#SplitThisRock2016 Sessions: Mental Health & Ability

Split This Rock 2016: Poems of Provocation & Witness presents sessions on mental health and ability justice.

For the full festival program, please visit the program page here.

And hey: Pre-registration is open now until March 31. 

Cripping the Intersections: Readings Probing Disability and Identity
Jim Ferris, Jill Khoury, Mike Northen, L. Lamar Wilson, Kathi Wolfe
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102 [Map]

Photo by Kristin Adair.

Thursday, April 14 4:00pm – 5:30pm

Disability – the one identity category that cuts across all the other lines. This themed reading will use poetry to explore some of the ways that the range of human circumstances we call disability weave through many other facets of identity, including race, gender, class, religion and spirituality, sexual orientation, level of education, and age. Disability intersects in complex ways with all other identity categories. This reading promises to challenge and trouble a variety of identity categories, probing the sometimes startling ways that seemingly disparate vectors of identity can converge. Discussion will follow; challenges, provocations, and jokes encouraged.

Physical Bodies and Poetic Bones
Diana Smith Bolton, Marlena Chertock, Leeya Mehta, Sarah Sansolo, Tyler Vile
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 101 [Map]

Friday, April 15 11:30am – 1:00pm

This panel will discuss body image and bodily integrity through the lens of female experience. Poetry carves a space that is inclusive and experimental, while still acknowledging and respecting poetic tradition and heritage. As poets, we contain multitudes beyond the straight, white, male experience. This panel will attempt to address the complex realities of the female body and identification (or rejection) of it as lived through poetry. Further, there are social and political implications for individuals whose bodies do not conform to the dominant media standard, such as through disability, racial identity, and gender identity. In recognition of emerging social justice for LGBT individuals and the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, this panel will explore how poets can channel the physical body into their poems to explore the physical and non-physical. This panel includes group discussion, poetry readings, and take-home workshop materials.

In This Skin: A Writing and Performance Workshop
Aimee Suzara
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Gallery [Map]

Saturday, April 16 9:30am – 11:00am

"Every organ has a consciousness," wrote Akira Kesai. And Sekou Sundiata said, so aptly, "it all depends on the skin we're livin' in." The body is our nexus of joy and pleasure, as well as the nexus for historical trauma, erasure, and exploitation. This writing and performance workshop will allow participants to explore how to begin writing from the body, while addressing attitudes about the body, including perceptions and expressions of beauty, race, gender, sexuality, and ability/disability. Participants will explore and develop gesture and text through guided writing, theater, and movement exercises and create a short piece. Given recent events in which the destruction of Black bodies has been most visible, and the historical trauma experienced by many people of color, those of colonized histories, and women, the workshop has special timeliness and relevance. It is a part of an effort to remember, heal, and transform individually and collectively.