Please Consider a Gift to Split This Rock

As you may have heard, we lost one of the world's great poet-activists this week, the South African Dennis Brutus, a fierce and beautiful advocate for justice.

We were so fortunate that Dennis joined us at the inaugural Split This Rock Poetry Festival on the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq in March 2008. Dennis was uncompromising in his challenge to all of us in attendance: our taxes pay for the wars our government wages. What are we going to do about it?

Here at Split This Rock, as we put the final touches on the second biennial festival, scheduled for March 10-13, 2010, part of our answer is that we work hard to give poets and poetry lovers a forum for speaking out, together, here in the nation's capital.

This March, as we remember Dennis Brutus and honor his contributions to the struggle for justice, we'll speak out for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for true health care and economic reform, for a future that celebrates the dignity of each of us. We'll speak through our poetry, as Dennis so eloquently did, as in his poem "Somehow We Survive":

most cruel, all our land is scarred with terror,
rendered unlovely and unlovable;
sundered are we and all our passionate surrender

but somehow tenderness survives.

Will you help us bring the vital poetry of tenderness and resistance to a diverse public hungry for authentic and visionary language?

* $40 provides one student scholarship
* $75 provides one full scholarship
* $250 flies a festival featured poet from the East Coast
* $500 flies a festival featured poet from the West Coast

Any amount will make a tremendous difference. All donors are thanked on www.SplitThisRock.org and donors who can give $100 and above will be recognized in the festival program book. All gifts are tax-deductible through our partnership with the Institute for Policy Studies.

Three easy ways to give:

* Click here to give on-line;
* Register for the festival and add a donation to your registration fee. Register here;
* Send a check made out to Split This Rock/IPS to: 1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036

Thank you!

With hopes for peace and justice in 2010,

Split This Rock Team
Sarah, Abdul, Alicia, Regie, Jaime, Katherine, Melissa