#SplitThisRock2016 Sessions: Migration and Immigration

We are pleased to present a selection of sessions on themes of migration and immigration at Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2016: Poems of Provocation & Witness.

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

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

Invisible Americans - Voices Without Papers
Stephanie Cork, Naliyah Kaya, Vishnupriya”Priya” Krishnan, Yvette Lerma
Human Rights Campaign Room 105 AB [Map]

Thursday, April 14 11:30am – 1:00pm

Photo by Kristin Adair.

This interactive workshop guides participants in exploring frequently unexamined notions about who is considered an “American” and why. In an effort to dispel myths and misconceptions around immigration, participants will discuss their own familial paths to citizenship and hear
from undocumented individuals about their daily lived experiences, with special attention to the ways in which their various intersecting identities and cultures have shaped their lives and immigration experiences. Presenters and participants will then spend time imagining and discussing immigration reform strategies.

Migration and Identity: Interrogating Privilege Through Poetry
Benjamin Brezner, Marcos Martinez, Sean Pears, Susan Tichy
AFL-CIO Gompers Room [Map]

Thursday, April 14  2:00pm – 3:30pm

How do privileges stemming from race, ethnicity, class, gender, and migration intersect in our lives? Writers and activists of all backgrounds need to understand how overlapping regimes of privilege work, in order to dismantle them. Panelists will address how they write about privilege as they explore the relationships between migration and identity. Through hands-on writing activities, participants will have the opportunity to interrogate the sources of our uneven social structures and to write about their own experience. In this session, we hope to take one small step towards building a community in which we feel comfortable working together and exploring these topics through our poetry. Writers will leave with additional resources to spark the creation of new poems.

Poetry of Resistance ~ Voices for Social Justice
Carlos Parada Ayala, Sarah Browning, Carmen Calatayud, Martín Espada, Odilia Galván Rodríguez, Joseph Ross
AFL-CIO Gompers Room [Map]

Friday, April 15  2:00pm – 3:30pm

In response to AZ SB 1070, a racial profiling law passed in 2010 in Arizona, the late poet-activist Francisco X. Alarcón created the Facebook page, "Poets Responding to SB 1070.” He invited his colleague Odilia Galván Rodríguez and other poet-activists to join him. Poets Responding became a public forum calling for a humane and just immigration reform, for social justice for those racially profiled, and who, as a result, suffer grave injustices, not only here in the United States, but also in other countries. With over 600,000 visits and more than 3,000 poems posted to the site, the poet-moderators decided to publish an anthology. Panelists will read works from the recently released anthology, Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press,) and discuss the lively mixing of poetics and politics, which will serve as a focus for discussion with the participants on the topic of building a community of writers willing to take action. The discussion will also center on the necessity of writing poetry of witness, as a means of calling out and for action against the injustices being suffered in the most recent upsurge of racially motivated hate crimes facing People of Color across our planet.