Martín Espada to Receive Busboys and Poets Award @ Fall for the Book

Martín Espada will receive the 2014 Busboys and Poets Award on Saturday, September 13, at 5:30 p.m. in Grand Tier III, Center for the Arts, on George Mason University’s Fairfax, VA, campus.  

The award is sponsored by Busboys and Poets, a restaurant, bookstore, fair trade market and gathering place based in Washington, DC. In addition to recognizing the work of the poet chosen to receive it, the award also pays tribute to Langston Hughes, who worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., during the 1920s before he gained recognition as a poet. 

Sarah Browning, Executive Director of Split This Rock and a long-time host of poetry programming at Busboys and Poets, will present the award—which includes a plaque and a monetary award—following a talk and reading by Espada.

Martín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published more than fifteen books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest collection of poems, The Trouble Ball (Norton), is the recipient of the Milt Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book Award and an International Latino Book Award. His previous book of poems, The Republic of Poetry (Norton), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has also received an American Book Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. 

The title poem of his collection, Alabanza, about 9/11, has been widely anthologized and performed. His book of essays, Zapata’s Disciple(South End Press), has been banned in Tucson as part of the Mexican-American Studies Program outlawed by the state of Arizona. A former tenant lawyer in Greater Boston’s Latino community, Espada is currently a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Previous winners of the Busboys and Poets Award include Claudia Rankine (2011), Rita Dove (2012), and Sonia Sanchez (2013).

Full details here: http://fallforthebook.org/2014/06/13/busboys-and-poets-award-martin-espada/

June Sunday Kind of Love

June Sunday Kind of Love 

Featuring 

Theresa Davis

Sunday June 16, 2013 

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

Theresa Davis is the mother of three and was a classroom teacher for over twenty years. She reclaimed her love for poetry ten years ago after the loss of her father. Since then, she has been a member of the ArtsInterface,  Co-founder of Art Amok Slam Team, Women of the World Slam Champion (2011), poet in residence as the 2012 McEver Chair of Georgia Tech University, Emerging Artist Grant Recipient, co-producer of the staged poetry performance with Jon Goode "Wish You Were Here", and was honored by the City of Atlanta with a proclamation making May 22, Theresa Davis Day.

In July 2012, Theresa released her Chapbook "Simon Says" poems about teaching and anti-bullying themes. This project, in partnership with the City of Atlanta's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, is a call to action to bring about an end to bully culture in our children's classrooms. As a contracted author, with Sibling Rivalry Press, Theresa has released her first published collection of poems entitled "After This We Go Dark."

  

*This event was supported in part by Poets & Writers 

Split This Rock Poem of the Week - Derrick Weston Brown

Split This Rock Poem of the Week - Derrick Weston Brown Duke Ellington's You St. Lament I try to follow his eyes see where his stare lands. The Duke watches from an elevated perch. Now. Not like before when his face used to be ground level. Maybe he just watches over you, me, and the faces still left in the color corridor. Or maybe that's a worried look on his wrinkled brow as if he's dreading a gentrified tap on his shoulder reminding even the Duke to fear a rise in rent. - Derrick Weston Brown from Wisdom Teeth, used by permission Derrick Weston Brown holds an MFA in creative writing from American University. He is Poet in Residence at Busboys and Poets (14th & V). He has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University and Cornelius Eady at American University and is a graduate of the Cave Canem Summer workshop for black poets and the VONA summer workshop. His work has appeared in such literary journals as Warpland, Mythium, Ginsoko, DrumVoices, The Columbia Poetry Review, and the online journals Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Howard University's Amistad, LocusPoint,and MiPOesias. His debut collection, Wisdom Teeth, was released by Busboys and Poets Books in 2011. Brown attended both the 2008 and 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness. Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of theinformation in this email, including this request. Thanks! Split This Rock www.splitthisrock.org info@splitthisrock.org 202-787-5210

April Sunday Kind of Love: Kevin Coval & the DC Youth Slam Team

April Sunday Kind of Love

Featuring Kevin Coval
& the DC Youth Slam Team

Sunday April 17, 2011
4-6 pm

**PLEASE NOTE: Contrary to previous announcements, April's Sunday Kind of Love will begin at 4 pm. The new starting time of 5 pm will begin in May. We apologize for the inconvenience.**

Langston Room, Busboys and Poets
2021 14th St. NW
Washington, DC

Hosted by Sarah Browning and Katy Richey
Co-Sponsored by
Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock

Open mic at each event!

Suggested donation: $5; no one turned away
For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET

Kevin Coval is author of the forthcoming, L-vis Lives! (Haymarket Books, Fall 2011), Everyday People and Slingshots (A Hip-Hop Poetica), an American Library Association Book of the Year-Finalist and the new chapbook, What I Will Tell My Jewish Kids And Other Poems on Palestine (Haymarket Books April 2011). Coval is the Co-Founder of Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Youth Poetry Festival, the largest youth poetry festival in the world, and subject of the award-winning documentary by the same name. Coval is Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors and teaches at The School of the Art Institute in Chicago.

The DC Youth Slam Team, coached by Jonathan B. Tucker, is a collective of teenage performance poets who write, perform and practice together, with coaching from professional poets. The DC Youth Slam Team has a rich history of providing young poets in our nation's capital with a chance to develop their art in a supporting, caring environment. Read more and support the team here.

Join Pulitzer Prize winning author, ALICE WALKER (The Color Purple), Busboys and Poets, NAACP CEO/President BEN JEALOUS, CODEPINK, Teaching for Change, TransAfrica Forum, Words, Beats and Life, Split This Rock, and many others as we celebrate the publication of Walker's new volume of poetry, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing.

Walker writes in the preface, "though we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one." PERFORMANCES BY:-- DJ EYE AM-- Chelsey Green, Electric Violinist-- Carolyn Malachi, Singer-- Holly Bass, B&P 5th & K Poet-in-Residence

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Medrano and Ghebremichael Rock the House @ August Sunday Kind of Love

Michael Luis Medrano, author of Born in the Cavity of Sunsets, and Simki Ghebremichael, winner of Split This Rock's 2010 poetry contest, were on fire at Busboys and Poets in August, reading in the series Split This Rock cosponsors with Busboys, Sunday Kind of Love.

Born in the Cavity of Sunsets (Bilingual Press) is getting rave reviews, as in this one from the Summer 2010 issue of Multi-Cultural Review: "Medrano’s portraits of hustlers, musicians, poets, as well as his letters and complaints, are marvelously vibrant and witty pieces that leave the reader wishing for more. We long for more Mexican clowns, more barrio contortionists, more cholos and vendors. If nothing else, the collection’s brightest moment is its title poem which celebrates the forgotten men of places like Fresno, the men “of mustaches and oiled hair, brawn, and estrogen / dripping from our tortas de jamón.” Medrano’s eye for original detail is a pure pleasure. And Born in the Cavity of Sunsets is a fine first collection. It will be a joy to watch his career unfold."

Read Simki's winning poem here.

Video of the Howard Zinn Tribute at Busboys!

Click here to watch a video of the Zinn tribute at Busboys and Poets.

Sarah Browning Reads Lenelle Moise's "Mud Mothers"

From the January 15 Confronting Climate Debt panel at Busboys and Poets Washington D.C. (14th and V) featuring Naomi Klein, Bolivian Ambassador to the UN Pablo Solon and activist/spoken word artist Michele Roberts.

Somehow Tenderness Survives: Remembering Dennis Brutus, January 10

Sunday, January 10, 2010, 4-6 pm
Langston Room, Busboys and Poets

14th and V Streets, NW
Washington, DC
www.busboysandpoets.com
202-387-POET

Please join Busboys and Poets, Split This Rock, TransAfrica Forum, Africa Action, Foreign Policy in Focus/Institute for Policy Studies, and Haymarket Books as we celebrate the life and work of South African poet and pioneer for justice Dennis Brutus (1924-2009).

Featuring poetry and remembrances by poets Kenny Carroll, Elen Awalom, Holly Bass, and Sarah Browning, Sameer Dossani, former director of 50 Years is Enough, Zahara Heckscher, Emira Woods of Foreign Policy in Focus, Neil Watkins of Jubilee USA Network, Dave Zirin, author of What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States, and others. Audience members will also have an opportunity to offer their memories or to read a favorite poem by Dennis Brutus. Program to be followed by a screening of I Am a Rebel, a 50-minute documentary of Brutus' life by the South African filmmaker Vincent Moloi.

A world-renowned political organizer and one of Africa's most celebrated poets, Brutus was a life-long champion of peace and social justice. As an early opponent of Apartheid in South Africa, he spent years in prison on Robben Island with Nelson Mandela. Upon his release and exile, Brutus successfully organized an international sports boycott of South Africa. Among his many books are Poetry & Protest: A Dennis Brutus Reader (Haymarket Books, 2006).

Photo Credit: Jill Brazel

Party With Split This Rock, Thursday August 27!

Featuring A.B. Spellman and Regie Cabico with the DC Youth Slam Team!



Thursday, August 27, 6-8 pm
Langston Room, Busboys and Poets
14th & V Streets, NW
Washington, DC

Split This Rock invites you to a party Thursday, August 27, 2009, 6-8 pm, in the Langston Room, Busboys and Poets at 14th and V Streets, NW. Busboys will be donating fabulous refreshments and creating a couple of funky Split This Rock cocktails.

Why party? Split This Rock has recently received nonprofit status, a crucial step on the road to becoming a permanent home for socially engaged poets from DC and nationwide. Plus, believe it or not, it's just 6 months until the second Split This Rock Poetry Festival. So we figure it's time to celebrate.

Reading and performing will be 2010 featured poet and DC leading light A.B. Spellman, along with Regie Cabico and the DC Youth Slam Team. See below for more details. Entry will be $10-$25, sliding scale, and you'll have a chance to bid on amazing prizes at auction. Come prepared for readings, for fun, for volunteer opportunities, and for celebrating! For more information: info [at] splitthisrock [dot] org or 202-787-5210.

Can't make the party? You can still volunteer - just contact us at the above email or phone. We'd love to have you involved! And you can definitely still make a donation. Just click here. Many thanks!

Poets Celebrating with Split This Rock August 27 - Join Us!

A. B. Spellman is an author, poet, critic, and lecturer. His poetry collection, Things I Must Have Known, was recently was published by Coffee House Press. He has published numerous books and articles on the arts, including Art Tatum: A Critical Biography (a chapbook), The Beautiful Days (poetry), and Four Lives in the Bebop Business, now available as Four Jazz Lives (University of Michigan Press). In recognition of Spellman's commitment and service to jazz, the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005 named one of its prestigious Jazz Masters awards the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. He was a poet-in-residence at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught various courses in African-American culture, and at Emory, Rutgers, and Harvard Universities, where he offered courses in modern poetry, creative writing, and jazz.


The DC Youth Slam Team poets utilize their vocal energy and strength to channel emotions, generate a message, or participate in the artistic field they enjoy. Through their poetic works, they rejuvenate the art of poetry and create individual identities with distinct voices. These teens are the future voices of America. Welcome to the beginning of a movement.



Regie Cabico is the Director of Split This Rock's World & Me youth poetry contest and Artistic Director of Sol & Soul. Cabico is a poet, playwright, and spoken word performer. He took top prizes at the 1993, 1994, and 1997 National Poetry Slams. His work appears in over 30 anthologies and he co-edited Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry. He received a NYFA Artist Fellowship for Poetry in 1997, NYFAs in 2003 for Poetry and Performance Art, and two Brooklyn Arts Council Poetry Awards. Cabico has been a teacher for Urban Word and developed a poetry and performance program for teens with psychiatric illness at Bellevue Hospital. He received the 2006 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers in recognition of his work with diverse communities.

Sunday Kind of Love This Sunday June 21

Return to Sunday Kind of Love on the first day of summer in the Langston Room at Busboys and Poets at 14th and V NW this Sunday, June 21, 4 - 6 p.m.

This reading will feature Lorna Dee Cervantes, Alice B. Fogel, and Reb Livingston.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wing Press, 2006) and From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada(1981), which won an American Book Award. Her work has been included in many anthologies including Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. She is also leading a workshop on Saturday the 27th. Register by emailing melissa.dcpaw [at] gmail.com. Also, check out the FaceBook event page

* Alice B. Fogel is the author of Be That Empty(Harbor Mountain Press, 2007), I Love This Dark World (Zoland, 1996) and Elemental, Zoland Books (Cambridge, 1993). Her poems have been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, Poets Choice, and many other anthologies. She teaches at the University of New Hampshire.



Reb Livingston is the author of Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books, 2007), Pterodactyls Soar Again (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series, 2006), co-author of Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books, 2006) and co-editor of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel anthology series. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, and other publications. She's also the editor of No Tell Motel and publisher of No Tell Books.

*Photo credit John Clarke Russ