The Radical Faeries and Spiritual Poets
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Franklin Abbott's poem "A Blessing for Relationships" written in 1983.
Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, Cal Gough, loaned for digitization.
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Photo of poet, artist, and Gay Spirit Visions founding member Raven Wolfdancer in June 1993.
Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, Cal Gough, loaned for digitization.
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Raven Wolfdancer (center) with librarian Cal Gough (left) and Gough's partner Larry Paul (right) at a GLBT event at now-closed Atlanta bookstore Bound to Be Read Books in 1982.
Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, On loan for digitization from private collection.
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Photo of a Radical Faerie gathering at Running Water Farm in North Carolina. Running Water Farm was used as a sanctuary and gathering place from 1979-1989.
Courtesy of Georgia State University. Special Collections, Ron Lambe collection.
In the late 1970s, gay activists Harry Hay and Donald Kilhefner reflected on a decade’s worth of gay liberation work and found that a dimension was missing: policy-oriented activism, they felt, was pushing for assimilation rather than a more radical freedom, one rooted in creative explorations of gay consciousness and spirituality. The result was the first “Spiritual Conference for Radical Faeries,” a gathering of around 200 men in a southwestern desert to engage in “Faerie circles” where participants could discuss facets of gay identity and perform spontaneous celebratory rituals as inspiration struck. Around the same time, the Southeastern Conference of Lesbians and Gay Men hosted in Atlanta brought together back-to-the-land gay liberationists who, in the wake of tensions between gay and lesbian activists at the conference, decided to hold Radical Faerie summer solstice gatherings exclusively for gay men at the remote Running Water Farm in North Carolina. Here, attendees established collective responsibility for the farm itself and for the Radical Faerie movement’s de facto cultural serial RFD: A Country Journal for Gay Men Everywhere. The Running Water collective maintained ties with Atlanta, a city-country thread sustained in part by Atlanta poets Franklin Abbott and Raven Wolfdancer, who would be involved in founding Running Water’s successor gathering, Gay Spirit Visions (GSV), along with fellow Atlantans spiritual writer John R. Stowe and librarian Cal Gough. Abbott, a prominent figure in Atlanta’s queer literary scene, has published two collections of poems and stories, Mortal Love: Selected Poems, 1971-1998 and Pink Zinnia: Poems and Stories (2009), most recently recording an album setting his poems to music, Don’t Go Back to Sleep (2017). Wolfdancer was both a poet and visual artist who shared his work in ink with friends and fellow GSV creatives. His art reciprocally inspired spiritual writer Andrew Ramer’s unpublished collection of stories about “the sacred role of gay men in the world,” Some Stories of Our People: For Men Who Love Men, in 1979. Wolfdancer also illustrated programs for Abbott’s poetic readings at 7 Stages in 1980 and at the First Existentialist Congregation in 1982. Wolfdancer was murdered in front of his home in 1993, a crime that has never been solved. In his honor, Gay Spirit Visions established the Raven Wolfdancer Financial Assistance Fund to support registration and travel costs for gay, bisexual, and transgender men who might, as Raven did, “benefit from experiencing the collaborative energy and outpouring of GSV brothers.”