Poems to Build a Bridge Across Our Fears: 4 Ways to Mark This Fall's Anniversaries

Dear Friend,

This fall it will be 10 years since the murderous attacks of September 11, 2001. We'll have a chance to remember that awful day and to mourn the loss of so many lives.

And then, we can take stock of our country's response and ask ourselves: Did we respond to the attacks in the most productive way? Did our response set us on the road to a healthier, safer, more just planet?

Here at Split This Rock, we believe the answer to be self-evident: No. We're waging four (or is it five?) wars, draining the national treasury, cutting essential programs, and succumbing to a climate of fear and mistrust. Every asp

ect of our response seems deeply, disastrously wrong-headed.

Now, more than ever, we need the poets and other artists to imagine alternatives, to give voice to our deepest hopes and wildest dreams. We need you.

Split This Rock is issuing an Open Call for poems to help us mark this fall's anniversaries: to mourn, to rage, to imagine, to speak out for a

new future. We'll choose our favorite poems for Poem of the Week and post some to 10 Years + Counting (see below), inviting peace and social justice groups nationwide to read the poems at their events and to use them in their organizing. This call is open to all, whether or not you have attended a Split This Rock festival or have been previously featured. Please see details below.

We're also joining forces with other efforts - one global, one national, and

one local to Washington, DC - in marking these anniversaries with poetry, art, and the trans formative imagination:

• 100,000 Poets for Change calls poets to speak out together for change on September 24. Over 400 events are planned around the world. If you're in the DC area, stay tuned for details about a Poetry Walk of Shame, readings outside the embassies of three countries whose citizens can't participate in the day's activities, for fear of detention and more.
• 10 Years + Counting invites artists and peace and social justice groups nationwide to use the power of creativity to illustrate the costs of war and image a more peaceful world. Split This Rock is providing poems for this effort - check out their blog for those we've posted so far. Use them yourself or send us your own to consider. See our Open Call below!
• 9/11 Arts Project: Healing 10 Yea rs Later - Here in DC, Split This Rock is joining the Smith Farm Center for the Healing Arts and many other groups in a city-wide "Year of Healing," with events to take place all over the city and throughout the year. On September 11 itself, we'll be presenting a special program of poetry, music, and visual art with Studio Gallery. Stay tuned for details!

We invite you to join Split This Rock and poets all over the world in planning events, sparking dialogue, and speaking out for alternatives to war and f

ear. Details of each of these initiatives, with links to their websites, are below. We look forward to a fall overflowing with creative democracy.

Don't You Hear This Hammer Ring?

Open Call for Poems to Build a Bridge Across Our Fears

This fall marks the 10th anniversary of the horrific attacks of September 11 and of our country's militarized and repressive response. Split This Rock calls for poems to help us mark this somber occasion, poems that mourn, rage, imagine, speak out for a new future. We'll choose our favorite poems for Poem of the Week and post some to 10 Years + Counting, inviting peace and social justice groups nationwide to read the poems at their events and to use them in their organizing.

This call is open to all, whether or not you have attended a Split This Rock festival or have been previously featured.

Split This Rock began Poem of the Week in 2009 as a way of publicizing the poets to be featured in the 2010 festival. We later opened it to registered participants at Split This Rock festivals. 90 poems later (and counting), the series reaches an expansive audience of poets, activists, and dreamers.

Guidelines:

• Please send up to three short poems (poems of 40 lines or under work best) as a single Word document email attachment to: info@splitthisrock.org.
• Include in the cover email your full contact information (name, address, phone, email address) and a bio of up to 75 words.
• Poems may have been previously published in a book, chapbook, or print journal, but not on the web, please. If previously published, you must own the rights to the work. Please include the citation, including the web address of the publisher, so we may link to it.
• Poems will be featured on a rolling basis.
• This call is open to all, whether or not you have attended a Split This Rock festival or have been previously featured.
• We will contact you if your poem is accepted to confirm details, and may request additional information at that time.

Questions? Please e-mail: info@splitthisrock.org

A Global Event

Saturday September 24, 2011

11:30am-11:30pm

Poets around the world are organizing for what Stanford University is calling a historic event -- the largest poetry reading in history. On September 24, all poets are invited to join together for an all-inclusive event, which asks poets to take a stand for whatever social or political cause they feel compelled to support.

At this time, 70 countries participating and about 400 individual events planned! A poetry and peace gathering in strife-torn Jalalabad, Afghanistan and poets in Nogales, Mexico and Nogales, Arizona reading poems to each other across the border fence are just two of the hundreds of events that will take place around the world. 100 Thousand Poets for Change is an open-ended event, and encourages participants to get creative. What will YOU bring to the table?

To organize in your town, or to find an event nearby, please visit www.100TPC.org. And don't forget to RSVP on the Facebook Page.

SEPTEMBER 11 - OCTOBER 7, 2011

September 11 - October 7, 2011 will mark the ten year anniversary of our nation continuously at war.

10 Years + Counting invites artists and others to take this historic moment as inspiration and use the power of creativity to illustrate the costs of war and image a more peaceful world.

Paint it, dance it, sculpt it, write it, sing it. Imagine peace and create connections. Concerts, readings, public art projects, garden parties, bake-offs, gallery exhibitions, street art, flash mobs, walks and runs: the possibilities are endless.

Turn the weeks of this anniversary of devastation into an unstoppable, irrepressible explosion of imagining the possible, a new beginning.

To organize in your town, or to find an event nearby, please visit: www.10yearsandcounting.com.

Check out the 10 Years + Counting Blog to keep up to date on projects and read poems from Split This Rock poets.

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Smith Farm Center for the Healing Arts is spearheading this citywide arts initiative and catalyzing a "year of healing," with multi-venue project events to take place around the anniversary and throughout the year.

Events and programs will span creative genres including dance and literary performances, visual arts exhibitions, facilitated dialogues, concerts, theater, interfaith services, and film screenings and will focus on such themes as social justice, multiculturalism, religious tolerance, art activism, individual healing, national trauma, and community engagement, to name a few.

Smith Farm Center now invites local Social Activist Groups, Interfaith leaders, Writers, Non-Profits, Dance troupes, Poets, Theaters, Musicians, etc. to join the project by sharing their unique voices and contributing a program or event

And, for individual artists looking to get involved, submit to the Art Bank!

To learn more about the project, add an event as a Project Partner, or submit to the Art Bank please visit - www.911artsproject.com

Connect with the project on Facebook

Follow the project on Twitter and use hashtag #911art to join the conversation!