what is creative portals

remembering devotion. remembering ritual. remembering return.

creative portals is a newsletter and digital garden for nonlinear creativity, research as ceremony, and writing from the middle.

this is not a place for optimization, productivity hacks, or neatly packaged lessons. it’s a space for circling questions, noticing patterns, and letting meaning form at its own pace — in the tradition of Black feminist thinkers like alexis pauline gumbs and moya bailey, who understood reflection, refusal, and imagination as vital forms of knowledge.

creative portals treats creativity as a living practice — something you return to, drift away from, and come back to again. as a practice of remembering. not a pipeline. not a performance. not a brand that requires constant output to prove it’s alive. this understanding is shaped by Black feminist practices of devotion and return, echoed in the work of lucille clifton, june jordan, and others who wrote survival, pause, and presence into form. here, making, resting, returning, and remembering are inseparable.

some pieces here will read like field notes. some will feel unfinished. some may contradict earlier thoughts. some will seem like you've flipped open a page in one of my many analog notebooks. that’s intentional. this space is built to hold process, not just conclusions — drawing from a lineage that values tending, witnessing, and staying with complexity, as articulated by the Black feminist creative thinkers who remind us that care and relation are themselves methods.

you’ll find reflections on creative research, ritual practice, care, and worldbuilding — often from the middle of the work rather than after it’s resolved. the writing favors honesty over polish and presence over urgency, informed by Black feminist commitments to care as method and imagination as survival.

creative portals is for people who think in spirals instead of straight lines. for those who feel suspicious of tidy narratives. for anyone who wants to stay in relationship with their creative life without turning it into a performance — a sensibility shaped by Black feminist traditions of making kin, honoring the everyday, and insisting, as audre lorde taught us, that liberation is a collective and ongoing practice.

there is no required order here. you don’t need to read everything. you don’t need to catch up.you can enter wherever you are.

works cited / creative lineage

this space is shaped by Black feminist writers, artists, and theorists whose work understands creativity as practice, care as method, and imagination as a site of liberation. this includes, but is not limited to:

• Audre Lorde — The Uses of the Erotic, Sister Outsider
• Toni Morrison — Playing in the Dark, Beloved
• Lucille Clifton — Good Woman, Blessing the Boats
• June Jordan — Poetry for the People, Civil Wars
• adrienne maree brown — Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism
• Alexis Pauline Gumbs — M Archive, Undrowned

these works inform how creative portals approaches:

• nonlinear process
• return and revision
• devotion as creative infrastructure
• collective imagination and care

this list is not exhaustive. it is a growing constellation.