We are pleased to present a selection of sessions on themes of race, identity, and racial justice at Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2016: Poems of Provocation & Witness.
For the full festival program, please visit the program page here.
Black Ladies Brunch Crew Presents "Not Without Laughter"
Saida Agostini, Anya Creightney, Teri Cross Davis, celeste doaks, Niki Herd
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102 [Map]
Saida Agostini, Anya Creightney, Teri Cross Davis, celeste doaks, Niki Herd
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102 [Map]
Thursday, April 14 11:30am – 1pm
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| Photo by Kristin Adair. |
Celebrating the Poetry of Pat Parker
Kazim Ali, Cheryl Clarke, Julie Enszer, Bettina Judd
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 300 [Map]
Kazim Ali, Cheryl Clarke, Julie Enszer, Bettina Judd
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 300 [Map]
Thursday, April 14, 2016 11:30am – 1pm
Pat Parker (1944-1989) was an influential poet and activist in feminist publishing, whose work as a poet and activist reflects the intersection of a variety of feminist and alternative publishing practices during the 1970s and 1980s. Parker’s poetry grapples with the multiple, intersecting oppressions that she experienced as an African-American woman and lesbian who both experienced and witnessed violence. Her work lends powerful words to these experiences. For example, in “Progeny” Parker writes, “It is difficult/to teach my child/the beauty of flowers/in a field/at the same time/I warn her about/the dangers of/open spaces.” Plain-spoken, but rhythmic and musical, Parker’s verse brings humor and pathos to readers and listeners. During her lifetime, Parker’s work circulated as widely as the work of Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Judy Grahn. Revered as poet, Parker also was a member of the Women’s Press Collective, the first lesbian-feminist publishing collective in the United States, founded in 1969. Today, Parker’s contributions as a publisher and a poet have fallen into obscurity, but a new edition of The Complete Works of Pat Parker will be released in April 2016.
The New Black Femininity
Elizabeth Acevedo, Tafisha Edwards, Dawn Lundy Martin, Katy Richey, Venus Thrash
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 300 [Map]
Elizabeth Acevedo, Tafisha Edwards, Dawn Lundy Martin, Katy Richey, Venus Thrash
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 300 [Map]
Thursday, April 14 2:00 – 3:30pm
Borrowing its name from the 2014 festival session “The New Black Masculinity,” this session will discuss the redefinition of Black Femininity in a modern context. What is Black Femininity? How is it personified and by whom? How can Black women subvert monolithic archetypes of Black womanhood in mainstream imagery? If hetero-white constructs represent the standard of feminine persona, how do black women understand and illustrate their own feminine identity? How do innovation, multi-ethnicity, gender performance, and vulnerability influence these evolving identities? Panelists will share their work and discuss their own relationships to and identifications of Black femininity.
Willow Books Showcase Reading
Elmaz Abinader, Mahogany Browne, Rachelle Escamilla, Yesenia Montilla, Rich Villar
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Elmaz Abinader, Mahogany Browne, Rachelle Escamilla, Yesenia Montilla, Rich Villar
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Thursday, April 14 2:00 – 3:30pm
Poets representing four publishing series by Willow Books will give a showcase reading. Founded in 2008, Willow Books specializes in the literary works of writers of color. The Willow Books Literature Awards, Established/Emerging Author Series, Editor’s Choice, and Innovator Series feature the diverse voices of poets of color from across the nation. Through publishing programs, national and international readings and partnerships with fellow organizations such as Cave Canem, Willow produces many of today’s top poets of color. The Literature Awards is a national competition for writers from diverse backgrounds; the Established/Emerging Series publishes distinguished and emerging poets; Editor’s Choice selects promising work from an annual open reading period; the Innovator Series recognizes the writings of leaders in the publishing industry who have committed themselves to advancing their fellow writers. Willow has created a national model for identifying emerging talent as well as providing established authors a much-needed platform for advancing their bodies of work. The format of the reading will involve 12-minute readings from five poets, followed by a 30-minute Q&A with the audience.
Nuev@s Voces Poetics: A Dialogue About New Chican@ Identities
Christopher Carmona, Isaac Chavarria, Rossy Lima, Gabriel Sanchez
Institute for Policy Studies Conference Room [Map]
Christopher Carmona, Isaac Chavarria, Rossy Lima, Gabriel Sanchez
Institute for Policy Studies Conference Room [Map]
Thursday, April 14 4:00 – 5:30pm
Over the past 14 years, Chican@ poetics has had a great resurgence in interest, political activism, and publication. There is a growing number of poetry readings, chapbooks, magazine publications, and CDs of Latin@ writers who have begun to identify with the political aspirations of the Chican@ movement. With the creation and popularity of Librotraficante and Poets Responding to SB 1070, along with Centro Victoria and its hijacking of the American Book Review, we have seen Chican@’s more politically active than they have been in years. We ask the questions: What has triggered such an interest in Chican@ in recent times? What types of poetry, writing, and art is being created and what are the social factors that have led to a new Chican@ poetics? This session addresses four different identities within the Chican@ identity such as xicanindio (Christopher Carmona), inmigrante (Rossy Lima), poch@ (Isaac Chavarria), & the fluid Chican@ (Gabriel Sanchez) as a jumping-off point to discuss all that is happening currently.
Bois in Color – A Reading on Queerness & Race
Cameron Awkward-Rich, Chen Chen, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Danez Smith
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Cameron Awkward-Rich, Chen Chen, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Danez Smith
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Friday, April 15 11:30am – 1:00pm
In moments like ours, when the fact of racist violence “re-emerges” everywhere we look, there is an understandable tendency to retreat into single-issue politics--to claim Audre Lorde as black but not lesbian, or to strip Bayard Rustin of his homosexuality--which nonetheless participates in the murderous flattening of poc lives. Against this impulse, our work as queer bois of color asks: what can queerness teach us about race, about resistance, about productive masculinities, about flourishing? This event will consist of each presenter offering a brief account of how their work fits into this larger conversation, followed by a reading, and will conclude with time set aside for a Q&A.
In moments like ours, when the fact of racist violence “re-emerges” everywhere we look, there is an understandable tendency to retreat into single-issue politics--to claim Audre Lorde as black but not lesbian, or to strip Bayard Rustin of his homosexuality--which nonetheless participates in the murderous flattening of poc lives. Against this impulse, our work as queer bois of color asks: what can queerness teach us about race, about resistance, about productive masculinities, about flourishing? This event will consist of each presenter offering a brief account of how their work fits into this larger conversation, followed by a reading, and will conclude with time set aside for a Q&A.
Can You See Us? Policed Black Womanhood
Destiny Birdsong, April Gibson, Kateema Lee, Katy Richey, Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Institute for Policy Studies Conference Room [Map]
Destiny Birdsong, April Gibson, Kateema Lee, Katy Richey, Nafissa Thompson-Spires
Institute for Policy Studies Conference Room [Map]
Friday, April 15 11:30am – 1:00pm
This reading will feature the work of black women writers who employ a range of craft approaches to writing the policed black woman's body, particularly when it is complicated by identity constructs such as poverty, (mental) illness, differing abilities, and addiction. Recent media coverage of the murders of black men has raised awareness about the vulnerability of black male bodies. However, the dehumanizing effects of policing are not treated with the same urgency for black women, whose multiple subjectivities place them in a constant police state. Everyone from police officers to doctors are trying to control, cure, or (as is the case in pop culture) reduce black women to commodified parts. In response, four poets and one fiction writer at various stages of their careers will read work that explores how such bodies are policed, how this policing informs our writing lives, and how we respond in ways that signal empowerment and rearticulation. The audience will be asked to participate in an interactive art project, and we will host a Q&A after the reading.
This reading will feature the work of black women writers who employ a range of craft approaches to writing the policed black woman's body, particularly when it is complicated by identity constructs such as poverty, (mental) illness, differing abilities, and addiction. Recent media coverage of the murders of black men has raised awareness about the vulnerability of black male bodies. However, the dehumanizing effects of policing are not treated with the same urgency for black women, whose multiple subjectivities place them in a constant police state. Everyone from police officers to doctors are trying to control, cure, or (as is the case in pop culture) reduce black women to commodified parts. In response, four poets and one fiction writer at various stages of their careers will read work that explores how such bodies are policed, how this policing informs our writing lives, and how we respond in ways that signal empowerment and rearticulation. The audience will be asked to participate in an interactive art project, and we will host a Q&A after the reading.
Cross X Bridge – Indigenous Poets, Genre, and Native Literature
Heid Erdrich, Eric Gansworth, Deborah Miranda, Trevino Brings Plenty, Karenne Wood
Human Rights Campaign Room 105 C [Map]
Heid Erdrich, Eric Gansworth, Deborah Miranda, Trevino Brings Plenty, Karenne Wood
Human Rights Campaign Room 105 C [Map]
Friday, April 15 11:30am – 1:00pm
Native American/Indigenous poets perform work that fuses genre, to cross and bridge cultures. Indigenous resistance asserts itself in poetry that crosses genres to expand Native Literature through line, lyric, and poetics that meld with music and moving images. Our voice performances speak from urban and reservation lives, from distinct nations—for those who are silenced. The poets will perform and engage listeners in a talk back session. We are Lakota, Ojibwe, Onondaga, Esselen and Chumash, and Monacan. We come from all directions to share our visions and make our histories and presence known.
Native American/Indigenous poets perform work that fuses genre, to cross and bridge cultures. Indigenous resistance asserts itself in poetry that crosses genres to expand Native Literature through line, lyric, and poetics that meld with music and moving images. Our voice performances speak from urban and reservation lives, from distinct nations—for those who are silenced. The poets will perform and engage listeners in a talk back session. We are Lakota, Ojibwe, Onondaga, Esselen and Chumash, and Monacan. We come from all directions to share our visions and make our histories and presence known.
Unlanguaging White Supremacy: Toward a Solidarity Poetics Practice
K. Bradford, Jen Hofer, Kristen Nelson
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Gallery [Map]
K. Bradford, Jen Hofer, Kristen Nelson
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Gallery [Map]
Friday, April 15 11:30am – 1:00pm
The world in all its beauty and brutality is made of language. Language scaffolds systems of institutionalized injustice -- and for poets, language is also the tool of our radical art-making and our revolutionary re-imaginings. What language can we use to unwrite white supremacy as it colludes with transphobia, sexism, classism and heterosexism? How to reimagine oppressive modes and syntax in and beyond language? On whose backs are our bridges built and how might we trouble the model of the bridge? What practical strategies and radical awareness about racism, white supremacy, white privilege, and solidarity action can we build without falling into clichés of allyship? This workshop will incite adventurous approaches to poetics as a spark and foundation to imagine otherwise; to conceive language as a tool for forging our way toward transformed community/kinship ties as potential for action. The facilitators of this workshop face daily moments where our gender, race, class or sexuality are "passed." Whether we are white & anti-racist or of mixed ethnicity, we ask: how can we acknowledge the privileges assigned to us while resisting the systems that afford those privileges. We invite a rigorous re-imagining of ways to notice and interrupt oppressive dynamics and structures – internally and externally, personally and systemically: poetically.
The world in all its beauty and brutality is made of language. Language scaffolds systems of institutionalized injustice -- and for poets, language is also the tool of our radical art-making and our revolutionary re-imaginings. What language can we use to unwrite white supremacy as it colludes with transphobia, sexism, classism and heterosexism? How to reimagine oppressive modes and syntax in and beyond language? On whose backs are our bridges built and how might we trouble the model of the bridge? What practical strategies and radical awareness about racism, white supremacy, white privilege, and solidarity action can we build without falling into clichés of allyship? This workshop will incite adventurous approaches to poetics as a spark and foundation to imagine otherwise; to conceive language as a tool for forging our way toward transformed community/kinship ties as potential for action. The facilitators of this workshop face daily moments where our gender, race, class or sexuality are "passed." Whether we are white & anti-racist or of mixed ethnicity, we ask: how can we acknowledge the privileges assigned to us while resisting the systems that afford those privileges. We invite a rigorous re-imagining of ways to notice and interrupt oppressive dynamics and structures – internally and externally, personally and systemically: poetically.
#BlackPoetsSpeakOut: From Hashtag to Social Justice Movement - A Panel Discussion
Amanda Johnston, Mahogany L. Browne, Derrick Weston Brown, Steven Leyva
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Amanda Johnston, Mahogany L. Browne, Derrick Weston Brown, Steven Leyva
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Friday, April 15 2:00pm – 3:30pm
In the wake of a grand jury failing to indict Darren Wilson in the murder of Mike Brown, Black Poets Speak Out was launched as a way to rally poets and allies to respond against police violence. In a short time, hundreds of poetry videos were posted and shared internationally across social media outlets and live readings, forums, and action events were produced. BPSO organizers Amanda Johnston and Mahogany L. Browne and regional coordinators Derrick Weston Brown and Steven Levya will discuss how the online campaign was developed and progressed to a community action-based movement.
In the wake of a grand jury failing to indict Darren Wilson in the murder of Mike Brown, Black Poets Speak Out was launched as a way to rally poets and allies to respond against police violence. In a short time, hundreds of poetry videos were posted and shared internationally across social media outlets and live readings, forums, and action events were produced. BPSO organizers Amanda Johnston and Mahogany L. Browne and regional coordinators Derrick Weston Brown and Steven Levya will discuss how the online campaign was developed and progressed to a community action-based movement.
Queer Pan-Latinidad: A LBGTQ Latina/o Poetry Reading
Rosebud Ben-Oni, Nívea Castro, Denice Frohman, Rigoberto González, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Ruben Quesada
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102 [Map]
Rosebud Ben-Oni, Nívea Castro, Denice Frohman, Rigoberto González, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Ruben Quesada
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102 [Map]
Friday, April 15 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Queerness and Latinidad both offer spaces to explore the complex, messy, and undefined parts of LGBTQ Latino/a poets. To combine both is to honor the queerness in Latinidad, and the Latinidad in queerness. Five Latina/o poets explore the diversity of Queer Latinidad, representations of marginalized communities such as Afro-Latino and Central American, and queer issues of racism and class. A question and answer session will follow the poetry reading, in order to engage with the audience on the rich complexities and nuances of Queer and/or Latino/a identity in 21st century poetry and poetics.
Queerness and Latinidad both offer spaces to explore the complex, messy, and undefined parts of LGBTQ Latino/a poets. To combine both is to honor the queerness in Latinidad, and the Latinidad in queerness. Five Latina/o poets explore the diversity of Queer Latinidad, representations of marginalized communities such as Afro-Latino and Central American, and queer issues of racism and class. A question and answer session will follow the poetry reading, in order to engage with the audience on the rich complexities and nuances of Queer and/or Latino/a identity in 21st century poetry and poetics.
The Drawbridge Collective: Disrupting and Reimagining Aesthetics of the Craft
Elizabeth Acevedo, Amin Law, Pages Matam, Terisa Siagatonu, Clint Smith
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Elizabeth Acevedo, Amin Law, Pages Matam, Terisa Siagatonu, Clint Smith
University of California Washington Center (UCDC) Auditorium [Map]
Friday, April 15 4:00pm – 5:30pm
Coming from both spoken word and formal literary backgrounds, while pushing back against the notion that these are mutually exclusive, the Drawbridge Collective will give a reading imbued with dynamic performance and literary merit. The reading will serve as an exhibition of new voices that traverse multiple genres and discuss what it means to be young artists of color at a time in America when many young people of color are on the receiving end of ubiquitous, and often state-sanctioned, violence. All under the age of 30, this group represents a new generation of multi-racial artists rejecting the false dichotomy between "the page" and "the stage." Their collective reading will specifically focus on the idea of intersectionality as it relates to racial justice. From illuminating the congruence between the Palestinian Liberation and Black Lives Matter movements to delineating what arts education looks like in a cross-cultural context, each poem is ingrained with critique, vulnerability, and honesty.
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| Photo by Kristin Adair. |
Hybrid Poetics: Igniting the Living Text
K. Bradford, Ching-In Chen, Angel Dominguez, Janice Sapigao
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Gallery [Map]
K. Bradford, Ching-In Chen, Angel Dominguez, Janice Sapigao
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Gallery [Map]
Friday, April 15 4:00pm – 5:30pm
This panel will investigate and activate the cross-hatchings between hybrid bodies and hybridized poetic forms. The core question: how do our bodies, which are marked by multiplicity — mixed race, mixed class, gender variant, queer, polyamorous — call forward unique poetic forms? As poets of radical embodiment, what we do to the sentence, to forms of writing on the page — and how we test the borders of the page itself — are acts of aesthetic and cultural subversion. Our cultural and political hybridity, our refusal to occupy or assimilate to states of singularity, infuses and drives our textual inventiveness. We see the page as a living text that speaks from and to our cultural bodies and collective experiences. Our poetics preach our daily walk, as writers and as community-builders who trace our lineages forward and back across time. Exploring cultural embodiments of text such as choral structures, call & response, field notes, polyvocal assemblages, sonic scores, community ritual & more, the poets on this panel will 1) perform samplings of such work; 2) discuss these techniques/expressions and how they reflect and activate hybrid, halfbreed cultures and politics; 3) engage participants in exercises and community dialogue.
Language of the Unheard: Rural Children of Color and Literature
Alex "PoeticSoul" Johnson, Patrice Melnick, Rosalyn Spencer, Latasha Weatherspoon
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 101 [Map]
Alex "PoeticSoul" Johnson, Patrice Melnick, Rosalyn Spencer, Latasha Weatherspoon
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 101 [Map]
Friday, April 15 4:00pm – 5:30pm
In rural America, there are close to four million children of color: full of power, promise, possibility, and potential. Unfortunately, because they are in rural communities, they do not receive the media attention afforded to children of color in more urban areas, and they are often under-prioritized by charitable or benevolent organizations. Educators Patrice Melnick and Rosalyn Spencer will join poets-cum-spoken-word-artists Latasha Weatherspoon and Alex “PoeticSoul” Johnson to explore the art of working with marginalized youth groups. Through active discussion, they will lead the roundtable in finding ways that literary artists can engage with youth, such as: Mentorship, volunteering at youth facilities, and organizing and actualizing artists’ presentations in schools, detention centers, and other facilities. Presenters and participants will consider the ways that literary artists act as youth activists, and how they can maximize their efficiency with methods like community grant programs and collaboration with other activists and community and religious organizations. Together, we –as poets, spoken word performers, and literary artists– will help our communities’ children thrive, succeed, and take the artistic and cultural future that is rightfully theirs.
In This Skin: A Writing and Performance Workshop
Aimee Suzara
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Gallery [Map]
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.
Writing Race: Poets on the Complexity and Contradictions of Race
Martín Espada, Nikky Finney, Richard Michelson, Solmaz Sharif
Human Rights Campaign Equality Forum [Map]
Martín Espada, Nikky Finney, Richard Michelson, Solmaz Sharif
Human Rights Campaign Equality Forum [Map]
Saturday, April 16 9:30am – 11:00am
In the "post-racial" Obama era, most nations remain racially polarized, as the tragedy and protests in Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere amply demonstrate. How can a poet write truthfully about the complexity and contradictions of race? How can a poet balance the message in the poem with the demands of poetry? How can a poet speak on behalf of his or her community, and yet empathize with other communities? How can a poet channel anger into art, risking the alienation of the audience for the sake of honesty?
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| Photo by Kristin Adair. |
Hosted by Amanda Johnston and Mahogany Browne
Charles Sumner School Museum & Archives Room 102 [Map]
Saturday, April 16, 11:30am – 1:00pm
A community Black Poets Speak Out reading for Split This Rock. Black poets and allies are invited to share poems by black poets in response to police violence. All readers will be recorded for the BPSO online archive that continues to reach an international audience and is sent directly to Congress as part of the BPSO letter-writing campaign. Black Poets Speak Out readings are poetic protest readings that directly address the crisis of police violence in the United States. These readings rally black poets and allies through poems of witness to actively engage the community, the justice system, and their elected officials in the demand for change.
Anne Spencer's Legacy: Home, Community, and the Poetry of Resistance
Claire Hermann, Rashida James-Saadiya, Jaki Shelton Green, Shaun Spencer-Hester, kynita stringer-stanback
Saturday, April 16 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Claire Hermann, Rashida James-Saadiya, Jaki Shelton Green, Shaun Spencer-Hester, kynita stringer-stanback
Saturday, April 16 2:00pm – 3:30pm
This session considers how homes, both physical and embodied in community, shape the poetry and activism of marginalized writers. In 1903 in Lynchburg, VA, black poet, librarian, gardener, and activist Anne Spencer’s husband built her a two-story home featuring scavenged materials. In the tumultuous decades that followed, poets, artists, and activists came to stay, write, and recharge in the house and its gardens and writing cottage. Guests included James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Marian Anderson, Zora Neal Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, the Rev. Martin Luther King, and other luminaries. Spencer's granddaughter will offer an intimate description of her grandmother's home and legacy. Panelists will offer short readings and reflections on the theme of home in poetry and change-making. Attendees will then complete and discuss a triggered writing exploring the following questions: How do we understand and honor the stories of our forebears as they are embodied in journeys, landscapes, and homes? How can these stories strengthen us to face challenges as marginalized writers in this society? What does it mean to invite other writers and change-makers into our very personal realm? And how can we use Anne Spencer's model to foster a new paradigm of creative community building?
Fracture: Reading & Discussion by Contemporary Korean American Female Poets
Marci Calabretta, Anna Maria Hong, Arlene Kim, EJ Koh
Human Rights Campaign Room 105 C [Map]
Marci Calabretta, Anna Maria Hong, Arlene Kim, EJ Koh
Human Rights Campaign Room 105 C [Map]
Saturday, April 16 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Muriel Rukeyeser asked, “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” Award-winning poets discuss difficult truths about struggling with the complexities and responsibilities of identifying themselves as Korean American female poets, seeking to answer practical and political issues that arise from living on the hyphen between “Asian” and “American.” Presenters also examine how their work is situated in the fractured identities they claim.
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