Speaker Maria Mar presents her Poetry Botanica

Speaker Maria Mar

Poetry as Rites of Passage

Poetry

Storytelling

Visual Arts

Music

Dance

Crafts & Books

Puerto Ricans dance La Bomba, an Afro-Puerto Rican traditional dance. The drums are vibrating. The singer is reciting poetry, singing, improvising and documenting what has happened in the community with her rhythmic words. A person from the community enters the circle. Immediately the seguidor, one of the drums, follows her movement. This is an empowering experience. The person expresses her feelings, her personality, her opinion, through movements that are heard and reflected by the drum. Everyone applauds without judgment. Elders and children, everyone can dance. Most people know how to play the drums, dance and sing. The experience builds community, heals, renews and empowers the individual. In that same tradition, I have created the Poetry Botánica."

Maria Mar

The Dream Alchemist

Take a Guided Tour through the Poetry Botanica!

The Poetry Botánica

A visual, interactive and exciting experience

of the power of poetry

	Literacy made fun.
	Rites of passage for women and their families.
	Latinos and multi-cultural audiences.

In the Poetry Botánica Maria Mar takes the experience of metaphors to its most powerful, compelling level. The Poetry Botánica is a vibrant experience of poetry and of all art as Rites of Passage.

A botánica in the Latino Barrios of the USA is a phenomenon that is almost extinct now. A botánica houses the spiritual syncretism of the USA Latinos, bringing together a true free-for-all of spiritual, religious, herbal, medicinal and crafted products and remedies. In a botánica African rituals, Native wisdom, Asian symbolism, local herbology and European traditions dance happily hand in hand.

Maria Mar has rescued the phenomena of the botánica as a living, three-dimensional metaphor of the power of art to heal the body and the soul, to initiate personal and social transformation, and to expand the imagination and empower the human being to express her or his vision and thus, transform the world.

The Poetry Botánica offers your audience poetry, stories, music, images and interactive experiences that are presented as Healing Metaphors, a specialty of the Poetry Botánica and its "owner," poet, artist and shaman Maria Mar.

Maria Mar's ever-growing, often improvised and customized poem of The Poetry Botánica is a metaphorical rendition tantamount to Louise Hay's best-selling books made visual, literary and performing arts.

The Poetry Botánica returns to poetry ~and to art in general~ its authentic role as Rites of Passage and its vital connection to the people.

The healing, transformational and spiritual function of art is still practiced in Latin America, the Native cultures and many cultures in the world that have not succumb to the western perception of art as a product to consume passively. Art is in its original expression a gathering where the community raises "power" to heal and solve their problems, as well as to connect to the natural world and express themselves. They do this using dance, poetry, drumming, music and other creative expressions through which they each transcend their limitations. This is the space Maria Mar opens in The Poetry Botánica.

In every good poem, there are metaphors that, like psychic keys, unlock the mysteries of your soul and serve as a mirror to see yourself anew.

Maria Mar

The Dream Alchemist

Available in Three Options:

	Poetry recital. Maria delivers the Poetry Botánica poems with music and interacts with the audience, giving those who ask for a "consultation" a healing metaphor to help with their problem. (60 to 90 minutes)
	Full performance. Maria delivers the Poetry Botánica poems with a Bomba music, song and dance group and several other artists. (60 to 90 minutes, with participation. Visual projections add the botánica environment to the performance. Tables with the artists' products are set. Time before and after performance should be added for people to shop in the Poetry Botánica.) (Open mike or participatory dance closing: add 20-30 minutes).
	Full multi-media art installation. This version includes the full performance PLUS a touring Art Installation that transforms a gallery or other space into a huge reproduction of a traditional botánica, with books, CDs and other "remedies" being sold in the stands. Local artists can be invited to sell their stuff in presentations pre-arranged one year ahead. (Requires pre-set and strike of the installation. Best left on display for at least three days, with cycles of events presented during the exhibition. Available from Spring 2009 onwards.)

Audiences:

English version: General English-speaking audiences

Spanish version: General Spanish-speaking audiences

Bilingual version: General Latinos and multi-cultural audiences.

Time and presenters:

60-120 minutes, depending on version.

2-13 performers, artists and technicians, depending on version.

Requirements:

Sound equipment

Folding tables

Image projection equipment, depending on version.

Educational Material:

Sold in the poetry Botánica:

Books

CDs

Art Posters

Crafts from visiting and/or local artists

Poetry "Potions" (Poetry in a bottle)

Botánica "Amulets" (Poetry mementos)

Available in English,
Spanish or Bilingual.

Life speaks in metaphors.

Learn the language.

The Poetry Botánica

Number 1

Come in. Don't be shy.

There is nothing to fear.

Everything here is blessed

by the faith of the people.

Aquí todo estí bendito

por la fé de este pueblo.

Entren. No tengan miedo.

Todo lo que hay aquí es bueno.

Welcome to the Poetry Botánica

where the Law of Attraction

rides on a banana

and dances wearing a bandana

to quicken your dream

en la mañana.

Aquí te preparamos amuletos

que te propelen a tus sueños

que te recuerdan tus poderes

y te despojan de tus miedos.

Here you face your hidden demons

with the help of the Curandera

and sing away your Shadow voices

drinking metaphors, dancing Plenas.

Aquí la cura es la mas pura:

tu percepción, tu imaginación,

tu fe, tu alegría, tu corazón.

Here we pour true life stories

down your ears into your Soul.

Open the doors of your consciousness

to trigger healing from the core.

Here you are not a disease.

A number.

A case.

A faceless symptom.

Here you are a child of light.

A drop of the Divine Ocean.

Seeking its way back to perfection.

Here you are a powerful healer

of your own painful manifestation.

Here you don't seek others

to take away your own creation,

but you listen to the cry

of your body and your soul

in your condition

and transmute your wound

into your Medicine,

your self-destruction into

self-creation.

Excerpt from The Poetry Botánica

Number 1

By Maria Mar