Meet Our Grantee-Partner: The Watering Hole
Mission: We are a southern-based vanguard who builds Harlem Renaissance-style spaces in the new contemporary South. Our core purpose is to cultivate and inspire kinship between poets of color from all spoken and written traditions, thus creating a tribe with a mutual focus of poetics and craft-building.
Candace G. Wiley and Monifa Lemons Jackson attended Cave Canem South Workshops in Columbia, South Carolina, in 2010 and 2011. Their experience as Cave Canem fellows inspired them to recreate a similar meaningful, safe, and growth-oriented writing community for Southern poets of color. In 2009, they started a Facebook Group named “The Watering Hole,” and in 2013, they held their first writing retreat on South Carolina’s Lake Marion. Their goals were affordability and accessibility for Southern poets since most writing workshops are held in New England or California. The positive response from the inaugural retreat’s 33 attendees led Wiley and Jackson to establish The Watering Hole (TWH) in 2014. After more than a decade, TWH continues to provide a unique opportunity for financially accessible, high-caliber poetry instruction for historically under-supported and under-represented writers.
TWH poets rehearsing their poetry
at the TWH Winter Retreat.
TWH considers itself a multiethnic, intergenerational, intersectional Tribe of poets. Fellows consist of poets from every level and genre, including beginners, slam poets, poetry PhDs, Gwendolyn Brooks scholars, Kendrick Lamar aficionados, and grade school students to retirees. TWH upholds the value of spoken and written poetic traditions in multiple forms and styles. Founders Wiley and Jackson come from backgrounds in academia and performance poetry, respectively, and use their experiences navigating the challenges faced by Black poets to create opportunities for poets of color to thrive.
In addition to annual poetry retreat workshops, TWH offers virtual courses designed to foster smarter readers, more impactful writers, and more widely published poets. Its poet-in-schools programs aim to increase awareness of the art form and inspire young writers. TWH is also finalizing a partnership with a local bookstore to provide in-person public readings and workshops.
“TWH is warm succotash over cornbread. Since attending TWH in 2020, I was able to secure my first publication and six more publications in one year—including an honorable mention for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize judged by Jericho Brown for Southern Humanities Review. I have built a poetry community, started an MFA, and attended several fellowships and workshops—all within 12 months! All because TWH took a chance on me, informing my work and advancing my future. Thank you TWH for seeing me and giving me a sacred home.”
—Ariana Francesca, TWH Fellow
Receiving a spring 2023 Equity in Verse grant from the Poetry Foundation enabled TWH to hire a part-time assistant to the executive director. This role is crucial, as TWH is led mostly by part-time contractors and volunteers. TWH aims to expand staff further to ensure it can continue serving Southern poets and poetry audiences.
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