Qatari poet Mohammed al-Ajami - also
known as Mohammed Ibn al-Dheeb, was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday, in
what Amnesty International calls
"an outrageous betrayal of free speech." He has been detained
since his November 2011 arrest on charges of "insulting" the Emir and
inciting overthrow of the government following publication of "Jasmine
Poem," which criticized repressive governments in the Gulf
region.
“All the information available points to Mohammed al-Ajami being a
prisoner of conscience who has been placed behind bars solely for his words.
Accordingly, he should be released immediately and his conviction quashed,”
said Philip Luther, AI's Middle East and North Africa director.
Ma Mere n'a Jamais eu des ailes (My momma never had wings)
Ma Mere n'a Jamais eu des ailes
My momma never had wings
But she could tap dance on hurricanes
And played poker with death
She couldn't teach me how to be a good man
But taught me how to be a good human being
How to sit up right, stand up straight, walk tall, face forward
Be proud of who you are, aint much God left in this world
But treat the world like there's still plenty God left in you
Ma Mere n'a Jamais eu des ailes
But she's always had this global warming smile
Told me to love only a woman
who could melt the polar ice caps of your past
Sat me down one day and exclaimed
"you better treat a woman as you would treat me, because if you don't
I will be on the next plane to slap you back into this country,
You are a Cameroonian man, we do not do that shit"
My mother
just said
"Shit."
But then she continued,
beware of the tempting ballad of Jazzy Belles
With Tuba lips, trombone legs and a bass line
That could turn any man into a crooked song
So make sure to never sleep with no one else's bones
but your own.
My momma never had wings
She believed if you try too hard to reach for the sun
You will end up in flames. Do not be a handsome shadow of Icarus...sun
Learn how to stay grounded...sun
Teach trees about their roots, and never give the world your tears
Only smiles gift-wrapped in forgiveness
Cuz Mama said, a "Hater"...is just a person with their "Heart" all jumbled up.
Their self worth drowning in a sea of simulation
turning the oceans in their chests, into puddles of insecurities.
Because those who show you no love,
are usually the ones who need to see it the most
Ma Mere n'a Jamais eu des ailes
My momma never had wings
But damn she could fly
Could care less about gravity
When she could bend space and time between her fingertips
She wears the fabric of the universe like a second skin.
Her first, being her will to always survive.
-Pages
Used by permission.
PAGES
is a wordsmith residing in the D.C. metropolitan area, but originally
from Cameroon, Africa. His features have included The Kennedy Center,
colleges and universities such as Columbia University, & BETJ Lyric
Café. He has shared stages with Ainsley Burrows and Oveous Maximus, and
opened for Andrea Gibson, Raheem DeVaughn, Chrisette Michelle, &
Afrika Bambaata, to name a few. Pages is also founder and co-president
of Da Movement Poetz, a performance based arts group geared towards
reaching young adults via the arts. In addition to winning multiple
local slams, he is the 2010 & 2012 DC Grand Slam Champion, two-time
member of the Busboys and Poets DC Slam Team & Beltway Slam Team,
and he co-hosts GraffitiDC, one of D.C.’s premier slam series presented
by Beny Blaq Entertainment. Currently, if he is not somewhere rocking a
stage, Pages works as a creative writing teacher and leads workshops
throughout various universities, and elementary to high schools as a
Teaching Artist for Split This Rock.
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock PoemoftheWeek widely. We just ask you to include all ofthe information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.
December Sunday Kind of
Love featuring Alan King &
Reuben
Jackson
Sunday
December 16, 2012
5-7pm
Busboys and Poets
2021 14th St. NW
Washington, DC
Hosted by:
Sarah Browning &
Katy Richey
$5
As always, open mic follows!
Alan King is an author,
poet, and journalist who lives in the DC metropolitan area. He writes about art
and domestic issues on his blog at alanwking.com.
In addition to teaching at Duke Ellington School of the Arts, he's also the
senior program director at the DC Creative Writing Workshop, a Cave Canem
fellow, and VONA Alum. Alan is currently a Stonecoast MFA candidate and has
been nominated twice for a Best of the Net selection. He is a Pushcart Prize
nominee. Drift
(Aquarius Press, 2012) is his first book.
Reuben Jackson lives in
Burlington, Vermont, where he teaches English at Burlington High School. He's
also the host of Friday Night Jazz With Reuben Jackson on Vermont Public Radio.
For 20 years, he worked as a curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of
American History. He's had poems published in 25 anthologies and in a long-gone
volume of verse entitled fingering
the keys.
Margaret (Peggy) Rozga
has published two books, the award-winning Two Hundred Nights and One
Day and her new book Though I Haven’t Been to Baghdad, poems responding
to her Army Reservist son’s deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. She
presented and discussed Baghdad at Split This Rock 2012. Currently she
is completing a new manuscript, Justice Freedom Herbs. She teaches
poetry workshops and works as a private writing coach.
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock PoemoftheWeek widely. We just ask you to include all ofthe information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.
Yvette Neisser Moreno's first book of poetry, Grip,
won the 2011 Gival Press Poetry Award, and in 2012 she was the first
runner-up for the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. Her translations
from Spanish include South Pole/Polo Sur by María Teresa Ogliastri and Difficult Beauty
by Luis Alberto Ambroggio, and she recently founded the DC-Area
Literary Translators Network (DC-ALT). With a specialization in the
Middle East, she has worked as an international program coordinator,
writer, editor, and translator, and has taught at GW, Catholic
University, The Writer's Center, and other institutions. Yvette serves
on Split This Rock's programming committee and leads the ongoing
campaign to get more poetry reviews in the Washington Post Book World and other newspapers.
Yvette will launch Grip at Sunday Kind of Love, this Sunday November 18th from
5-7pm at Busboys and Poets 14th & V location. Reading with her is
fellow poet and poetry and lectures coordinator at the Folger
Shakespeare Library, Teri Cross Davis. Don't miss it! Details here.
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock PoemoftheWeek widely. We just ask you to include all ofthe information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.
Heather Holliger teaches
writing at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. Her poetry
has been published in many literary journals, including the Aurorean, Gay & Lesbian Review, Labletter, and Sugar Mule, among others. Her work also appeared in the anthology Riffing on Strings: Creative Writing Inspired by String Theory. She is a former editor of So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language & Art and has written news stories for Ms. magazine online.
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock PoemoftheWeek widely. We just ask you to include all ofthe information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.
Review of Man Up: Cracking the Code of Modern Manhood
Written by Sarah Lawson
Carlos Andrés Gómez has had nothing short of a
book-worthy life. From his struggle to find identity as a
Colombian-American child and his parents' early divorce, to his ups and downs
with love, both familial and romantic, to his time spent working as a social
worker in Harlem, Gómez has volumes worth to share. Yet in his first book, Man
Up, he chooses to parse these complex stories down to concise chapters to
weave the story of a greater narrative: what it means to be a man.
Gómez deconstructs notions of manhood through a composite
of fiercely personal and often shockingly honest stories. He challenges
masculinity’s narrow framework of dealing with complicated emotions stemming
from love, divorce, success, fear, failure, hurt, and how the restrictions of
machismo ideals often lead to destructive behavior.
One story included in Man Up that challenges the
“choke chain” of Gómez's own masculinity involves his relationships with women.
Dating back to his high school hook ups and post-college escapades, Gómez leaves
out no details when describing situations in which perceived frameworks of
masculinity led him to keep women at arm’s length, using them for sexual
pleasure or as emotional crutches, all the while professing honesty to
ultimately manipulate them--and he still came out the good guy (I
cringed a bit!). It is by pulling back the veil on these stories in such a
precise way that Gómez examines how absurdly these notions manifest and how
fear is the driving force in how the idea of masculinity is miscalculated in
action.
While the voice and lens of the book is undeniably Gómez's, he uses this brilliant yet accessible narrative to look at masculinity
through angles of varying races, genders, sexual orientations, and positions of privilege.
The best part about this book is not only its extraordinary honesty, but the
way Gómez weaves the path of his own manhood, without ever absolving himself as
the ‘bad guy’ in some of these stories. He does a great job at not excusing his
actions. He never claims that he is the perfect man or that he has all the
answers. He simply uses his life (each chapter a novel in its own right), to
put masculinity under a microscope, to challenge patterns of patriarchy, and to
do some serious navigating through the complex ideals of what it truly means to
“man up.”
***
Join us on Wednesday November 7th for a special author event with Carlos Andrés Gómez at Busboys and Poets! More info here.
Carlos Andrés Gómez is an award-winning poet, actor and writer. He has been nominated for the
Pushcart Prize and was named Artist of the Year at the 2009 Promoting
Outstanding Writers Awards. He was a featured performer at the 2012 Split This
Rock Poetry Festival, and performed alongside poets from the DC Youth Poetry
Slam at the festival. He costarred in the Spike Lee film Inside Man and
appeared in the sixth season of HBO Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry. He
lives in New York City. Man Up is his first book.
Sarah D. Lawson is
the founder and slam master of the Beltway Poetry Slam, DC’s premier poetry
slam. She can be found teaching writing workshops throughout the city, sharing
rough drafts on open mics and hosting at Busboys & Poets 5th and K. She has
served on the board of mothertongue DC, DC's women's spoken word group, and was
a member of the Jenny McKean Moore Writing Workshop in poetry at the George
Washington University. Sarah is coach of the Madeira poetry club, which placed
second in DC's Louder Than A Bomb Teen Poetry competition. She was also a
member of DC's Team Treat Yo Self, which ranked 5th at the 2012 Southern Fried
Poetry Slam.
We're celebrating Tim Seibles' Fast Animal being named a finalist for the National Book Award in poetry. Congrats, Tim! Check out Alan W. King's blog post,"Tim Seibles: A Product of Sweat and Patience."
Here's a few lines from Alan's blog: "Understanding how Tim Seibles got the National Book Foundation’s attention requires some knowledge of neuroscience and of his persistence to be heard. At any given moment, the human mind rapidly shifts between thoughts.
It’s that movement Seibles is after when he’s arranging the sections of
his books. “If we’re really listening, we’ll go from rage to tenderness
pretty quickly,” he says in a recent phone interview. “I try to put
together different kinds of poems in a section…approximately the ways in
which our minds move.”
The results are five books that take readers on an exciting ride
through a surprising twist of tone and subject matter on each page. This
skill is one reason the National Book Foundation selected his latest
collection Fast Animal as a 2012 National Book Award Finalists."
Split
This Rock calls poets to the center of public life and fosters a
national network of socially engaged poets. From our home in the
nation's capital we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative
power of the imagination. All of Split This Rock's programs are designed
to integrate poetry of provocation and witness into public life and
support the poets who write and perform this critical work.
Split
This Rock is seeking dynamic, committed, social justice-oriented
individuals with a love of poetry to join our Board of Directors for the
2013-2015 calendar years. This is a unique opportunity to shape the
future of a thriving organization at the intersection of poetry and
social change.
We
currently have four openings on the Board, including a Treasurer
position. Board terms are two years. Split This Rock seeks to ensure
diversity on the Board consistent with our core values, and
encourages candidates of color, LGBTQ candidates, and people with
disabilities to apply. We are particularly looking for board members
with legal, technology, and/or fundraising experience.
The
Board is a "working board" which means that Board members are expected
to support the general management of the organization in addition to
being responsible for and/or assisting in various programming activities
(including Split This Rock's biennial festival), fundraising, donor
cultivation, and strategic planning efforts. Additionally, Board members are expected to participate on a committees (formal and ad-hoc) in addition to full board meetings. The Board meets quarterly,
and Board membership is estimated to involve a minimum of 4-6 hours per
month.
If
you are interested in serving on the board, please submit your
curriculum vitae or resumé and a letter of interest outlining your
desire to serve on the Board to info@splitthisrock.org by November 9, 2012.
Please make sure you include contact information. A member of the
Nominations Committee will contact you to discuss your interest and
answer any questions you may have.
was
it at the bus stop the fruit
leather that hung like
a
general's ribbon from the hands
of a homeless child
that
reminded me of the red truth dripping down our
throats?
she
wishes upon a bone moon. the
same moon
that
climbs in my eye. our gazes
meet up there:
an
"almost" neutral
territory.
her
smile a coca-cola
scar.
-Daniela Elza
Used by permission.
Published in Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here: Poets and
Writers Respond to the March 5th, 2007, Bombing of Baghdad’s “Street of the
Booksellers.” Editors: Beau Beausoleil and Deema Shehabi (PM Press,Oakland, CA,
August 2012)*
Daniela Elza has
lived on three continents and crossed numerous geographic, cultural and
semantic borders. Her work has appeared in well over 60 publications. In
2011 Daniela launched her first e-Book, The Book of It (now also in
print). Daniela’s poetry collection, the weight of dew, was published by
Mother Tongue Publishing (2012). Her poetry book Milk Tooth Bane Bone
is forthcoming with Leaf Press (April, 2013). Daniela lives and writes
in Vancouver, Canada.
*On March 5th, 2007, a car bomb was exploded on al-Mutanabbi Street in
Baghdad. More than thirty people were killed and more than one hundred
were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling,
a winding street filled with bookstores and outdoor book stalls. Named
after the famed 10th century classical Arab poet al-Mutanabbi, it has
been the heart and soul of the Baghdad literary and intellectual
community. This anthology begins with a historical introduction to
al-Mutanabbi Street and includes the writing of Iraqis as well as a wide
swath of international poets and writers who were outraged by this
attack.
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock PoemoftheWeek widely. We just ask you to include all ofthe information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.
