Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience

Photo by Jill Brazel

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience. 

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.).

• Poems will be accepted until January 31, 2017. 
• Send us your poems of resistance and power, and we will publish them on Split This Rock’s blog, Blog This Rock (blogthisrock.blogspot.com), to create a Virtual Open Mic. We welcome poems new and old, whether previously published or not. (Please include credit information for previously published work.) 
• Thematically we are wide open: resistance, mourning, rage, celebration, love. We are especially open to poems in solidarity with marginalized people, poems that celebrate activism and community, poems that sustain us in these perilous times. What would you like your country to know at this moment? What do you need to say to America?
• Unfortunately, Split This Rock's blog is not compatible with poems with complex formatting. Should we find that your poem can not be properly posted we will be in touch to request a different poem.
• Send the poem(s) as email attachments (.doc or .docx only) with the subject line “Resistance Poem” to submissions@splitthisrock.org. Include the poem name and your name in the document title.
• Please include the poem's title and your full contact information in the body of the email. 
• We invite one poem per person. 
• From the open mic collection, we may occasionally choose poems to run as Poem of the Week in the weeks ahead. We will contact you directly if we decide to use your poem for Poem of the Week. 
• Send questions to info@splitthisrock.org.

After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

Thank you for refusing silence.

Check out other resistance opportunities at our Poetic Resistance Events & Virtual Open Mic - January 2017 blog post!