Revamped XCP webspace!

XCP's webspace has been revamped and the journal will be posting (with some regularity) complete writings and excerpts from the journal's nearly 15 year history of continuous publishing. Thanks, everyone, for continuing to submit work, subscribe, and read the amazing writing that continually fills the pages between the covers of XCP.

http://xcpcrossculturalpoetics.wordpress.com/

Poem of the Week: Remica Bingham

photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths


Final Exam Administration


I enter to find all the students in uniform
occupying a small room.

I hand out pencils and registration forms.
Some begin without orders.

I remind them to remain anonymous
no names, just ID numbers should appear

on the waiting pages, white and clean
as unwritten letters or discharges.

Just a number.....the private
in BCGs and fatigues mumbles

from the back.....that’s all
we are. A number

and a gun......His comrades laugh,
erasing what might have been.

Do your best.....I say,
and they settle, salute.


-Remica L. Bingham

Used by permission.

Remica L. Bingham is currently the Competency Coordinator at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, VA. She earned an MFA from Bennington College and is a Cave Canem fellow. Among other journals, her work has been published in New Letters, Callaloo, and Gulf Coast. Her first book, Conversion, won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and was published by Lotus Press. A book of her selected poems, The Seams of Memory, will be translated into Arabic and published in 2010 in conjunction with the Kalima Project.

Bingham appeared on the panel Reclamation, Celebration, Renewal, and Resistance: Black Poets Writing on the Natural World during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Split This Rock in Fire and Ink

Fire and Ink: An Anthology of Social Action Writing, edited by Francis Payne Adler, Debra Busman and Diana García, is a valuable and vibrant anthology. I will publish a short review of it and other works received at AWP soon, but for now, let me call your attention to the following blurb about Split This Rock in the preface to the anthology:

In 2003, poetsagainstthewar.org drew thousands of poems within days. In 2008, with no end in sight to the war in Iraq, activist poets gathered at Split This Rock Poetry Festival in Washington D.C. They came from across the country, a national network of writers for change, with readings by such poets as Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Carolyn Forché, among others - many of them contributers to this anthology.

As to the question of the taboo against social action writing or "political writing: some writers inhabit a privileged realm that leaves them free to reflect on the perfect hurricane or a new hummingbird's nest. Other writers' realities reflect on the aftermath of the hurricane. It is the need to privilege those alternate or non-mainstream realities now that compels us to name social action writing as a literary movement.

Andy Shallal's Op Ed in the Washington Post

The excerpt below is from a recent Opinion Column by Andy Shallal in the Washington Post. To read the full essay, click here:

Sure, raising taxes for this reason is in my self-interest. I'm a business owner in this city, and I want more customers to have money to spend at my restaurants. Having a city with a widening gulf of haves and have-nots simply doesn't bode well for my long-term business plans.

My personal stake in this doesn't end there. One of the proposals I support is raising the income tax on the top 5 percent of earners in the city. I fall into this category, and I'm happy to tell the D.C. Council that I'm not about to move to Bethesda or Fairfax if it takes this step. My family certainly isn't going to leave behind our friends, neighbors, doctors, etc., just because of a half-percentage increase on our income taxes. I love this city and want all its residents, not just a few, to prosper.

Photo of the Week: Mark Doty

This feature highlights a different photo each week from the 2 Split This Rock Festivals. For more photos from the last festival, check out Split This Rock's Flickr.



2008 Featured Poet Mark Doty reads at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

Photo Credit: Jill Brazel

Poem of the Week: Lee Sharkey

Eye

A rubber-coated metal bullet struck Ziad's eye during clashes in Bethlehem. . . . His eyeball fell in the palm of his hand and . . . he kept holding it till he reached the hospital. He thought they could put it back in.

-Muna Hamzeh, Refugees in Our Own Land



What do you do with an eye in the cup of your hand?

What do you see that you didn't?

What do you make of a sphere of jelly with fins of torn muscle?

What do your fingers impress on the rind?

Do you rush it to hospital, where a surgeon waits to fuse sight to vision?

Does the eye have a nationality? a history?

Does the eye have a user name?

Its own rubber bullet?

Where is the eye transcribed?

A little globe there and you are the keeper

Of the watery anteroom, the drink of clear glass

Dear eye

Once it lay snug in fat in its orbit

Once it saw as a child

Through humor a peppering of stars


-Lee Sharkey


From A Darker, Sweeter String, Off the Grid Press, 2008. Used by permission.


Lee Sharkey is the author most recently of A Darker Sweeter String (Off the Grid Press), of which Maine's Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl says, "If our dreams could edit the news (and sometimes our nightmares) these poems are how they'd wake us up to the urgency of our times." She is also the author of the book-length poem farmwife and To A Vanished World (both Puckerbrush Press), a poem sequence in response to Roman Vishniac's photographs of Eastern European Jewry in the years just preceding the Nazi Holocaust. She lives in rural Maine, teaches a writing workshop for adults with mental illness, and stands in a weekly peace vigil with Women in Black. She is the co-editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal, which published a chapbook of the work of Split This Rock poets for the first Split This Rock festival.

Sharkey appeared on the panel What Makes Effective Political Poetry? Editors' Perspectives during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Kyndall Brown Wins Larry Neal Writers' Award

Kyndall Brown, a freshman at Duke Ellington High School was awarded First Place in the Larry Neal Writers' Award competition for Teen Poetry. Split This Rock is incredibly proud of Kyndall, who has been a part of the Split This Rock family since 2006 when her poem “When Is War Going to Stop?” was published in the special Wartime Issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly.

Imaginary Pressures

Its seems clear
It sounds just right
Each row perfectly aligned
And spaced
Flawlessly decorated with
Personality and self expression
Lyrically flowing swift
And smooth
She’s swept away
It’s done and finally finished
That false sense of security
Slowly but surely
Falling into a bottomless
Pit of uncertainty
She eventually cracks
Under the burden of
Physical abuse and
Low self-esteem
She becomes transparent
One piece at a time
Almost but not completely
Wiped away
Lost to the insanity of
That white page and thePressure of her own insecurities
She’s trapped
Between blue lines and
Marginalized by red bars
She tries to escape
From that mental slavery
By hiding behind a mask
Of trivial rhythm and rhyme
Only to be swept into deception and disorder
Each verb, noun and predicate becoming
Lost in confusion and doubt
No longer able
To speak the truth
She’s tossed away
Like some unwanted trash
Imprisoned behind
Circular walls of desperation and indifference
There with
The other failures
Broken, scarred and wrinkled
She contemplates her own fate
And wonders if
She can ever be
Truly set free
Or will she forever
Be bound and tied
By the imaginary pressures
To be a perfect
Poetic Verse

Kyndall Brown
2009

Photo of the Week: Deanna Nikaido and Andrea Carter Brown

This feature highlights a different photo each week from the 2 Split This Rock Festivals. For more photos from the last festival, check out Split This Rock's Flickr.



Deanna Nikaido and Andrea Carter Brown at the 2008 Cento.

Regie Cabico at Poets and Writers Online

Check out this great video:

http://www.pw.org/content/regie_cabico_16

Poem of the Week: Lita Hooper

One Man’s Plea

........A Found Poem from www.newyorktimes.com 7/7/2007


Frederick Lake has been to prison
finished his time
convicted in 1989
now faces deportation to Jamaica
insisted innocent
I wasn’t in the country
applied for a pardon

On Monday, President Bush granted
clemency to Lewis Libby Jr.
Libby was about to go to prison
Bush declared the sentence severe
to his family

Mr. Lake is the father of children 8 and 9
has heart disease and diabetes
worked at night cleaning aircraft
ran a car repair business
Mr. Lake is asking for mercy
When is INS going to come for me?

May 18, 1989 a payroll company was robbed
by a short stocky man wearing an earring
Mr. Lake did not have a pierced ear
is close to 6 feet tall
produced airline tickets from Jamaica
a week before robbery.

His passport stamps matched. The truth
is swimming on top of the water
Prosecutors challenged
Grave inaccuracies
Son says
Are they going to put me in the casket with you?


-Lita Hooper

Used by permission.

Lita Hooper is a poet, playwright and educator. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Crux: Conversations in Words and Images from South Africa to South USA (2008) and Tempu Tumpu/walking Naked: African Women’s Poetic Self-portrait (2009). She is the author of two chapbooks, Legacy and Perspectives, and a critical biography, Art of Work: The Art and Work of Haki Madhubuti (2006) Her work has also been published in online and print journals and magazines, including poetrymidwest, Drumvoices Revue, Essence, The Drunken Boat, Reverie, and Pluck! Ms. Hooper's collection of poems, Thunder in Her Voice: The Journal of Sojourner Truth, was recently published by Willow Books (2010).

Hooper appeared on the Willow Books Reading panel during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Sunday Kind of Love with Aracelis Girmay and David Gewanter

Sunday Kind of Love!
Sunday May 16, 2010

4-6pm

Featuring Aracelis Girmay
and David Gewanter

Busboys and Poets
14th & V St., NW
Washington, DC

Hosted by Sarah Browning and Katy Richey
Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock

Open mic at each event!
Admission free, donations encouraged

For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET



Aracelis Girmay is the author of the poetry collection Teeth, for which she was named a Pan African Literary Fellow & recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award. Girmay's work has also been published in Callaloo, Ploughshares, & MiPoesias, among other journals. She teaches in Drew University's low-residency MFA program, DreamYard's Bronx Poetry Project, & will begin teaching at Hampshire College in September. Among the poets whose work is deeply teaching her are: Forugh Farrokhzad, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martín Espada, Nazim Hikmet, & Lucille Clifton.



David Gewanter is author of three books of poetry: In the Belly (1997), The Sleep of Reason (2003), and War Bird (Fall 2009) all published by the University of Chicago Press. His work appears in Threepenny Review, Poetry Magazine, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Tikkun, Slate.com, Harvard Review, PoetryMagazine.com, Crossroads, Boston Globe, Semicerchio (Italy), PMLA, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Witter Bynner fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer's award, and a Hopwood award. He teaches at Georgetown University and lives in DC.

Sunday Kind of Love with Aracelis Girmay and David Gewanter

Sunday Kind of Love
Sunday May 16, 2010

4-6pm

Featuring Aracelis Girmay
and David Gewanter

Busboys and Poets
14th & V St., NW
Washington, DC

Hosted by Sarah Browning and Katy Richey
Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock

Open mic at each event!
Admission free, donations encouraged

For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET


Aracelis Girmay is the author of the poetry collection Teeth, for which she was named a Pan African Literary Fellow & recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award. Girmay's work has also been published in Callaloo, Ploughshares, & MiPoesias, among other journals. She teaches in Drew University's low-residency MFA program, DreamYard's Bronx Poetry Project, & will begin teaching at Hampshire College in September. Among the poets whose work is deeply teaching her are: Forugh Farrokhzad, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martín Espada, Nazim Hikmet, & Lucille Clifton.

David Gewanter is author of three books of poetry: In the Belly (1997), The Sleep of Reason (2003), and War Bird (Fall 2009) all published by the University of Chicago Press. His work appears in Threepenny Review, Poetry Magazine, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Tikkun, Slate.com, Harvard Review, PoetryMagazine.com, Crossroads, Boston Globe, Semicerchio (Italy), PMLA, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Witter Bynner fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer's award, and a Hopwood award. He teaches at Georgetown University and lives in DC.

Metaphor, (re)vision, and the Ode: A Workshop

In this workshop, we will explore risk, metaphor, & vision in relation to the praise poem. Through a series of generative prompts & questions, we will explore the ways in which the act of practicing metaphors might teach us something essential about personal history, empathy, action, and memory.

Sunday May 16, 2010
noon-2:30pm
Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th St. NW
Suite 600
Washington DC, 20036

**To register, send a check for $25 made out to "Sarah Browning" to Split This Rock, 1112 16thStreet, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036. Scholarships available.**

Please contact Sarah at browning at splitthisrock dot org for more info.


Aracelis Girmay is the author of the poetry collection Teeth, for which she was named a Pan African Literary Fellow & recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award. Girmay's work has also been published in Callaloo, Ploughshares, & MiPoesias, among other journals. She teaches in Drew University's low-residency MFA program, DreamYard's Bronx Poetry Project, & will begin teaching at Hampshire College in September. Among the poets whose work is deeply teaching her are: Forugh Farrokhzad, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martín Espada, Nazim Hikmet, & Lucille Clifton.

Photo of the Week: Sonia Sanchez

This feature highlights a different photo each week from the 2 Split This Rock Festivals. For more photos from the last festival, check out Split This Rock's Flickr.



2008 Featured Poet Sonia Sanchez laughs at the 2008 Opening Ceremonies at Busboys and Poets.

Photo Credit: Jill Brazel

Haiku To President Obama

The following are haiku my GW University Writing students created at the end of their semester. Although I could not post all my students' creations here, I am very proud of them. - Katherine

I would have voted
for you if I were 18
Show me I was right
- Rachel Sher

Pain, destruction, hope
Anger has taken hold of
Change, promised yet false
- S.J. Tilden

The frail, red-cloaked man
just wanted to shake your hand
fallen to the East
- Jade Batstone

War

The Apes kill themselves.
We destroy each other too.
Where is the difference?
- A.J. Hudson

inches predicted?
weather man talks job report
to believe or not?
- Alexander Leanos

Teach-In on Capitol Hill

On Thursday, April 29, 2010, a “Teach-In on Capitol Hill,” was held in Room 2168 of the Rayburn House Building , in Washington, D.C. , dealing with the question of what the U.S. Congress must do to end the U.S. Wars and secure a peaceful Middle East . Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) served as the Moderator. On the panel were: David Swanson, Chris Hedges, Ann Wright, Jeremy Scahill and Josh Stieber.

For more details on this event and its sponsors, go to: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/51592

Teach-In on Capitol Hill on Ending U.S. Wars from William Hughes on Vimeo.

Poem of the Week: Joseph Ross

If You Leave Your Shoes

.........A response to Arizona’s law SB 1070

If you leave your shoes

on the front porch

when you run

to the city pool

for swimming lessons,

you might end up

walking across the sand

of the desert in

scorched feet,

bare, like the prophets,

who knew what it was

to burn.

If you leave your lover

to run to the market

for bread and pears

you might return

to find your lover

gone and the bed

covered with knives,

hot and gleaming from

a morning in the sun.

If you leave your country

in the wrong hands,

you might return to

see it drowning in blood,

able to spit

but not to speak.

-Joseph Ross

Used by permission.

Joseph Ross is a poet, working in Washington, D.C., whose poems have been published in many journals and anthologies including Poetic Voices Without Borders 1 and 2, Poet Lore, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Full Moon on K Street. He co-edited Cut Loose the Body: An Anthology of Poems on Torture and Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib for D.C. Poets Against the War. He has given readings in Washington, D.C.’s Miller Cabin Poetry Series and in the Library of Congress’ Poetry-at-Noon Series. He teaches in the College Writing Program at American University in Washington, D.C.

Ross appeared on the panel Gay and Lesbian Poetry in the 40^th Year Since Stonewall: History, Craft, Equality during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210