Click here and bid today to take home an intimate piece of the historic 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival!
We have a 24” x 36” poster designed by the fabulously talented Nancy Bratton (www.nancybrattondesign.com), that feature original signatures from most of Split This Rock 2010’s featured poets:
Patricia Smith, Martín Espada, Jan Beatty, Fady Joudah, Lenelle Moise, Quincy Troupe, Lillian Allen, Chris Abani, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Cornelius Eady, Martha Collins, Richard McCann, Alison Hedge Coke, Mark Nowak, Nancy Morejón, Francisco Aragon, Natalie Illum, Sinan Antoon, Holly Bass, Beny Blaq, and Derrick Weston Brown, among others.
Spoken word artist Theresa Davis, who appeared on the panel Word Warriors: Women Spoken Word Artists at the 2008 festival, is featured on the poster – along with the late South African great Dennis Brutus. The poster also features a quote from a letter Adrienne Rich wrote to Split This Rock: “May this gathering inspire and affirm the spirit of many…Thank you for your belief in the freeing power of language and action.”
Your bid will help us bring poetry and poets into the public sphere in a variety of exciting ways:
* Biennial festivals – 2012 is just over the horizon. And guess what? We already have commitments from Marilyn Nelson, Sonia Sanchez, and Alice Walker for Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2012! You won’t want to miss it – March 22-24, 2012.
* Poets’ voices in the media – Through our partnership with the Institute for Policy Studies, Split This Rock arranges for poets to write op eds and appear on radio programs discussing critical social issues. In just one example, Mark Nowak’s op ed, “Warning: Shopping May Prove Deadly to Miners,” appeared in small-town newspapers throughout the country.
* Infusing poetry into political action – Split This Rock poets read at demonstrations, hand out poems, carry poetry signs. Recently, we distributed poems to a fired-up crowd at an immigration justice rally in DC and urged supporters to do so at the many rallies that took place throughout the country. And Split This Rock’s Poem of the Week reaches thousands who might not otherwise be reading poetry of provocation and witness.
* National and community collaborations – Here in DC, Split This Rock will present a reading of the poem “Howl” by poet Anne Waldman at Busboys and Poets in July, to celebrate the exhibit “Beat Memories” at the National Gallery. And next year, we’ll be a literary partner at the conference of the Associated Writers & Writing Programs, AWP, to be held here in DC on Langston Hughes’s birthday in February. We’ll have programs in the conference celebrating Hughes and the poet as public citizen, as well as off-site events, plunging us all into the vibrant life of the city.
This year is critically important for Split This Rock. We’ve received a major grant from the Open Society Institute to build the foundation of the organization so we can keep growing nationally and locally. We can’t do it without you. Won’t you join us?
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