The Root's 30 Top Black Performance Poets

To cap off National Poetry Month, The Root recently compiled one badass list of the top Black Performance Poets "who revitalize the art on page and stage." Over here at Split This Rock, we were thrilled to see our beloved Patricia Smith (featured poet at the 2008 and 2010 festivals), and Lenelle Moïse (featured poets at the 2010 festival) make the list.

DC was also finely represented by local favorites and friends: Holly Bass, Sonya Renee Taylor, and Asha Shannon - who just might be the youngest poet on the list at 17, and who recently slammed her way to a spot on the DC Youth Slam Team.

And after experiencing Douglas Kearney on the Poets Rewriting Race Panel at AWP 2011, we have to agree with this pick and The Root's accurate description of Kearney's "unmatchable ability to translate printed stanzas into explosive, endearingly bizarre live shows."

Props to The Root for quite a comprehensive list representing an expanse of styles and voices.

Check out the full list here: http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/top-30-black-perform-formers

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.

Haiti Quaking in Our Hearts: By Lenelle Moise

The following is an excerpt from a blog post by Lenelle Moise, a 2010 Featured Poet at the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Click here to read the full post.

Nearly 30 years ago, I was born in Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital; in General Hospital, one of the many buildings this terrible earthquake has destroyed. Many Haitian friends are writing to me, calling for comfort and prayers. They cannot find or connect with their loved ones on the island. They are at wit's end. My own grandparents live down the road from the partially collapsed National Palace. We have not heard from them. We wait, horrified. Thousands have died. Millions are displaced, injured, traumatized and wailing. Haiti needs our collective cri de coeur, our respect, our love, our magic and our energy. Haiti needs immediate international support.

The following are Lenelle's suggested ways to help.

If you have not already done so, I encourage you to text YELE to 501501 to donate $5 to musician Wyclef Jean's earthquake relief effort. Yele is an effective grassroots organization that brought fast, direct assistance to the people during Haiti's recent hurricane/flooding crises.

For those who can give more, journalist Rachel Maddow has compiled a list of links.

Medical professionals can call 212-697-9767 to volunteer.

To read Lenelle's poem "Mud Mothers," our November 25, 2009 poem of the week, click here. Please circulate the poem and Lenelle's blog post.

Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week: Lenelle Moïse

Mud Mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

they took off
with our torn branches
beheaded our future
stuck our breath up on pikes
for all the world to see

we are a living dead example
of what happens to warriors who―
in lieu of fighting for white men’s countries―
dare to fight
for their own lives

during carnival
we could care less
about our bloated empty bellies
where there are voices
we are dancing

where there is vodou
we are horses
where there are drums
we are possessed
with joy & stubborn jamboree

but when the makeshift
trumpet player
runs out of rhythmic breath
the only sound left is guts
grumbling

& we sigh
to remember
that food
& freedom
are not free

is haiti really free
if our babies die starving?
if we cannot write our names
read our rights keep
our leaders in their seats?

can we be free
really? if our mothers are mud? if dead
columbus keeps cursing us
& nothing changes
when we curse back

we are a proud resilient people
though we return to dust daily
salt gray clay with hot black tears
savor snot cakes
over suicide

we are hungry
creative people
sip bits of laughter
when we are thirsty
dance despite

this asthma
called debt
congesting
legendarily liberated
lungs

- Lenelle Moïse

Used by permission.

····

Lenelle Moïse hailed “a masterful performer” by GetUnderground.com, is an award-winning "culturally hyphenated pomosexual" poet, playwright and performance artist. She creates jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized texts about Haitian-American identity and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality and resistance. In addition to featured performances in venues as diverse as the Louisiana Superdome, the United Nations General Assembly Hall and a number of theatres, bookstores, cafes and activist conferences, Lenelle regularly performs her acclaimed autobiographical one-woman show WOMB-WORDS, THIRSTING at colleges across the United States.

····
Moïse will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010, in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism - four days of creative transformation as we imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org.

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