They nurture.
They remind us that there are landscapes within ourselves,
And that to listen is to use all of our senses,
That to feel is our path towards liberation.
In this moment we plant seeds of…
Joy and justice,
Presence and playfulness,
Experimentation and ignition,
Hope, and heartfelt holding,
Courage and clarity, calm, care and compassion,
In this moment we seed renewal,
So our family and the not yet familiar,
Can experience timelessness and time travel.
A reimagining of time, a slowing of time, a crip time, for all.
Together, we call in…
A collective cry for justice, that brings forth the low rumblings of our earthly bellies,
Harnessing a deep knowledge and wisdom, that only the land can offer,
A liberatory force for freedom, that only the land can fuel,
A loving space for comfort, that only the land can hold,
A fiery fortitude, that only the land can nurture,
And a slowness and simplicity of the now, that only the land can gift,
To nurture radically restful futures.
