Save the date: March 10-13, 2010!
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©Jill Brazel |
Support Our Arts Stimulus Campaign
Artists contribute greatly to our society as educators, agents of change and builders of community, yet many live without health insurance and struggle with issues of housing and security. In the less than a month, Congress will pass a $600 billion stimulus package in order to stimulate the economy and help create jobs. Split This Rock has joined up with Institute for Policy Studies to call on Congress to include the arts in its stimulus package. We need your help! Take a moment, please, and sign our petition and send word along to friends.
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/artsstimulus/index.html
Read Melissa Tuckey's Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye
Foreign Policy in Focus recently featured an interview with Split This Rock featured poet Naomi Shihab Nye: www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5519.
Sign the Appeal to Creative Artists
Poets who attended the Split This Rock Poetry Festival have issued an Appeal to Creative Artists for a week of creative protest against war and social injustice to be held March 15-21, 2009 (marking the 6th anniversary of the present Iraq war). We propose Monday, March 16, as a specific day on which we will "Speak Art to Power"—that is, find creative ways to communicate our message, through art, directly to those in government. Join our efforts! To read and sign the petition online, click here. To download the petition as a PDF file and share it with fellow artists, click here.
Support Split This Rock
Split This Rock depends on a strong financial foundation. Your funds will help support grassroots outreach, communications, and planning for the 2010 festival and other programs. They will help us create a stable organization you can count on to serve your interests as a socially engaged poet. Gifts of any size will be deeply appreciated. We hope you'll consider giving $50, $100, or more. The Institute for Policy Studies is still accepting donations on our behalf. Click here to donate: https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/357/t/8457/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4271
Donations by mail can be sent to: Split This Rock, 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036. We thank you!
Join us -- and Volunteer at the Split This Rock table at AWP in Chicago!
Split This Rock will be at the Associated Writing Programs conference (http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2009awpconf.php) in Chicago in February--table #309. Let us know if you'll be there! We'll be hosting a party and much fun will be had at our table with book signings, haiku postcards to the new president, and more. Let us know if you have a few hours to volunteer at the table.
In 2009, as we prepare for the 2010 festival and expand our work, Split This Rock will be looking for volunteers for a variety of activities. Stay tuned, and let us know if you would like to help!
Be a guest blogger on Blog This Rock
Blog This Rock is a community space. Recently, we've been recruiting poets to blog their reaction to the election and their experiences on election night. We will continue this conversation for a few more weeks. Beyond that, we welcome well-written updates and musings on poetry and activism. Contact Co-Director Melissa Tuckey (melissa.dcpaw@gmail.com) if you'd like to be a guest blogger. It is our intention that the blog represent a diversity of voices and opinions in the spirit of Split This Rock.
Read What Artists and Activists Are Saying About Split This Rock
Writers, activitists, and just plain folks from around the country and the world have written heartfelt accounts of the first Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Click here to read their words and be inspired!Read the Split This Rock Collaborative Poem
On March 23, 2008, during the first Split This Rock Poetry Festival, participants marched to the White House and contributed to the creation of an amazing collaborative poem about peace. To create this cento, participants each read out loud one line of no more than 12 words. Click here to read the poem.
Pacifica Radio Coverage of the Festival
Pacifica Radio recorded an hour of highlights from the festival. To hear poets reading, click here (53 MB mp3 file). For more information about Pacifica Radio, click here.
Split This Rock Festival a Smashing Success—Inspires Hundreds of Poet-Activists
The four-day festival brought hundreds of poets of conscience and activists to Washington, D.C. from all over the United States for readings, panels, workshops, a film program, walking tours, open Mics, and inspiration. The turn-out and the quality of the events were spectacular, exceeding all expectations. The Washington Post covered the festival in a lengthy and poetic article by reporter David Montgomery entitled, "Averse to War: Split This Rock's Army of Poets Marches Into Town and Raises the Anti."
An excerpt:
"The poets are in town. Dozens -- no, hundreds. Hundreds of poets. Can you imagine? They are everywhere.
"In long, disheveled columns, they are prowling Langston Hughes's old neighborhood around U Street NW. They are eating catfish at Busboys and Poets (where else?) and quoting Hughes, Shelley and Whitman back and forth -- "Through me many long dumb voices" -- over the hummus and merlot.
"They are signing fans' battered paperbacks and shiny new ones bought on credit (autographs!). They are squinting from the stage into the cathedral depths of a filled high school auditorium, amazed at the turnout. They are sharing with preschoolers the miracle of closely observed turtles and infinity in a drop of water.
"Also, to mark the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, they are getting ready to march on the White House."
Click here to read the rest of the article.
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| ©Jill Brazel |
Poet Karren LaLonde Alenier has also posted several write ups on the festival at her blog, The Dressing. Click here to read her commentary and see photos.
Split This Rock Poetry Contest: Winning Poems Online
Click here to read the top three winning poems and learn about the finalists. First prize went to Jeffrey Thomson for "Achilles in Jasper, Texas." Second prize went to Persis M. Karim for "Ways to Count the Dead." Third prize went to David-Matthew Barnes for "Latin Freestyle." The contest was judged by Kyle G. Dargan.
Foreign Policy in Focus and Common Dreams Publish Essay About Split This Rock
Foreign Policy in Focus, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, has published a special feature in conjunction with Split This Rock. FPIF's Fiesta section, which explores the intersection of art and foreign policy, featured Sarah Browning's essay on Split This Rock entitled "Hear This Hammer Ring." And, with the help of Melissa Tuckey, FPIF was able to highlight the profoundly moving poetry of Lee Sharkey, Susan Tichey, Christi Kramer, and others. Visit www.fpif.org for more of our Split This Rock coverage.
Common Dreams, the national non-profit citizens' organization working to bring progressive Americans together, has also published "Hear This Hammer Ring." The essay explains the genesis of the festival and describes "why we need poetry now, more than ever." Says Browning, "We need poets to tell the complex human story. Poets cut through the fog of propaganda and remind us of the real consequences of our government’s actions." Click here to read the essay.
Blog This Rock |
Washington Blade and Washington Post Highlight the Split This Rock Festival
Click here to read "Provocative Festival Comes to Town," an article by poet and activist Kathi Wolfe appearing in the Washington Blade. The festival was also mentioned in a Washington Post column by Lavanya Ramanathan.
Split This Rock Publications
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| ©Jill Brazel |
Check out two new publications dedicated to the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. The Beltway Poetry Quarterly Split This Rock Issue celebrates political poetry “borne out of a hunger,” by seventeen poets who are participating in the festival, either as organizers or readers. Go to http://www.beltwaypoetry.com to read this fantastic issue. Also, the Beloit Poetry Journal has dedicated its Spring 2008 issue to a special chapbook of work by poets around the nation who will be participating in the festival. The 56-page Split This Rock Chapbook consists of poems by eighteen of the festival’s featured readers. Go to www.bpj.org to learn more or click here.
Sign up for the Split This Rock Listserv! |
Help Us Get the Word Out!
Split
This Rock needs your help in getting the word out! You can help out by emailing your friends
and placing a link on your website, blog, Facebook ro myspace page.
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©Jill Brazel |
For some cool graphic tags you can use, click here.
Donate and get involved today!
Read, Write, Resist!
Split This Rock Poetry Festival brought poets and writers to Washington, D.C. on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, in the midst of the presidential election, for four days of collaboration, learning, and performance. The festival featured opportunities to build community and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change. Save the date for the next festival, March 10-13, 2010, and join us as we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.
Featured poets: Chris August, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Coleman Barks, Dennis Brutus, Princess of Controversy, Kenneth Carroll, Grace Cavalieri, Lucille Clifton, Joel Dias Porter (aka DJ Renegade), Mark Doty, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Brian Gilmore, Galway Kinnell, Stephen Kuusisto, Semezhdin Mehmedinovic, E. Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Alix Olson, Alicia Ostriker, Ishle Yi Park, Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith, Susan Tichy, Pamela Uschuk, and Belle Waring.
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| ©Jill Brazel |
Cosponsored by DC Poets Against the War, the Institute for Policy Studies, Sol y Soul, and Busboys and Poets
Please note that the official bookseller of the Split This Rock is Busboys and Poets Books. Visit the store or website to find progressive books to activate your mind and community, run by Teaching for Change.