Anam Cara Conference at the University of Udine

Our first event is a two-day conference at the University of Udine. The conference is titled Anam Cara, and is a blend of themes: poetry, art, and women of peace. This unique mixture of speakers and subjects is unified by the conference’s title: Anam Cara is a Celtic term for a friendship of the soul, pure love that can supercede differences, which is the aim of shamanism. I first heard the term when practicing meditation in women’s circles in my hometown and reading the work of John O’Donahue. I read O’Donahue’s poems at my grandmother (my stepdad’s mom’s) memorial service the week before I came on this trip, so of course everything is in synchronicity.

The room is packed, mostly with women, and there are two rows of students standing in the back; the fire marshal warns that no more will be allowed in. Over 100 people are crammed into the lecture hall in Udine to take part in a two-day conference entitled Anam Cara, an exploration into poetry, the work of the soul, and women’s work for peace around the world. Over two days for sixteen hours, high school and college students listen to speakers and watch films detailing stories ranging from a Sufi healer from Uzbekistan, to a young poet from South Africa who performs her spoken word over John Coltrane’s sax, to a mother who lost her two children in the terrorist attack in Beslan, Chechnya, one year ago, to two American women describing the peace movement and apologizing for the immense failures of our country’s administration, for our inexcusable foreign affairs failures, and the failures of our domestic policy (now global evident in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina).

The two-day conference is an incredible experience—particularly the emphasis on the centrality of art to activism by the weaving of poetry and film throughout the presentations. We stay in the student dorms and eat in the school cafeteria. Every morning we have crusty rolls, cheese, jam, and bowls of coffee. One night I go out with Marco who takes me to the independent movie theater and art gallery, which has a bar with pink lighting!