2026 Spring Men's Conference—Where the Marrow Stirs, the Man Softens

$90.00

Our winter thaw is slow beneath the ice and snow. Beneath the barely greening grass, the prayers we do and do not make cling to the root of frost — its deepest contemplations numb to us, maybe, but not to life’s longing to be free of its frozen state. And yet, it waits with patient reverence to find its release into a new season of answers to those inquiries made during the fading into and back from darkness. Let’s ride into that next, never-before-seen season together this year.

As the ice softens, loosening its grip on stone, and bone, and root, mycelium get to work — whistling the sap, gargling sweetness long locked up: “It’s time to climb, flow, dance, share the sweetness of the cold dark’s answers.”

This one-day gathering invites men to connect with their purposeful life — where armor loosens, marrow awakens, rhythms return, and humility ripens into quieted strength. Through story, memory, reflection, embodied practices, time in nature, and ritual space, we explore what it means to soften the heart without losing our edge… to mature without hardening… to allow, “the soft animal of our body, love what it loves.”

Event Details:
Saturday, May 16th, 2026
9:00 am – 6:00pm

(Tent Camping available Friday and Saturday night: contact@minnesotamensconference.com for details)

Venue:
7537 Lakeview Road, Barneveld, Wisconsin

Land generously provided by William Robichaud www.birdinthebush.net

Registration: $90 (scholarships available)

2026 Fall Minnesota Men's Conference

The 2026 Fall Minnesota Men’s Conference will be held October 6 through 11, 2026 (Tuesday afternoon through Sunday afternoon). We are in the planning stages now and will provide more information as it becomes available.

The conference will be held at YMCA Camp Miller in Sturgeon Lake, Minnesota.

To get more information, reach out via email to: Contact@minnesotamensconference.com

Iron Earth, Iron Soul: The First Australian Minnesota Men's Conference

Photo by Hannah Gibbs on Unsplash

For the first time since its inception—and in a year that carries great significance as Robert Bly would be turning 100—a Minnesota Men’s Conference will happen outside the US, and it will take place in Australia.

The Minnesota Men’s Conference is honored to partner with The Fifth Direction, a soul-focused organization based in Australia to produce a four-day men’s conference near Brisbane, Australia

From Minnesota’s Iron Range to the iron-stained red earth of Australia, these two ancient landscapes are joined by the element of iron as both mineral and metaphor.

Iron in the ground.
Iron in the blood.

A metal that must be heated, shaped, tempered.
A quality in a man that cannot be borrowed.

This is also a fitting bridge for a gathering shaped by the enduring legacy of Iron John, Bly’s classic text that called so many men toward soul.

We are living in a time where men feel that call more than ever, but have few places to take it. Recently, we have seen renewed attention on the very real dangers this presents in the rise of the online manosphere.

When a culture fails to offer meaningful initiation and living rites of passage, young men will invent their own, often performative and destructive facsimiles that inflate the immature masculine and trap it in image, fantasy and grandiosity, rather than leading it toward service and soul.

True initiation requires contact with mystery, limits, humility, and consequence. It often involves an honest encounter with mortality, death, and loss.

As Bly warned, when this hole in the masculine psyche is not met in this way, it fills with demons. Young men are being recruited through precisely that wound, offering macho certainty where instead a cultivated heart is required.

Yet beneath the noise, there is a clear signal.

A hunger for the father, for true brotherhood, for purpose—and for a way to cross from performance into depth.

But hunger without guidance can turn quickly. Into emotional illiteracy, into misogyny, and violence against women, into a hardening of the very thing that is asking to be met.

What is missing is a place where a man can sit in the presence of other men and feel something real move inside his chest.

Beneath that is often grief.
And inside that grief is love.
And inside that love is something we might call soul.

On September 10 through 13, 2026, over four days, men will gather in Australia for our inaugural Minnesota Men’s Conference, in partnership with The Fifth Direction.

Elder voices will arrive from the US and voices from this land will stand alongside them. In story. In conversation. In truth.

Iron Earth.
Iron Soul.

If something in you stirs at the edge of this, you are not alone. You are already on the path, and we would be honored to have you walk further with us.

Dates:
September 10-13 (Thursday through Sunday), 2026

Location:
The Regenerative Training Centre
283 Woodrow Rd, Woodford QLD 4514, Australia
Get directions

Who We Are

The Minnesota Men’s Conferences are unique gatherings of men dedicated to embodying what it means to live a life of character, depth, and consequence amidst the noise and chaos of our times.

We believe that words matter. We witness how the old stories carry a source of nourishment that can give a man a depth and heft that is as rare now as it is invaluable. We set loose upon the fields of our imaginations wild poetic verses that buck and kick and upset conventional ways most men are taught to see and feel—and not feel.

Poet, author, teacher, elder, and founder of the Minnesota Men’s Conference Robert Bly has passed to the ancestral. Robert’s insight, wisdom, and imagination have been and continue to inspire people. His work has helped to deepen the lives and awaken the soul of countless people. Those of us who knew and worked with Robert will recount that he provided an ongoing lesson in how to give blessings. He had a way of taking an interest in the people he encountered and saying just the right words to awaken their souls. The Minnesota Men’s Conference has been introduced, through Robert, to many brilliant teachers. Each of us who have attended the conference over the years carries with us a trove of stories, ideas, and poetry that Robert provided.

Robert, may your sweet soul abide in the ancestral lands. You will remain for us an inspiration, an ancestor of the soul, and a beloved teacher.

Here is a poem of Robert’s that reveals best how we remember him:

Gratitude to Old Teachers
When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers? 

Water that once could take no human weight—
We were students then—holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.
—Robert Bly

“Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.” 

2022

— Robert Bly