Welcome to The KG Collective, I'm so glad you're here!
This is a place to gather- with authenticity and vulnerability- around the deep and tender topics of life, love & transcendence. A place for people with the shared values of personal growth, living from the heart and respect for all living beings to gather in symbiotic relationship (ie: community) toward the shared goals of personal transformation, integration and the evolution of personal and collective consciousness.
We believe in the power of cultivation... cultivation of the self, of our consciousness and of our community, through authenticity and true power from within. Just as in a garden where every choice made will define the expression of that ecosystem (and where what thrives is what is planted, watered and weeded), so too in everything we cultivate it is by discernment and intention that we vote for what is to become.
This is a space for the exploration of existential adventures- in both our internal and external worlds- through poetry, art and conversation. Like all of life, you could call it a call-and-response. I recognize that the initial “call” in this exchange is my art. You’ve found this community most likely through my writing, so it has presumably touched you in some (hopefully meaningful) way. I also recognize that as an artist, sending my work into the world is only half the equation. Art is simply “call”…but it is nothing without “response”. Art becomes meaningful when it is perceived. The ways and shapes of that meaning are as numerous and diverse as its audience.
More on this in the Welcome & Orientation section inside  :)
The life blood of any community is connection. It is this primal human need that drives us to relate. The expression of our engagement with others can manifest in a myriad of ways, whether it's a community softball league, a role playing game meetup, a p-patch where we dig in the soil next to our neighbors or a online community like this...it's the relationships that matter most. To that end, I've crafted this space to facilitate connection in a few different ways, some more free-form and group driven, others more structured and guided by me. I'll list a few here with more details given in the Welcome & Orientation section inside.Â
The KG Collective, namesake of this community, is the space where you will find my art. Though you may already have a good many of my poems in a book on the nightstand, the value of my real-estate here is two-fold. The first being that I can share a broader spectrum of art ranging from unpublished poems to videos or music (that would have been very tricky to publish in a book :). The second and most important reason I want to share my art here is you! To be more clear, the book is a one way vehicle. You can hear me…but I can't hear you. Whatever conversations might arise between your ears while reading my printed book would be hard pressed to find their way to me without a platform like this.Â
My first intent in creating this space was that I wanted to be free to build relationships with my readers. I wanted to afford deeper levels of engagement with my writing, and see what questions, conversations, breakthroughs and breakdowns may arise in your life as my words find new meaning in your story. In addition to my posts in this space and our written engagement in the thread, I will also host a live, virtual event each month to share my art and connect with the community in a way that allows us to see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices. This will most often be in the format of reading a handful of selected poems interspersed with community engagement.
The Poetic Collective is a more facilitated container which centers around the process and practice of writing poetry as a vehicle for metabolizing and sharing life experience…for finding our Truths and healing our hearts. This is a monthly cycle which will follow the same format each month, one prompt a week leading to a completed poem by the end of the month. The prompts will be dynamic (always changing) but in rotation (mixed, matched and repeated over time). The process will be- as all creativity is- new and unexpected every time.
At the end of each month there will be a virtual open mic where whoever wants can sign up and read their poem aloud to the group. In doing this, you will be finding the sovereignty in you creativity. There are few things more powerful in life than becoming the storyteller of your own narrative. Doing it in a notebook is powerful. Doing it in community can be life changing. Because Truth is a dance between creativity and objectivity…between us and God (for lack of a better word). Truth, like life, is a call-and-response. So much of what we call reality is simply a collective agreement on the experience we are choosing to create together. When you tell a story, your story, and that story becomes someone else’s story…of you…this collective, co-creative power of agreement is at work. And you are participating in the artistry of consciousness.
At the end of each year- if there is enough engagement in the Poetic Collective- I will curate a collection of poems written by you, the community, (from those for which I have permission to do so), and release as them in a printed book under my publishing company, Free Peanut Butter Press. Sound like fun!?
While the IDEA of unfettered connectivity and global community building- as facilitated by the digital age- is appealing in theory...in practice it's become a bit of a shit show. Let's just call a spade a spade. In the same way that we have somehow achieved an excess of food with a simultaneous deficiency of nutrition, mainstream social media accommodates a gluttony of social interaction with a coinciding dearth of the psycho-social and spiritual nutrients we're so starved of- namely safety and authenticity...and the types of interaction that can arise from a confluence of the two.
Authenticity is messy. FEELINGS are messy. Diversity is...messy. If you define authenticity as uninhibited, unfiltered expression of every impulsive thought and chaotic feeling you have then you’re in the wrong place. If you define respect as caretaking the feelings of others, sanitizing your emotions and swallowing your truth so that no one anywhere ever has to feel uncomfortable with your sovereignty…you’re in the wrong place. There are plenty of spaces online for vomiting unprocessed emotion from the ego-spasms of our unintegrated psyches all over unsuspecting souls…and there are plenty of places online to be woke, feign perfection and sand off every hard edge of your truth until there’s nothing left but the fluffy clouds and cotton candy of shallow and homogeneous social conformity. All living things find their thriving within the dynamic tension of diversity…preserved within the safety of sovereignty and respect (ie: all life thrives in a balanced state). I created this community because we live in a world where authenticity and respect have become polarized, split from one another…where each has become the collective shadow of the other. This community is a place for authenticity and respect. It’s a place to speak and to listen. A place to agree and to disagree.Â
It is not always easy, finding the middle way between two extremes, especially beneath all the noise and chaos of a world at war with itself. But even when it is not easy, it is still natural. It's a way of relating that- even if you've never fully experienced it- you can recognize in your bones as the way we were made to be...in healthy community. In symbiotic interdependence. Individuated AND unified. It is the 'and' which affords us a vital diversity, and it is harmonious diversity that defines healthy community. What this group offers at the surface is a place to meet people, share art and poetry, and to stay connected with my new offerings and events. Beneath the surface, it is so much more. Or at least it can be, if you will help me make it so.
I invite everyone here to help me tend the garden of this social ecosystem. This is a cultivated space, what we're growing here is authenticity, vulnerability, playfulness, curiosity and camaraderie. I invite you to become a thriving expression of the diverse flora we're growing in this permaculture garden of human connection!
 Click the Request to Join button in the header above to enter the community!Â
You are welcome here. đź’š