Friday, May 30, 2014

Poem of the Week: Keith Jarrett

Keith Jarrett -
Keith Jarrett - "A Gay Poem"

  
Keith Jarrett lives in London, England. A former London and UK poetry slam champion, he writes performance poetry and short fiction and teaches as part of a pioneering Spoken Word Educator programme. He is also working on his first novel, a tale written partly in verse. 

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.

An Open Letter to Dr. James Billington, Librarian of Congress

Yesterday, Split This Rock sent the following letter to Dr. James Billington, Librarian of Congress, urging him to appoint a person of color as the next Poet Laureate. 

To add your name to this Open Letter, please send an email to info@splitthisrock.org with "Open Letter" as the subject line. In the body of the email, please tell us exactly how you'd like to be identified.

Thank you for joining this effort to make the very public position of Poet Laureate more accurately reflect the true diversity of American poetries.


May 28, 2014

Dr. James Billington
Librarian of Congress
via email

Dear Dr. Billington,

We are writing to you as members of the broad and diverse literary community of the United States, to urge you to appoint a poet of color as the next Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.

As you know, the position of Poet Laureate was created in 1985 after a 22-year effort in Congress by Spark Masayuki Matsunaga, an Asian American veteran of WWII who represented the people of Hawai’i first as a US Representative and then as Senator for a total of 27 years. And yet, in the 28 years since Senator Matsunaga’s long effort finally paid off, only two people of color have held the position of Poet Laureate.

Poetry can tell the many stories of our nation, can help us understand and bridge our differences, but only if we listen to its many and varied voices. The outgoing Poet Laureate, Natasha Trethewey, was an exemplary choice; her own poetry and her tireless efforts extended the reach of the Laureate’s office, bringing the transformative power of poetry to wide and diverse audiences.

We urge you to build on Trethewey’s successes by appointing another poet of color, continuing to showcase the extraordinary work that poets of all ethnicities and races are doing throughout the nation. Indeed, as there has never been an Asian American, Latino/a, or Native American Poet Laureate, this year offers an excellent opportunity to broaden representation and reflect the great diversity of the United States.

With gratitude for your dedication to poetry and literature,

Sarah Browning, Split This Rock
Dan Vera, Split This Rock
Francisco Aragón, Institute for Latino Studies, University of Notre Dame
Craig Santos Perez, Director, Creative Writing Program, University of Hawai'i, Mānoa
Sonya Renee Taylor, Artist, Activist, Founder of The Body is Not An Apology
Joseph O. Legaspi, Co-founder, Kundiman
Susan K. Scheid, Split This Rock
Barbara Jane Reyes, Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program, University of San Francisco
Maritza Rivera, Publisher, Casa Mariposa Press
Eileen Myles, poet
Martín Espada, poet
Yael Flusberg, Split This Rock
Pamela Uschuk, Raven’s Word Writers
Brenda Hillman, Faculty Director of MFA Program in Creative Writing, Saint Mary's College of California
Ed Madden, University of South Carolina
Afaa Michael Weaver, Simmons College
Melissa Tuckey, Split This Rock
Charles Bane, Jr., Contributor, The Gutenberg Project
Kevin Simmonds, poet
Pamela Stewart, poet
Eduardo C. Corral, poet
Ruby Hansen Murray, poet
Beth Seetch, poet
Joseph Ross, poet
Prageeta Sharma, The University of Montana, Co-director of Thinking Its Presence: Race and Creative Writing Conference
David Giannini, poet
Meg Withers, Professor of English and Creative Writing, Poet, Community Activist
Phylinda Moore, poet
Tim Seibles, Old Dominion University
Larry Sawyer, Co-director/The Chicago School of Poetics; curator/Myopic Poetry Series, Chicago

Friday, May 23, 2014

Poem of the Week: Nicholas Samaras

Nicholas Samaras headshot



Anxiety Attack at 27,000 Feet



What is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
Who brought these children here?
How will this raven-haired girl grow into her life?
There is no way I can die with this room full of Bostonians.
Why is the serrated coast of New York approaching so rapidly?
How many of these faces will separate before the plane lands?
We go blind in this whiteness as my stomach descends
and, somewhere far in the back, I can hear an animal wailing.
Why am I wearing this black suit of my comfortable life?
Into what country will we even touch down? What if we splinter
and explode upon landing, the moment of our most hope and relief?
How will my body feel enjoined to metal, shrouded in upholstery?
I wish everyone peace, as we slam into the earth of our.making.
But what is that red throbbing and these murmurs building?
What are all these stern looks of kindness and concern
as hands hold my hands and place the mask over my breathing face?

 
-Nicholas Samaras    
  
Used by permission.
  
  
Nicholas Samaras won The Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for his first book, Hands of the Saddlemaker. His new book, American Psalm, World Psalm, is now out with Ashland Poetry Press (2014). He lives in West Nyack, New York.

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. 

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Workshop with Keith Jarrett & Sophia Walker

Capturing Fire 2014:
Workshop with Keith Jarrett & Sophia Walker
"The Great British Wank Off" 
  
Keith Jarrett  

June 1st
2:30-5pm
DC Center for the LGBT Community
2000 14th St NW #105
Washington, DC 20009

Register Now!
Open to all!
$25
or
FREE for Capturing Fire Festival Registrants
(e-mail browning@splitthisrock.org for code)

**Scholarships are available**
(e-mail browning@splitthisrock.org)



Workshop Description
There is nothing a Brit can't get away with, and it's not just the accent. Preaching to the choir is boring. It's easy. How do you turn your biggest detractors into the ones snapping loudest at your lines? Push boundaries, push uncomfortable truths, push your audience. With satire, we can say anything. Looking at the work of some of the most successful British poets (Gerry Potter, Anna Freeman and others), we'll take on everything we're not supposed to talk about. Be ready to write.


Bios

Keith Jarrett lives in London, England. A former London and UK poetry slam champion, he writes performance poetry and short fiction and teaches as part of a pioneering Spoken Word Educator programme. He is also working on his first novel, a tale written partly in verse.  

Sophia Walker is an internationally touring poet and teaching artist. She is the 2013 BBC GrandSlam Champion, winner of the 2012 London Poetry Olympics, 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival Slam and is a former Scottish National Slam Champion.  

Friday, May 16, 2014

Poem of the Week: Gretchen Primack

Photo by Deborah Degraffenreid

The Dogs and I Walked Our Woods,


and there was a dog, precisely the colors of autumn,
asleep between two trunks by the trail.
But it was a coyote, paws pink
with a clean-through hole in the left,
and a deep hole in the back of the neck,
dragged and placed in the low crotch
of a tree. But it was two coyotes,
the other's hole in the side of the neck,
the other with a dried pool of blood below
the nose, a dried pool below the anus,
the other dragged and placed
in the adjoining low crook, the other's body
a precise mirror of the first. The eyes were closed,
the fur smooth and precisely the colors
of autumn, a little warm to my touch though the bodies
were not. The fur was cells telling themselves
to spin to keep her warm to stand
and hunt and keep. It was a red
autumn leaf on the forest floor, but
it was a blooded brown leaf, and another, because
they dragged the bodies to create a monument
to domination, to the enormous human,
and if I bore a child who suffered to see this,
or if I bore a child who gladdened to see this, or if
I bore a child who kept walking, I could not bear
it, so I will not bear one.
  
-Gretchen Primack   
  
From Kind (Post Traumatic Press, 2012)    
Used by permission.
  
  
Gretchen Primack is the author of two poetry collections, Kind and Doris' Red Spaces, and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, FIELD, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. Also an animal advocate, she co-wrote the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery 2012).
 
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, May 9, 2014

Poem of the Week: Kamilah Aisha Moon

 
Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths     
 

Dressing Down

--to Shirley Q. Liquor, Drag Queen in Blackface


When you're gay in Dixie,

you're a clown of a desperate circus.


Sometimes the only way to be like daddy

is to hate like him--

hope your brothers laugh

instead of shoot,

wrap a confederate skirt around your waist.


You traded glamour for nasty tricks--

dethroning your mammy's image for dollars

that will never cover so much debt,

unraveling years she lost

loving you for a living.


  
-Kamilah Aisha Moon  

Used by permission.
  

Kamilah Aisha Moon's work has been featured in several journals and anthologies, including Harvard Review, jubilat, The Awl, Poem-A-Day for the Academy of American Poets, Superstition Review and Gathering Ground. Her poems and prose have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize and the Audre Lorde Publishing Triangle Award. A native of Nashville, TN, currently living in Brooklyn, NY, Moon is the author of She Has a Name (Four Way Books) and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from the Publishing Triangle.

***   

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. 

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

May Sunday Kind of Love: Kamilah Aisha Moon & Gretchen Primack

Sunday Kind of Love
presents:
Kamilah Aisha Moon
&
   Gretchen Primack  
  


  
Sunday May 18, 2014

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


Kamilah Aisha Moon's work has been featured in several journals and anthologies, including Harvard Review, jubilat, The Awl, Poem-A-Day for the Academy of American Poets, Superstition Review and Gathering Ground. Her poems and prose have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize and the Audre Lorde Publishing Triangle Award. A native of Nashville, TN, currently living in Brooklyn, NY, Moon is the author of She Has a Name (Four Way Books) and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from the Publishing Triangle.


Gretchen Primack is the author of two poetry collections, Kind and Doris' Red Spaces, and a chapbook, The Slow Creaking of Planets. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, FIELD, Antioch Review, Ploughshares, and other journals. Also an animal advocate, she co-wrote the memoir The Lucky Ones: My Passionate Fight for Farm Animals (Penguin Avery 2012). 


Kamilah Aisha Moon photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Gretchen Primack photo by Deborah Degraffenreid

Friday, May 2, 2014

Poem of the Week: David Tomas Martinez

David Tomas Martinez   
 

1.

(from the poem "Forgetting Willie James Jones")

It's not water to wine to swallow harm,
though many of us have,

and changing the name
of Ozark Street to Willie Jones Street,
won't resuscitate,

won't expose how the sun roars across rows of faces
at the funeral for a seventeen-year-old-boy,

won't stop the double slapping
of the screen door against a frame,
causing a grandmother, by habit, to yell out, Willie.

It can't deafen the trophies in a dead teenager's room.
That day in '94 I felt strong.

I walked down the street with nickel bags of weed
in the belt loops of my Dickies,

and a bandana strung from my pocket.

That's when I thought trouble could be run from,
could be avoided by never sitting
with your back to the door
or near a window.

I swore by long days and strutted along a rusted past,
shook dice and smoked with the boys

that posted on the corners:
and men cruising in coupes, men built so big
they took up both seats,
I rode with them that summer.

That was the season death walked alongside us all,
wagging its haunches and twisting its collared neck
at a bird glittering along a branch.

Willie was shot in that heat,
with a stolen pistol,
in the front yard of a party.

It poked a hole
no bigger than a pebble
in his body.

The shooters came from my high school:
we sometimes smoked in the bungalow
bathrooms during lunch.

A few weeks before Willie got shot,
Maurice had been killed--

An awning after rain,
Maurice and Willie
sagged from the weight.

Some say it is better
to be carried by six
than judged by twelve.

Some say the summer of '94
in Southeast San Diego
was just another summer.


-David Tomas Martinez

Used by permission.
From Hustle (Sarabande Books, 2014)

David Tomas Martinez's work has been published or is forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio, Poetry International, Gulf Coast, Drunken Boat, RHINO, Ampersand, Caldera Review, Verse Junkies, California Journal of Poetics, Toe Good, and others. Martinez has been featured or written about in Poets & Writers, Houstonia Magazine, Houston Art & Culture, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express News, Border Voices, Buzzfeed, and NBC Latino. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the University of Houston's Creative Writing program, with an emphasis in Poetry. Martinez is also the Reviews and Interviews Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and a CantoMundo Fellow. His debut collection of poetry, Hustle, will be released May 13, 2014 by Sarabande Books.

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.