Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge – Kim Roberts

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.  ― Gwendolyn Brooks  

As we journey through political, economic, and global health crises, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth underlying causes, illuminate impacts, and insist on transformative change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other structurally precarious people at greater risk are not new. Today, many more people are experiencing the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues. We recognize this opportunity for a heightened awareness of how our very survival depends on one another.

Poetry can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. Poetry can be a comfort when the most necessary actions are to rest and recover. It can remind us of what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. As cultural workers, we know that culture shapes our political and social imagination at a foundational level. As poets, we can use poetry to map what is, what has been, and possibly, the way forward, including the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect our lives, our communities, and our planet.

We asked poets to give us the words they chant to get out of bed, to raise their fists, to encourage their kin, to remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” To read all of these poems, visit Split This Rock’s website.

***

Order Ephemeropta, The Mayfly Family
By Kim Roberts

Each Spring coffin flies,

ephemera guttulata, emerge from the water

in tangled skeins, in hordes.

They mature in a matter of hours.

At dusk they mate in midair,

then in vast regiments

attack light: street lights, lamps

seen through glass panes. Underneath

the yellow porch light of the lake house,

the bodies pile up a foot deep.

Thoreau wrote, Am I not partly leaves

and vegetable mould myself?

Life spends itself so cheaply.

The pale amber wings, veined

with these fragile runes, lap

against one another like loose shingles.

In the morning, gathered in my dustpan,

death weighs almost nothing.

Split This Rock · Kim Roberts Order Ephemeropta Audio

Listen as Kim Roberts reads "Order Ephemeropta."

Published in The Southern Review, Spring 2019. 

Poem of the Week: Kim Roberts

 

PROTANDRIC

Oysters may look to us
like wet floppy tongues,

but there’s no licking.
There’s no touching.

Oysters are protandric-
they can change sex at will.

All oysters are born male.
They change to female

the following season.
They seem to like being female

most of the time. The older the oyster,
the more likely he’ll be female.

And you thought
they were an aphrodisiac?

One male ejaculates
then every male in the colony

follows suit.  Soon the waves
look like milk.  The eggs

sway like belly dancers.  It’s spring!
Once again, it’s spring.

***

From Little Patuxent Review (Winter, 2014).

Used with permission.

***

Kim Roberts is the author of four books of poems, most recently Fortune’s Favor: Scott in the Antarctic, a series of blank verse sonnets based on the 1910-1913 journal of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, whose team was the second to reach the South Pole (Poetry Mutual, 2015). Roberts is editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010), and co-editor of the Delaware Poetry Review and the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes. Her website is: kimroberts.org.

July Sunday Kind of Love

July Sunday Kind of Love

featuring

Deborah Ager 
Rachel Malis 

Yvette Neisser Moreno  

 and  

Kim Roberts

A Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poets Group Reading

  

  

Sunday July 20, 2014

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

Purchase tickets and learn more here. 

Deborah Ager is the author/editor of three books, co-director of the Miller Cabin reading series, and founding editor of 32 Poems Magazine. Her books include The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (2013) and Old Flame: Ten Years of 32 Poems Magazine (2012).     

Rachel Malis earned her M.F.A. from Arizona State University in 2010 and has been published in the New Mexico Poetry Review, Adirondack Review, Superstition Review, and several others. While completing her master's degree, Rachel received awards and grants to travel to Ukraine, the Czech Republic, and Australia, and these adventures have informed her work.    

Yvette Neisser Moreno is the author of Grip (winner of the 2011 Gival Press Poetry Award), and the translator of two volumes of poetry from Spanish. She directs the DC-Area Literary Translators Network (DC-ALT), serves on Split This Rock's Festival Committee, and teaches at The Writer's Center.     

Kim Roberts is the author of four books of poems, most recently To the South Pole, a connected series of blank verse sonnets written in the voice of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott, which will be published in November by Broadkill Press, and Animal Magnetism, winner of the Pearl Prize (Pearl Editions, 2011). She is the editor of the journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly, the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010), and co-editor of the web exhibit DC Writers' Homes. 

Poem of the Week: Kim Roberts

Portrait of Hippocrates, or Buqrat

from The Falnama of 1703, Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

O augury seeker,
...................know and be aware...

In the book of divination,

Hippocrates rides the simurgh,

..................a mythical bird,

as he returns to his home

carved from emeralds
.....................on Mount Qaf.

With his white turban,

scholar's dark beard,
..............and bright orange robe,

he looks over one shoulder

and strokes the bird's

....................golden tail feathers

.......as she flits through an azure sky

between eddies of clouds.
..................Healer of the sick,

Builder of the first hospital,

Master of alchemy,

................astrology and magic,

.....I have prepared myself

for your prognostication
.................with bathing and prayers,
......opened the book in my blindness,

opened my heart in hope
...................and placed my body,

my wounded body, in your hands.

-Kim Roberts

Used by permission.

Kim Roberts' most recent book, Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions, 2011), won the 2009 Pearl Prize. She is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington DC (Plan B Press, 2010). She is the author of two additional books of poems, The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007), and The Wishbone Galaxy (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1994), and the nonfiction chapbook Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word in DC (Beltway Editions, 2010).

Roberts will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. Join us!

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

Poem of the Week: Kim Roberts

IUDs

Dittrick Medical History Center, Cleveland

Wheels, whisks, wishbones,
silhouette of a tiny pine.

Birds in flight and fiddlehead ferns.
The uterus is a magic place:

dark as a cave, it accommodates
any shape we insert:

circles and snakes, beetles
and bows, fossils and fleurs de lis.

Some are even shaped like a uterus
in miniature, amulets for warding off

miniatures of ourselves. Leaves
of a plastic ginko tree unfurl —

no end to our genius, its infinite contours.
On this scaffold we build

a barren language in plastic letters:
expandable O’s, flying V’s,

X’s like antlers, and a range
of two-handled T’s, eager to get to work.

Used by permission.

From Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions, 2011)

Kim Roberts's most recent book, Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions, 2011), won the 2009 Pearl Prize. She is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington DC (Plan B Press, 2010). She is the author of two additional books of poems, The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007), and The Wishbone Galaxy (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1994), and the nonfiction chapbook Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word in DC (Beltway Editions, 2010).

Roberts organized the Beltway Poetry Quarterly Tenth Anniversary Reading at Split This Rock 2010, and was also on the panel The Poet as Historian in the 21st Century: A Rare Opportunity in Difficult Times. She also serves on the planning committee for the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem of the Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!

Split This Rock
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

February Sunday Kind of Love: Kim Roberts

Join us for a very special Sunday Kind of Love as we celebrate the publication of Kim Roberts's award-winning book of poems, Animal Magnetism. Kim has been central to Split This Rock since Day One, the smartest of advisors. Please join us as we toast her terrific accomplishment! As always, open mic follows.

Sunday Kind of Love

Featuring

Kim Roberts

Sunday February 20, 2011

4-6pm Langston Room - Busboys & 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!
Admission free, donations encouraged

For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET

Kim Roberts's most recent book, Animal Magnetism (Pearl Editions, 2011), won the 2009 Pearl Prize. She is the editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon On K. Street: Poems About Washington DC (Plan B Press, 2010). She is the author of two additional books of poems, The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press, 2007), and The Wishbone Galaxy (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1994), and the nonfiction chapbook Lip Smack: A History of Spoken Word in DC (Beltway Editions, 2010).

Roberts has been featured in numerous anthologies, including Letters to the World (Red Hen Press), American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon University Press), The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel (No Tell Books), and The First Yes: Poems About Communicating (Dryad Press). She has published widely in literary journals throughout the US, as well as in Canada, Ireland, France, Brazil, and New Zealand. Her poems have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Mandarin.

Washington Post Article about 'Full Moon on K Street'

The following is an excerpt from the Washington Post article about Full Moon on K Street, the recent anthology published by Beltway Poetry Quarterly editor Kim Roberts. For the full article, click here.

Photo Credit: Dan Zak, Washington Post

Washington has seen its small-press and self-publication movements, its spoken-word renaissance, its uniting of activist poets in the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, and the anchoring of reliable venues like Busboys and Poets and Beltway Poetry Quarterly -- these separate communities, the old and young, the living and the dead, the scholarly and the streetwise, have a place in the anthology.

"We're living in a historical place in historical times in a city that monumentalizes itself," says District writer-editor Dan Vera, 44, as the reception wanes and poets wrap themselves in scarves. "Sometimes you feel trapped in amber, but you try to catch the normal in poetry."

As she ties up small talk with guests, Roberts has other projects on her mind, like putting down a literary history of Washington in book form in a couple years. But first, 1,500 copies of "Full Moon on K Street" will go out, perhaps answering for some people the question "Washington has . . . what, exactly?"

It has Reed Whittemore's "gray facades/Of pillar and portal."

It has Sterling A. Brown's swarmed alleys and deserted pool rooms along Florida Avenue.

It has May Miller's "Cool magnificence of space."

It has Betty Parry's red and yellow roses in a back yard in Brookland.

Photo of the Week: Kim Roberts and Regie Cabico

This new feature will highlight a different photo each week from the 2008 festival. For more photos from the last festival, check out Split This Rock's Flickr.



Kim Roberts, editor of Beltway Quarterly, celebrating 10 years, and Regie Cabico, Split This Rock Youth Educator, at the Sunday March at the 2008 festival.

Full Moon on K Street: Poems about Washington DC

Plan B Press will release a new print anthology in January 2010, edited by Kim Roberts, the publisher of the acclaimed online journal Beltway Poetry Quarterly. Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington, DC will include 101 poems, written by current and former residents of the city between 1950 and the present.




Featuring over one hundred contemporary poems, the book captures DC's unique sense of place, from monuments to parks, from lawyers to bus stations, from go-go music to chili half-smokes. All poems were written between 1950 and the present, by past and current residents of the city. This anthology captures the city's many moods: celebratory, angry, and fiercely political.

Contributors include: two-time US Poet Laureate Reed Whittemore; DC's first Poet Laureate, Sterling A. Brown; senator and five-time presidential candidate Eugene J. McCarthy; Cervantes prize winner for lifetime achievement in Spanish-language literature, Jose Emilio Pacheco; renowned gay rights activist Essex Hemphill; and President Obama's official inauguration poet, Elizabeth Alexander.

Preorder from Plan B Press now and get 25% off!