Mago Academy is happy to announce the April Poetry Salon, a spinoff project from the April Salon, Poets Lead the Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality Movement.
Our presenting poets are Harriet Ann Ellenberger, Tamara Wyndham, Harita Meenee, Mary Saracino, and Sara Wright. Responding poets are Jsabél Bilqís and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang. Then, we will have an open floor time by inviting the audience participants to chime in with your insights, questions, or a poem to resonate with the voices of the featured poets.
The Poetry Salon marks continuation of “Nine Poets Speak” as part of the Tri-Annual She Rises Poetry Salons. “The Nine Poets” does NOT refer to the designated figures but refers to an open circle of the poets whose poetry works are aligned with the Goddess Feminist Activist Spirituality Movement, a specific thread that began as the She Rises trilogy. The number nine refers to the Nature’s Way patterned through the Ninefold Cosmic Music, the creative force of the Matriverse (Maternally perceived universe), which is represented as the Nine Mago Creatrix (based on Dr. Helen Hye-Sook Hwang’s research on Ceto-Magoism, the Whale-guided Way of Mago, the Creatrix).
Theme: Let the Power of Poems Transform Again and Ever
When: April 18 (Sat) Noon – 1:30 PM PT (90 min)
Moderator: Helen Hye-Sook Hwang
Presenting Poets: Harriet Ann Ellenberger, Tamara Wyndham, Harita Meenee, Mary Saracino, and Sara Wright
Responding Poets: Jsabél Bilqís, Noris Binet, and Helen Hye-Sook Hwang
Contents:
Presentations (each presents for about 10 min)
Respondences (each responds for 6 min)
Open Floor Time with the audience (15-20 min)
Presentation details are included at the end of this page.
Registration: Fee of $10 per salon recommended not mandatory or Donation (enter your own amount) with your answers to below questions (email it to: magoacademy@gmail.com):
Registration Questions:
- Your name (and affiliation)
- Email address
- What makes you interested in this Salon?
Featured Poets
Presenting Poets
Harriet Ellenberger
“The Ones You Love” by Harriet Ellenberger
Summary: I’ll read three short poems about different aspects of love. The message is that love is stronger than anything else.
Biography: Harriet Ann Ellenberger (aka Harriet Desmoines) was a co-founding editor of Sinister Wisdom, which is now in its fiftieth year of publishing. She has participated in many feminist projects since 1970. Her book, The Ones You Love: Poetry and Prose, 1968-2024, is available for free at akadesmoines@gmail.com. She lives in Hartland, New Brunswick, Canada.
Tamara Wyndham
“I submit to your glory, O great Goddess” by Tamara Wyndham
Summary: One long poem not more than 10 minutes. A hymn to the Goddess. Partly erotic with some explicit language. In my poem, the Goddess is presented as representing all that is good and beautiful, but also as highly demanding. She tests and demands sacrifice. The male servant of the Goddess submits to her tests and sacrifices to achieve erotic and spiritual ecstasy, and union with the Divine. The paradox of finding freedom within servitude. The poem ends with the Goddess “opening the doors” and freeing all the world.
Biography: Tamara Wyndham has been making art all her life, encouraged by her mother, an artist. Ms. Wyndham has been awarded artist residencies at the Henry Street Settlement, the Kate Millett Art Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, the Maříž Ceramic Workshop, Czech Republic, Fundación Valparaíso, Spain, and an artist’s fellowship from Earthwatch to work in Orce, Spain. She received a grant from the Jenni Crain Foundation. She has exhibited at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, the International Fusionism Museum, Gallery GAIA, Artfront Galleries, Grace Exhibition Space, and performed at ChaShaMa and Art in Odd Places.
Harita Meenee
“Merging with the Elements – A Cosmic Dance” by Harita Meenee
Summary: Each of the three poems (“Cosmic Dancers,” “The Sea’s Touch,” and “The Fire Within”) traces an intimate encounter with the Goddess through the elements of earth, water, and fire. The sensual becomes a gateway to the spiritual. Immersion in the sea brings ecstatic rebirth, while the rising inner fire ignites profound transformation. Ultimately, the planet itself appears as a living presence, journeying through the cosmos and inviting us into its eternal dance.
Biography: Harita Meenee is a Greek independent scholar of classical studies and women’s history, as well as an editor, translator, artist and activist. She has presented cultural television programs and lectured at universities in Greece and the United States. She is the author of five books and numerous articles and essays. One of her poems, “Africa,” has been set to music and is available on YouTube. Her anti-war poem “For the Fatherland” received an award from the Koukidaki blog. Her first poetry collection, Partner in Dream, is forthcoming in Greek in September 2026. Website: www.hmeenee.com
Mary Saracino
“The Power of Women’s Voices” by Mary Saracino
Summary: I will read poems from my new collection, Motherlines, that speak to the power of women’s voices in keeping with the Salon’s theme of Let the Power of Poems Transform Again and Ever.
Bio: Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet. Her book of poetry, Motherlines, was published by Pearlsong Press in 2026. She is the author of four novels: Heretics: A Love Story, The Singing of Swans, No Matter What, and Finding Grace, and the memoir, Voices of the Soft-bellied Warrior. She co-edited (with Mary Beth Moser) She Is Everywhere! Volume 3: An anthology of writings in womanist/feminist spirituality (iUniverse 2012), which earned the 2013 Enheduanna Award for Excellence in Women-Centered Literature from Sofia University.
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Sara Wright
“Nature and Woman (as daughter, mother, grandmother, teacher etc)” by Sara Wright
Summery: I write about my relationship with the natural world and how intimately it intersects with my own. Behind this personal relationship lies the reality that we are all connected human and non – human alike and my poems weave personal story into the whole.
Biography: I live in a little cabin in the woods with plants and a 32 year old collared free flying house dove who recently ended up on an NPR program highlighting a personal story about interspecies communication. I also have a four pound chihuahua who is eleven months old and the joy of my life. Dogs first, then all animals and plants have been my teachers and Coalie is teaching me how to live with her congenital liver disease. I am life- time naturalist, ecologist and ethologist (studies animals in the wild), and a dedicated eco-feminist writer who publishes nature stories, poems, feminist essays in different venues. I am also a former Jungian Analyst.
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Responding Poets
Jsabél Bilqís
Jsabél writes for women living deeply with the Goddess. From the spiraled lens of body, myth, symbol, and archetype; she stirs the cauldron where ecomythology meets theacentric psychology. Though credentialed across metaphysics, parapsychology, and thealogy, her work is most greatly informed by her relationship with MotherGod.
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Noris Binet
A native of the Dominican Republic, now living in Ajijic, Mexico, Noris is a visual artist, psycho/spiritual therapist, sociologist, author, and spiritual teacher. She facilitates groups in meditative self-inquiry to support self-realization. Her female root teacher for 25 years is Gangaji, based in Ashland, Oregon. Noris’ Dharma Poetry is a conduit through which she shares her insights and revelations. She has published her poems and essays in articles, journals, and anthologies, and has written sociologically themed columns for several U.S. newspapers. While living in Nashville, Tennessee, Binet created Womenon the Inner Journey Foundation, dedicated to providing a safe space for reclaiming the sacred feminine through art and holistic practices. Her book Women on the Inner Journey describes through word and image Black and White women healing racial wounds. Benet’s work can be viewed online at http://sonomawriters.blogspot.com or on her website at www.norisbinet.org.
Helen Hye-Sook Hwang
See below for Moderator
Moderator
Helen Hye-Sook Hwang Ph.D.
Dr. Hwang is a researcher, author, and advocate of Ceto-Magoism (the Whale-guided Way of the Creatrix) and has recently established the MA/PhD. program in Creatrix Studies. Having achieved an MA and Ph.D. in Religion with emphasis on Feminist Studies (Claremont Graduate University), Hwang studied an M.A. program at UCLA. Having founded The Mago Work, Hwang has recently launched the S/HE Conference and the S/HE Forum in 2024. She authored, co-edited, and published by Mago Books Reader: Toward Magoist Cetaceanism (2023), The Mago Way: Re-discovering Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia (2015), Mago Almanac: 13 Month 28 Day Calendar annually since 2018, and the Budoji Workbook series since 2020, Goddesses in Myth, History and Culture (2018), Celebrating Intercosmic Kinship of the Goddess (2023), the She Rises trilogy series (2015, 2016, and 2019), and Celebrating Seasons of the Goddess (2017).
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