Friday, June 28, 2013

Poem of the Week: Lillian Allen

Lillian Allen                      

Broken   


The boy is broken on the sidewalk
The sidewalk is broken beneath him
His colour is back (not black)
Because it was washed out
Worrisome for his aunt
Whose leg was taken to save her life
No, not diabetes but from shrapnel            Flying

What have we forgotten to say
to give the heart ease
Just out of diapers when learning to walk
the body seeks an inherent language of peace

What do you wish to be?
Happy, I'm sure

You may ask;
Whose voice is in my head, so fully formed?
So old and heavy with pain and venge
Behind the lead(er) passage is set
Funeral is the badge

Language now frozen symbols
Symbols like bells calling
Calling to the divide
Fists and blows and broken
Splayed like shrapnel on the sidewalk

Fall away   fall away
What do you wish for the world
What do you wish for your heart
Boy broken on sidewalk
Sidewalk broken beneath boy

 
-Lillian Allen 

Used by permission.  
 
Lillian Allen has returned to the stage with full vigor in 2012, launching her new reggae dub poetry/spoken word album Anxiety. Allen, who grew up in Jamaica, immigrated to North America as a teenager, is internationally recognized as a godmother of dub lyricism, rap, and spoken word poetry. Her debut book of poetry, Rhythm An' Hardtimes became a Canadian best seller, blazing new trails for poetic expression and opened up the form. Her other collections, Women Do This Everyday and Psychic Unrest are studied across the educational spectrum. Her literary work for young people includes three books: Why Me, If You See Truth, and Nothing But a Hero.   

Allen is also a recognized authority and activist on issues of diversity in culture, cultural equity, cross cultural collaborations, and the power of arts in education. She is a professor of creative writing at Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU). She has also held the post of distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Canada's Queen's University and University of Windsor.  She was a featured poet at 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!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.    

Friday, June 21, 2013

Poem of the Week: Jennifer Perrine

Jennifer Perrine                    

A Theory of Violence   

              -after New Delhi, after Steubenville

Under the surface of this winter lake,
I can still hear him say you're on thin ice
now, my heel grabbed, dragged into the opaque
murk of moments--woman raped on a bus;

girl plunged into oblivion, taken
on a tour of coaches' homes, local bars,
backseats of cars, the sour godforsaken
expression on each classmate's face; the dark,

the common route home, faint footfalls behind.
How many times have I bloodied my fist
against this frozen expanse to remind
myself there is another side, hope-kissed,

full of breath? I howl. The water begs, drown,
its hand pressing tight, muffling every sound.

-Jennifer Perrine


Used by permission.

Jennifer Perrine's first collection of poems, The Body Is No Machine (New Issues), won the 2008 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award in Poetry. Her second book, In the Human Zoo(University of Utah Press), received the 2010 Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize. In 2014, she will serve as a member of the U.S. Arts and Culture Delegation to Cuba. Perrine teaches in the English department and directs the Women's and Gender Studies program at Drake University.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Weekwidely. We just ask you to include all of the 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.    

Friday, June 14, 2013

Poem of the Week: Theresa Davis

            
                 
Because She Thinks She Is Going To Hell  
 
honey

you are not being judged
because your bones decided
maybe in a moment unplanned
to rest near my bones

passion has no punishment
except the ones
we place upon our own hearts

I mean
we were runaway trains that night
and I was wearing my voice
at just the right decibel

you never stood a chance

besides
I understand those urges
that make you question things
like sexuality and I want to know
what this feels like
regret doesn't live in my heart
it simply can't afford the rent
and I am no test dummy
no one takes advantage of me
without my permission
if your tongue is tied
my prayer is that your thoughts are not
I am drawn to all things beautiful
and like it or not you were
you are beautiful

I mean
we were a head-on collision that night
and I never saw you coming
well
until I did 

-Theresa Davis 

Used by permission. 

From After This We Go Dark, Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013. 
 

Theresa Davis has been a member of the ArtsInterface, Co-founder of Art Amok Slam Team, Women of the World Slam Champion (2011), poet in residence as the 2012 McEver Chair of Georgia Tech University, Emerging Artist Grant Recipient, co-producer of the staged poetry performance with Jon Goode "Wish You Were Here", and was honored by the City of Atlanta by declaring May 22 "Theresa Davis Day."
 
In July 2012, Theresa released her Chapbook Simon Says, poems about teaching and anti-bullying themes. This project, in partnership with the City of Atlanta's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, is a call to action to bring about an end to bully culture in our children's classrooms. In 2013, Theresa released her first published collection of poems entitled After This We Go Dark with Sibling Rivalry Press. 
  
 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!

Thursday, June 13, 2013

How Poets Are Chosen to Feature at Split This Rock Poetry Festival

As we prepare to announce the line-up for the next Split This Rock Poetry Festival, we wanted to share with the community our process for selecting featured poets. 

Featured poets are chosen by a Curatorial Committee made up of members of Split This Rock’s staff, board of directors, and advisory committee.

The Curatorial Committee solicits recommendations from past featured poets, members of Split This Rock’s Advisory Committee, and other board members and activists within the organization and the broader poetry community. Members of the committee also read widely and attend many poetry readings and performances throughout the country.

The Curatorial Committee balances many considerations when choosing poets to feature:
  • Split This Rock Poetry Festival presents approximately 15 poets on its main stage.
  • The festival features poets who are among the most significant and artistically vibrant writing and performing today. They exhibit exemplary public citizenship, as activists, supporters of marginalized voices, and/or in a variety of other ways. We are interested in established poets, emerging poets, and mid-career poets whose work deserves greater attention.
  • Several featured poets will be closely associated with the Washington, DC, area, in keeping with our mission to support and promote voices local to our home community.
  • We value international perspectives and strive to include poets from outside the United States at each festival.
  • Each festival will also present one or two poets who read at an earlier festival, to ensure continuity of the spirit of the event.
  • We strive for a mix of poets that reflects the rich diversity of our country and its poetries: This diversity includes demographic considerations such as: race/ethnicity/language /country of origin; social/economic class; age; gender, including members of the trans community; sexual orientation; physical ability; and geography. It also includes diversity in poetic subject matter.
  • Finally, the festival strives to present poets on the same stage who represent the stylistic diversity of American poetry today, such as: lyrical, narrative, spoken word, alternative/  experimental/avant garde, elliptical, New Formalist.
  • Featured poets are asked to participate in the community of the festival, as panelists, workshop leaders, or youth mentors, in the spirit of collaboration and open-heartedness that we prize at Split This Rock.

We are always interested in learning about poets new to us and we’re building a library of books and CDs by poets who write poetry of provocation and witness. If you would like us to know about your work, please send us a recent sample at the address below.

Split This Rock
1112 16th Street, NW
Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036


Many thanks for your interest in Split This Rock. Please contact us with questions or concerns at info@splitthisrock.org. And save the date for the next festival: March 27-30, 2014!

Beginning & Ending in Heartbreak: A Review of Luivette Resto's Ascension

by Split This Rock intern Vileana de la Rosa

Ascension is Luivette Resto's second book of poetry and the best I have read in 2013. Ascension begins and ends in heartbreak, reflecting on beauty, disappointment, and the contradictions of Latino identity and modern life. Resto describes her poetry as “socio-political” – the tone varies from nostalgic to angry, drawing full pictures of love, heartbreak, anguish, joy, and wisdom. Truly a mujer con ganas, a voice of outrage without all the usual clichés of an angry woman, Resto often plays with and pokes fun at the hybridity of culture and language, mixing satire and Spanglish in a manner that is critical, endearing, and thoughtful.

Her poem, “Thank You Ricky Martin,” pokes fun at headlines from the late nineties that claimed to “discover” Latino culture: “The Legacy of Generation Ñ” and “Latino America: Hispanics are hip, hot, and making history.” Suddenly it’s cool to grow up Puerto Rican American, wearing a “Menudo T-shirt” and “rolling r’s.” But Resto’s “Perfect Attendance” paints a different portrait of immigrant experiences, weaving together the working class struggles of young troubled but determined immigrants, toiling multiple jobs, suffering from PTSD, and escaping a life of gang violence:

They leave in silence
intimidated by the syllabus,
amazed at the price of textbooks,
determined to return the next day.

These verses capture the eagerness and determination of immigrants to succeed in this country, not letting setbacks, language boundaries, or lack of resources become detriments to success. Throughout Ascension Resto challenges the notion that success in America is defined by assimilation: she presents a football star from El Monte who dreams of going to college; Guadalupe, who works two jobs and supports her family; and Eun, who is called a F.O.B. by classmates and is quiet in class. Resto’s collection beautifully shows that despite setbacks and struggles, people everywhere are still striving for a better life and working hard to achieve their dreams.
           
Ascension also includes more politically critical poems. “No More Tacos in Gwinnett County” speaks directly to xenophobia, hypocrisy, and racism toward undocumented and Latino immigrants in the United States. Resto draws connections between the Chicano student walkouts of the 1960’s to 2006 and the recent struggles of Latino immigrants who have become the targets of racist local laws and policies:

No more dollar corn tortillas
satiating the appetites of
housekeepers, gardeners, waiters,
peach pickers, janitors, nannies.
Giving them all a five-minute taste of Juarez...

Paranoia and sign making spread to the Midwest
where a Butler County, Ohio, jail
had a sign pointed to it
“Illegal Aliens Here.”

The steel bars shivered
because hunger for
revolution and absolution
only existed here.

Resto’s sass is her poetic strength; her sharp and critical wit, built through imagery, weaves together dialects of Spanish, street slang, and poetic styles to create rich, textured portraits of everyday life. Resto’s bittersweet poem “Sweatshop Tiffany’s” recalls the love and labor of immigrant Latina women working in a sweatshop, noting their unique strength and sadness:

Everything under the table
including the half hour homemade lunches
eaten in a storage room substituting as a cafeteria
mixed with the smells of sweat, exploitation, and arroz con pollo.

Ten years later I entered into my first Tiffany’s
filled with smiles on women’s faces, empty pockets of remorseful
husbands,
commission quotas being met, surprise engagements.

As I touched a velvet turquoise bag,
the cash registers sang
y hubo alguien

Through Puerto Rican singer Marc Anthony’s romantic song “Y Hubo Alguien”, “And there was somebody,” this poem recalls the idea of America as a place where you can become someone or a “somebody”; but the material reality of these immigrant women’s lives proves otherwise.

What I related to the most in this collection, however, were the poems on interpersonal relationships, family values, and personal reflections and struggles. In “Christmas Lies,” we see a mother’s struggle to explain to her child the existence of Santa Claus; in “The Pendeja Syndrome,” a women struggles to let go of her ex-boyfriend; and students organize against racism in “A Poem for the Students of UCSD.” “A Poem for Me” explores the narrator's insecurities, wishing she could play the piano and better deal with her emotions, but finding her whole imperfect self as a muse for her poetry. These poems are introspective -- they encourage us to look at our flaws and mistakes as a way to define our identity and values.
           
Luivette Resto’s Ascension really hit home for me. Resto needs to be read as an influential and relevant writer of our time, recognized for her depth and insight. She breaks apart the myth of post-racial America and turns the critical gaze on American life, discovering unexpected truths. These powerful personal poems will inspire future Latino poets.

--Vileana de la Rosa

Vileana returned to her home in California last week and graduates tomorrow from the University of California-Irvine. Here at Split This Rock we miss her already! We're so proud of her and grateful for all she gave us in her months in DC. Watch out, world!

Monday, June 10, 2013

Poetry as Connection: A Workshop with Theresa Davis

Poetry as Connection: 
A Workshop with Theresa Davis

Sunday June 16, 2013 
2-4pm

@ The DC Center for the LGBT Community 
1318 U St. NW 
Washington, DC 20009


Poetry as Connection invites participants to create an original piece of work from a prompt and image that incorporates personal experiences. In this workshop we will discuss, share and receive feedback from the group followed by a discussion and tips on performance, how to put your poem in your body. World Champion Slam Poet Theresa Davis will facilitate.

All Levels Welcome! 
 Limited to 20 participants.

Workshop fee: $25. Scholarships available.  
All participants must register in advance.    


Theresa Davis is the mother of three and was a classroom teacher for over twenty years. She reclaimed her love for poetry ten years ago after the loss of her father. Since then, she has been a member of the ArtsInterface, Co-founder of Art Amok Slam Team, Women of the World Slam Champion (2011), poet in residence as the 2012 McEver Chair of Georgia Tech University, Emerging Artist Grant Recipient, co-producer of the staged poetry performance with Jon Goode "Wish You Were Here", and was honored by the City of Atlanta with a proclamation making May 22, Theresa Davis Day.


In July 2012, Theresa released her chapbook Simon Says poems about teaching and anti-bullying themes. This project, in partnership with the City of Atlanta's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, is a call to action to bring about an end to bully culture in our children's classrooms. As a contracted author, with Sibling Rivalry Press, Theresa has released her first published collection of poems entitled After This We Go Dark.

Friday, June 7, 2013

Poem of the Week: Amaranth Borsuk

Amaranth Borsuk              
Character Anatomy  
 
Few things the hand wished language could
do, given up on dialect's downward spiral:
words so readily betray things they're meant
to represent.

Words tasted like other things. Type refused
to look machined, showed the strokes that
unbalanced, grew spurs against stress, each
swash, spine, shoulder, tail a fresh mark of
the hand that had no hand in it.

Arms broken, tissue mangled, the hand was
ready to try body's cant: a disappearing text,
past and future pressed into skin's plies.
Grammar's ultimate loss: surface, each
nanosecond, dead and reborn in microscopic
fragments.

Take take take take take -- that's how body
ensures its own survival. The hand couldn't
trust it long enough to decipher its cipher:
empty vessel with hands. The body had false
papers, could not be identified, clearly could
not represent. It didn't look like the pictures
anymore, would only sit still to be counted,
so the hand learned to trust numbers --
observable, firm -- needed something to
count on without fingers or toes now that
fingers and toes were gone. Fingers and toes
wouldn't cut it.

-Amaranth Borsuk   

Used by permission. 

From Handiwork: Poems, Slope Editions, 2012. 
 

Amaranth Borsuk is the author of Handiwork (Slope Editions, 2012); Tonal Saw (The Song Cave, 2010), a chapbook; and, with programmer Brad Bouse, Between Page and Screen (Siglio Press, 2012). She has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and recently served as Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at MIT. She currently teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington, Bothell.

 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!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.   

Monday, June 3, 2013

June Sunday Kind of Love

June Sunday Kind of Love 
Featuring 
Theresa Davis


Sunday June 16, 2013 
5-7pm
Busboys & Poets 
2021 14th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Hosted by
Sarah Browning & Katy Richey
$5 online or at the door

As always, open mic follows!
Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets &
Split This Rock


Theresa Davis is the mother of three and was a classroom teacher for over twenty years. She reclaimed her love for poetry ten years ago after the loss of her father. Since then, she has been a member of the ArtsInterface,  Co-founder of Art Amok Slam Team, Women of the World Slam Champion (2011), poet in residence as the 2012 McEver Chair of Georgia Tech University, Emerging Artist Grant Recipient, co-producer of the staged poetry performance with Jon Goode "Wish You Were Here", and was honored by the City of Atlanta with a proclamation making May 22, Theresa Davis Day.

In July 2012, Theresa released her Chapbook "Simon Says" poems about teaching and anti-bullying themes. This project, in partnership with the City of Atlanta's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, is a call to action to bring about an end to bully culture in our children's classrooms. As a contracted author, with Sibling Rivalry Press, Theresa has released her first published collection of poems entitled "After This We Go Dark."
  
*This event was supported in part by Poets & Writers