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Program & Schedule: Thursday, March 20, 2008

Online Registration Closed

Festival contact

Split This Rock will enter a fallow season on July 1, 2021, and all of our external programming and publishing efforts are on pause until April 1, 2022. We’re excited for time to dig into deeper wells of creativity for: 1) expanding the organizations’ capacity for working towards liberation; 2) defining more concretely what working towards liberation means at Split This Rock; 3) increasing the impact of our poetry, resistance, and community building offerings; and 4) more deeply aligning the organization’s mission with its systems, protocols, and practices. Learn more about the inspiration, projects, and goals for fallow season at the News from Split This Rock webpage. Visit the fallow season webpage to explore responses to frequently asked questions. We’re eager to continue engaging with you! To be invited to fallow season community gatherings we’ll be hosting, be sure to complete this online form.

The 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 readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, activism, and walking tours—opportunities to build community and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for change. Hundreds joined us as we celebrated poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.

The official bookseller of the festival 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.

Thursday, March 20 Friday, March 21 Saturday, March 22 Sunday, March 23
1:00 p.m.       Press Conference
2:00-6 p.m.    Registration Begins

5:00-7 p.m.    Opening Celebration & Featured Reading by Sonia Sanchez

Join fellow poets for food, drink, funkiness, and a reading by renowned poet Sonia Sanchez. Celebrate the power of the written and spoken word with us at an opening night party at the city’s premier performance space and lounge, Busboys and Poets.

8:00 p.m.       Featured Reading

Martín Espada
E. Ethelbert Miller
Naomi Shihab Nye
Alix Olson

10:00 pm       Opening Night After-Party, Marvin Bar and Restaurant, 2007 14th Street, NW

Complimentary glass of wine for first 40 Split This Rock participants to join us.