A conference on the mythopoetic imagination

May 16 - May 23, 2025
Camp Wavus | Jefferson, Maine

The Great Mother Conference is an annual retreat founded by Robert Bly in 1975.

Since its founding year, it has brought together poets, thinkers, artists, dreamers, doers, musicians, ecologists, singers, journalists, activists, and everything in between and far beyond for a gathering designed to stir a revolution of the heart, an interrogation into mystery, and a wild-eyed courtship of land and story unlike any other.

"True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown." ― Robert Bly

"We would give anything for what we have." ― Tony Hoagland

“I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.” ― Robert Bly

“By going deeper into myth, I go deeper into love, and when I go deeper into love, innately I find morality. I locate a True North in my own heart.” ― Martin Shaw

"If we let the limiting forces of circumstance and sorrow and boundary enter the play, we get poems. All of the poems I love involve brokenness and death and loss or desire and also an enormous amount of that ethereal force that is our play, our dream. It is the birdsong at the funeral." ― Steve Scafidi

"How one gets work is a story. Whom you love is another story. ‘The human story is simple: We are born, we fortunately and joyously live and then die. Ah but allowing the joy in ‘we live.’ What does it mean to ‘live?’ To be truly alive? We owe allegiance to the beautiful body and its senses and the spirit which lives within." ― Gioia Timpanelli

"What if wonder was the ground of our gathering?" ― Ross Gay

“It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.” ― Robert Bly

“The business of stories is not enchantment. The business of stories is not escape. The business of stories is waking up.” ― Martin Shaw

"True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown." ― Robert Bly "We would give anything for what we have." ― Tony Hoagland “I am proud only of those days that pass in undivided tenderness.” ― Robert Bly “By going deeper into myth, I go deeper into love, and when I go deeper into love, innately I find morality. I locate a True North in my own heart.” ― Martin Shaw "If we let the limiting forces of circumstance and sorrow and boundary enter the play, we get poems. All of the poems I love involve brokenness and death and loss or desire and also an enormous amount of that ethereal force that is our play, our dream. It is the birdsong at the funeral." ― Steve Scafidi "How one gets work is a story. Whom you love is another story. ‘The human story is simple: We are born, we fortunately and joyously live and then die. Ah but allowing the joy in ‘we live.’ What does it mean to ‘live?’ To be truly alive? We owe allegiance to the beautiful body and its senses and the spirit which lives within." ― Gioia Timpanelli "What if wonder was the ground of our gathering?" ― Ross Gay “It’s all right if you grow your wings on the way down.” ― Robert Bly “The business of stories is not enchantment. The business of stories is not escape. The business of stories is waking up.” ― Martin Shaw

2025 Teachers

2025 Theme and Story

JOYFUL DARKNESS, FEROCIOUS LIGHT

This year, we will work to explore the concept of “joyful darkness,” entering into a larger dance which includes both grief and joy, root and branch, light and darkness, and the twilit music that sings beyond all opposites.

Performance storyteller Jay Leeming will bring us stories of descent and transformation. We will be diving in to the stories of Persephone, Sleeping Beauty, and Indra's descent and forgetting of himself, from the Mahabharata.