Split This Rock at AWP in Tampa - March 7–10, 2018

Split This Rock will be at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference (AWP) taking place March 7-10 in Tampa! 

If you're attending, we hope you'll join us to celebrate Split This Rock's 10th anniversary as we rededicate ourselves to poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. Check out all the details below! (See the AWP website for more on the conference.)

Visit Split This Rock at 

AWP Table #T603

Visit Split This Rock at Table #T603 in the AWP Conference Bookfair, where you can meet and hang out with Split This Rockers, write a haiku post card to elected officials demanding gun control, buy a T-shirt, mug, or notecards with beautiful artwork with Split This Rock co-chair Dan Vera, pictured above and excerpts from poems in The Quarry, and enter a drawing for a free registration to Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2018 featuring Elizabeth Acevedo, Kazim Ali, Ellen Bass, Sherwin Bitsui, Kwame Dawes, Camille Dungy, Ilya Kaminsky, Sharon Olds, Sonia Sanchez, Solmaz Sharif, Terisa Siagatonu, Paul Tran, and Javier Zamora. We look forward to seeing you! 

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Split This Rock 10th Anniversary Reading at AWP!

Thursday, March 8 at 10:30 AM - 11:45 AM

Tampa Convention Center, First Floor, Room 20 & 21

In their last year of leadership, Split This Rock Executive Director Sarah Browning and long-time Board Chair Dan Vera will read with two poets whose work and spirit are central to Split This Rock, Franny Choi and Cornelius Eady. Also performing with Cornelius will be musicians from the Cornelius Eady trio.

Sarah Browning is co-founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness. Author of Killing Summer and Whiskey in the Garden of Eden, and co-editor of three special issues of Poetry magazine, she co-hosts Sunday Kind of Love at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC.

Franny Choi is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone. She has received awards and fellowships from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, and Kundiman. She is a Project VOICE teaching artist and a member of the Dark Noise Collective.

Cornelius Eady is the author of eight poetry collections including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize, and Brutal Imagination. He holds the Miller Chair at the University of Missouri and is co-founder of Cave Canem.

Dan Vera is co-editor of Imaniman: Poets Respond to Gloria Anzaldúa and author of two books of poetry, most recently Speaking Wiri Wiri. Winner of the 2017 Oscar Wilde Award and Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, his poetry appears in various publications and university writing curricula. He now co-chairs the board of Split This Rock.

Learn more on Facebook. 

Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology Book Launch & 10th Anniversary Celebration

Friday, March 9 at 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

The Attic Cafe

500 E Kennedy Blvd, Suite 400, Tampa, Florida 33602

Come celebrate the launch of Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology and Split This Rock’s 10th anniversary! Hosted by Melissa Tuckey, Editor, and Co-Founder of Split This Rock. This ground-breaking book of poems brings social justice to the forefront of eco-poetry and offers a rich terrain of culturally diverse perspectives. 

Readers include Jennifer Atkinson, Sarah Browning, Camille Dungy, Kathy Engel, Jennifer Foerster, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Allison Hedge Coke, Tiffany Higgins, Brenda Hillman, Philip Metres, Lenard Moore, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Emmy Pérez, Danez Smith, Pam Ushuck, Dan Vera, and Javier Zamora. 

This off-site event is free! Full cafe menu will be available for purchase, including beer and wine. Within walking distance of the convention center and conference hotel. Wheelchair accessible.

Learn more on Facebook. 

Poem of the Week: Aaron Kreuter

 

Paddling the Nickel Tailings Near Sudbury

-- After Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes Photographs

We put in at the edge of the tailings pond,

our canoe loaded with gear and food

to take us on the four-day loop trip,

our nylon tent and stainless steel pots.

The river at first is like any other river

but not, a photo with the colours twisted,

stunning, rich orange fluorescence,

tailing off into the blackened valley bed.

The slurry so thick it takes a dozen strokes

before we learn how to move in it,

but by mid-aft we're paddling well,

elbowing with the river's curves,

the blades of our paddles sizzling

as we dig through the golden slur.

We pass charred river banks,

stunted trees subsumed in industrial after-thought,

the refinery puffing away on the horizon

busy piping out the iron chaff

that ends in the tailings impoundment

we're set on exploring

(I think: iron, ironic, nickel).

We enter a delta and pick our way

through; later, on the only portage

of the day-from Wet Tailings Outflow 3

to Wet Tailings Outflow 7--

the ground gives like fresh bread,

endless salt-and-pepper spongy loam.

The canoe on our shoulders

we sink knee-deep in the gummy effluent.

There are no animal tracks, no

beaver dams to break through

(I think: terrestrial habitat disturbance,

I think: various tailings disposal alternatives

at a conceptual design level,

think: slurry trench cut-off wall).

We put back in at Stony Waste Basin.

The sun, coalish through the haze,

is lowering. We're an hour or so

from the main tailings pond, can

smell the tangy iron-oxide (I think: fact, faction,

factor. I think: Factory).

Stew, my paddling companion, coughs, says:

"I didn't think I'd miss the insects

as much as the potable water,

the blue sky, green." We

haven't used the bathroom

since parking at the quarry.

It's started raining fire, pitch.

Our faces black, our hands glowing.

We need to set up camp.

We need to find someplace

to hang the food barrel.

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From the forthcoming Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology (University of Georgia Press). Used with permission.

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Aaron Kreuter is a writer of fiction and poetry currently based in Toronto, where he is pursuing a PhDin English literature at York University. He has had work published in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, including: Best Canadian Poetry 2014, Parchment, Vallum, Carte Blanche, and PacificREVIEW, among other places. His first poetry collection,Arguments For Lawn Chairs, is forthcoming from Guernica Editions. Learn more at his website aaronkreuter.com.

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