Hey Garden(ers).

Next Saturday is Valentine's Day, and the people are leaning into the Anti-V-Day feels! We wanted to share a few specially themed events coming up on the long weekend!

🎭 Places, theater nerds! At Do You Hear the Garden Sing? (Musical Theater Night) we watch musical theatre movies, pro-shots (and some slime tutorials) every other week. This is a bi-weekly space to nerd-out about musical theater, enjoy some tunes and even share some hateful takes ;) For our anti-Valentines day musical, we are watching The Last Five Years, a musical about a struggling actress and a successful writer’s failed marriage told from two perspectives. Come join the curtain call on Saturday February 14 at 5pm PST! RSVP!

💔Next Saturday, February 14th at 7pm PST, we will be bringing the internationally acclaimed tour Cupid Ain't @#$%!: An Anti-Valentine's Day Poetry Movement back to Garden! Part heartbreak, political rants, humor, bitter love poems and YOU, this year's event will be featuring poets T. S. Banks & Venus Kii Thomas, an open mic portion and a haiku slam. Hosted by J Mase III. Come ready to crown the Anti-Valentine's Day Haiku Slam Champion! RSVP here! Have BIPOC friends that would like to come through, but aren't members of Garden? Have them sign up for a Day Pass here! (Please sign up by 11:59pm PST Feb 13th.)

Artist Bios:

T. S. Banks (he/him) is a Black & QTDisabled, non-binary teaching artist, poet, and playwright from Madison, WI. He is the Founder of Loud ‘N UnChained Theater Co and LNU Publishing House, which is home to Black mad-Krip, neurodivergent, and chronically ill authors and teaching-artists. His work addresses visioning for Black Liberation, a critique of the medical system, radical consensual care + access, madness, QT Mad-Krip Liberation, disability justice, & abolition. T's chapbooks and sign-ups for his weekly care groups and poetry workshops can all be found at LnuTheaterCo.com. Follow him @LnuTheaterCo on IG.

Venus Kii Thomas (xe/she) is a queer Black trans writer, multidimensional freedom artist, sensualist, and alchemist, living in Piscataway and Susquehannock Territory, known as Baltimore, Maryland. Influenced and motivated by the avant-garde, Black queerness, and her Louisiana roots, she has spent the last 20 years cultivating her own creative world. Xyr poetry, music, and storytelling, among many mediums, explore the intersections of identity, memory, resistance, and liberation, offering a deeply personal yet universal vision of transformation.

⚧ Special Event: At 2-pm PST Monday February 16th, The Black Trans Prayer Book, (J Mase & Lady Dane) are hosting Healing Past Fascism (A Space for Trans People to Be Free). Designed for us to reset our nervous systems during these trying times while connecting with other Trans folks, this session is open to people across the Trans, Non-Binary & Gender Expansive spectrum and will incorporate meditation exercises, discussion and reflections on Transcentric political praxis. RSVP here!

Until next our avatars meet,

🪄Al , 🪻J Mase & 🪴Kwaku

PS: Have a one-time-event or a recurring event and need a place to host? Email us at info@meetatgarden.com!

Garden is a free 24/7 space, but it does cost money for us to maintain it on Gather.Town. If you'd like to donate to this work, consider throwing some money in the pot here. To send donations directly through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, email us!