Sheree Mack’s practice manifests through poetry, storytelling, image and the unfolding histories of Black people. Sheree engages audiences around black women’s voices and bodies, Black feminism, ecology and memory . She facilitates national and international creative workshops and retreats in the landscape, encouraging and supporting women on their journey of remembrance back to their authentic selves. She is currently writing a mixed-genre memoir around a Black woman's body with/in Nature. She’s a podcast host of the newly launched podcast, The Earth Sea Love Podcast, which explores women of colour and their relationship with the natural world.

In this episode, we talked about:

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• Sheree describes being raised by a strict West Indian father who believed that “children should be seen and not heard” and gave her paper and pencils to keep herself busy

• Art wasn’t valued and she became a teacher. Sheree spent hours creating teaching resources and felt connected to her artistic roots

• Creativity wasn’t welcomed in teaching, and she left the profession to become a freelance writer and artist

• After being told that she couldn’t be successful in many genres, she focussed on her poetry

• Five years ago, Sheree expressed herself more fully as she became interested in visual journaling.  The phrase “the soul speaks in images” resonated with her. Sheree created a practice of filling the page with colour, then images and then a single word. She felt she was diving into her wisdom and pulling out her authentic wisdom

• Prior to that, Sheree had been publicly shamed as a plagiarist and resulted in her losing her reputation and being unable to trust words

• “The words got me intro trouble, but it was the words that got me out”. She had to learn to “dance with the words in a safe way”

• The blank page as a space of play

• Visual journaling is where she creates her dreams, such as a creative retreat in Iceland

• She shares her story to help others find their voice. Especially women who often hide, oppress or have lost our voices

• The power of our own authentic voice

• Giving space to finding your inner voice, where you’re not trying to be loved and accepted and no longer hurting yourself by hiding your truth

• “We’re enough by just being”

• “Life is a practice”

• Exploring and curiosity as the seed for making

• “We were born creative”

• Creativity includes breathing, preparing meals, how we dress, how we express ourselves through words, movement and making things

• Creativity as a way of connecting with ourselves and others if we choose to share it

• “It’s through doing that things become clearer”

• Radical joy to be present and feel all the emotions rather than numbness

• Feeling joy through the body

• Everyday sensuality connects to the body

• The magic of swimming in the sea to ‘shock yourself into your body’ - survival mode and being present. “Once your control your breathing, you still your body and other sensations come through such as the water caressing your skin, the salty taste of the sea, the squawking of the gulls above you...You feel alive and the afterglow goes with you through the rest of the day”

• Knowing the signs of overdoing it in order to be able to withdraw

• Creativity is about giving and receiving. E.g in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, where the morning pages are the daily clearing, and the artist’s date is the act of filling the well

• Learning to embrace rest and have a mentality of abundance rather than scarcity

• “Nature is always creating something”

• Creating the Earth Sea Love podcast to support people of colour getting into nature

• “You can only love and care about something if you’ve had an experience of it”

• “Being an artist means forever healing from your own wounds, at the same time endlessly exposing them”

• Hiding wounds would mean living in fear and shame rather than courage

Resources:

Earth Sea Love podcast 

Living Wild Studios

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