Split This Rock Takes Part in 2015 Individual World Poetry Slam

Presented by The Beltway Poetry Slam and Poetry Slam Inc. (PSi), the Individual World Poetry Slam (October 7-10, 2015) is a four day poetry slam festival created by PSi giving spoken word poets the opportunity to compete outside of team competition for the title of the Individual World Poetry Slam Champion. The contenders hail from every major North American city including DC, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Vancouver, as well as countries around the world such as Australia, France, and Germany. In addition to two days of competition culminating in a grand finale of the top 12 poets, the event brings world acclaimed feature performers, poetry and performance workshops, specialty slams, open mics, and events for all ages to Washington D.C. Just a few of the many events Splitistas might be interested in include The Queer Kids Table Open Mic on Thursday, Sister Outsider: An Intersectional Conversation with Women of Color Panel & Reading on Friday, and the #BlackPoetsSpeakOut Open Mic on Saturday. For more detailed information on the IWPS schedule and poets participating in the competition, visit the IWPS website.

Split This Rock is pleased to be a sponsor & co-host to the following IWPS events:

WRITING WORKSHOP
Wednesday, October 7 | 6:30-8:15pm 
1112 16th St, NW, 6th Floor Conference Room 
Cost: FREE 
Facilitated by Robalu Gibson as seen on TVOne's Verses & Flow.

THE QUARRY, THE CHOIR, THE BREAKBEATS PART ONE
Friday, October 9 | 1-3 pm 
1112 16th St, NW, 6th Floor Conference Room
Cost: $5 (Get tickets at IWPS website) | Closest Metros: Farragut West or North
A literary craft workshop with Sarah Browning, Mahogany Browne, and Matt Gallant. Our panelists will focus on the importance and possibilities in writing for the page in a way that is authentic to the author and their voice, while exuding mastery of its conventions.

THE QUARRY, THE CHOIR, THE BREAKBEATS PART TWO
Sat., Oct. 10 | 1-3 pm | Split This Rock Office, Institute for Policy Studies 6th Floor Conference Room, 1112 16th St, NW, Suite #600, Washington, DC 20036
Cost: $5 (Get tickets at the IWPS website) | Closest Metro: Farragut West or North
The second portion of this workshop will focus on the do’s and don’ts of submissions, and how to create the best manuscript or submittable piece of work.  Participants will also have the opportunity to engage with panelists with inquiries. Panelists: Safia Elhillo, Matt Gallant, and Katy Richey.

Join Us for 3 Fabulous 100,000 Poets for Change Events featuring Mahogany L. Browne!

As part of the global celebration of poetry, art, and music's ability to promote social, environmental, and political change, Split This Rock is thrilled to join with Little Patuxent Review, Upshur Street Books, and the George Mason University Fall for the Book Festival to present three FREE events featuring Mahogany L. Browne, co-founder of #BlackPoetsSpeakOut, a movement that engages Black poets and poetry in the Black Lives Matter movement. Learn more about the annual 100,000 Poets for Change celebration and other affiliated events at its website.

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Mahogany L. Browne bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcees. Author of Smudge, she is an Urban Word NYC mentor, as seen on HBO's Brave New Voices and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country. Browne is also the publisher of Penmanship Books, the Nuyorican Poets Café Poetry Program Director and Friday Night Slam curator, and currently an MFA Candidate for Writing & Activism at Pratt Institute.

Get an early peek at what's in store by watching Browne perform "#blkgrlmagic" on Youtube.

JOIN US FOR THESE FREE SPECIAL EVENTS!

The Poet's Response: A Conversation on Social Justice & Poetics

Sun., Sept. 27 | 12-1pm | Baltimore Inner Harbor | FREE  

This Baltimore Book Festival panel & poetry reading features Mahogany Browne, zakia henderson-brown, Goldie Patrick, & Laura Shovan. Co-moderated by Sarah Browning (Split This Rock) and Steven Leyva (Little Patuxent Review). Visit the Baltimore Book Festival's website for more info.

Reading at Upshur Street Books 

Sun., Sept. 27 | 6pm | 827 Upshur St. NW, DC | FREE 

Join us for poetry, light refreshments, and inspiration as Mahogany Browne shares her heart-filling poetry. Visit the Facebook event page for more info.

Reading at GMU Fall for the Book Festival 

Mon., Sept. 28 | 4:30pm | GMU - Fairfax, Virginia campus, 

Sandy Spring Bank Tent, Johnson Ctr. Plaza | FREE
Don't miss Mahogany Browne at this week-long regional festival for all ages! Read more about the event and the festival at the Fall for the Book website. 

2015 Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism Honoring Mark Nowak

On April 2, Split This Rock presented the 2015 Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism, sponsored by the CrossCurrents Foundation, to Mark Nowak, for his extraordinary work fostering the voices of workers and bringing the stories and voices of workers to the center of poetry and public life.  

The ceremony was a resounding success, packing the house at the Arts Club of Washington. The three Finalists, Black Poets Speak Out/Mahogany L. Browne, Jonterri Gadson, Amanda Johnston; John Lee Clark; and Bob Holman, were also celebrated with a multimedia presentation during the ceremony, available below. 

Check out more photos, all by Kristin Adair, on Flickr here.

Split This Rock Executive Director Sarah Browning delivered opening remarks.

 Elexia "Lexi" Alleyne (top) and Milen Mehari (bottom), members of the 2015 DC Youth Slam Team, each performed a poem, impressing the entire audience with their talent. Check out Lexi's performance on Split This Rock's Youtube channel.

 Mahogany L. Browne (top), coordinator of Black Poets Speak Out, delivered a powerful performance of her poem "Black Girl Magic," to thunderous applause. Watch the video here.

A slideshow highlighted the work of the 2015 finalists: Black Poets Speak Out, John Lee Clark, and Bob Holman. Click on the video above to watch or go here.

CrossCurrents Foundation President Micheline Klagsbrun gave a short speech praising Split This Rock, the Freedom Plow Award, and Mark.

E. Ethelbert Miller, a judge for the 2015 Award, delivered the following judges' statement, written by one of his fellow judges, Sheila Black:

We know in our bones that poetry is not merely a luxury, an elite art, but a human force, necessary as bread, constant as air. Mark Nowak, a child of working class Buffalo, has been on a passionate, large, and determined mission to engage poetry with the hard troubles of our world, with lived experience. His work, documentary in nature, is composed of the testimony of workers, the parts of the machines they use, the history of their labors.  

He has said concerning his kind of poetry: “It needs to find its feet outside of AWP and art galleries and instead locate itself (or organize its potential location) on factory floors, on union halls…” He also said when asked whether what he wrote was more social history than poetry: “I am not a historian, I am a writer who would like to contribute to the rescue of the kidnapped memory of all America.”  

I ask us to pause and ponder this. We live in an era when the life of work—the miners, the factory workers, the retail clerks and fast food workers, the part-time security guards, and hotel maids—is often simply not spoken of in what we call poetry. We are urged by advertisers and the global multi-nationals they represent to forget that workers exist, to believe the goods they produce appear as if by magic. 

Mark Nowak provides an antidote to this amnesia. In his poetry, the community workshops he holds with workers nationally and transnationally, and his blog, Coal Mountain—which provides a running commentary on the extraction industry worldwide—he reminds us of the material and the material suffering these goods are actually composed of, the lives they swallow and ruin. 

And this effort is beautiful, not only because it is truth, but also because of Mark Nowak’s profound grasp of how language works and what it does and does not do. Words, he tells us, have weight and force—they can have the force of truth or beauty: they can have the force of lies. They are like the surface of an etching in which we can see the traces of lived experience, the hard facticity of our material conditions and also the elusive palimpsest of vision and dream. He is, further, a poet who is revolutionary in working to examine how the collective voice  “we,” and not simply “I” can forge a new space for poetry to breathe in. 

E. Ethelbert Miller, Martha Collins, and I have been proud to serve as judges for the second annual Freedom Plow Award for Poetry and Activism. Mark Nowak was chosen out of a remarkable field of finalists—Black Poets Speak Out/Amanda Johnston, Mahogany Browne, Jonterri Gadson; DeafBlind poet and activist, John Lee Clark, and Bob Holman and his world languages project. His work and theirs remind us in the words of Noel Prize winner, Herta Muller, “The more words we are allowed to take, the freer we become.”  

Last year, E. Ethelbert Miller said in his judges’ citation: “One poem strikes a match. One poem is a spark. One poet can push or pull us into tomorrow.”

This seems especially relevant tonight.

Please join me in welcoming the extraordinary poet and global activist Mark Nowak.

Sarah Browning and E. Ethelbert Miller presented the 2015 Freedom Plow Award for Poetry & Activism to Mark Nowak.

Mark Nowak gave his remarks, shared a teaser from an upcoming documentary, and read from his book of poetry, Coal Mountain Elementary. He was both hilarious and poignant.

Mark signed copies of his books and spoke with enthusiastic attendees.

Coal Mountain Elementary (Coffee House Press, 2009)

Shut Up Shut Down (Coffee House Press, 2006)

Special thanks to everyone who made this event the tremendous success it was, especially to the sponsor, the CrossCurrents Foundation, and the cosponsors, the Arts Club of Washington and FOLIO Magazine. Thank you to all the volunteers that helped out with the event, and to everyone who came out to celebrate! We hope you'll join us again in 2017!

September Sunday Kind of Love

September

Sunday Kind of Love

Featuring:

Rachel Eliza Griffiths &

Mahogany Browne

Sunday September 18, 2011
5-7pm
Busboys & Poets
2021 14th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

Hosted by:
Sarah Browning and Katy Richey

Co-Sponsored by:
Busboys and Poets, Split This Rock and
Fall for the Book

Suggested Donation: $5

As always, open mic follows!

For more information:
www.BusboysandPoets.com
www.SplitThisRock.org
browning@splitthisrock.org

202-387-POET

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and a photographer. She is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press), and her newest collection poetry, Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose), will be published this fall. A Cave Canem Fellow and recipient of numerous fellowships, Griffiths' literary and visual work has been widely published. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

Mahogany Browne, a Cave Canem Fellow, is the author of several books including Swag & Dear Twitter: Love Letters Hashed Out On-line, recommended by Small Press Distribution & listed as About.comBest Poetry Books of 2010. She has released five LPs including the live album Sheroshima. As co-founder of the Off Broadway poetry production, Jam On It, and co-producer of NYC's 1st Performance Poetry Festival: SoundBites Poetry Festival, Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcee. Her journalism work has been published in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada's The Word and UK's MOBO. She is an Urban Word NYC mentor, as seen on HBO's Brave New Voices and facilitates performance poetry and writing workshops throughout the country. She is the publisher of Penmanship Books, a small press for performance artists and owns PoetCD.Com, an on-line marketing and distribution company for poets. Mahogany is currently host and curator of the Friday Night Slam at the famous Nuyorican Poets Cafe.