Poem of the Week: Sonia Sanchez

With today's Poem of the Week we finish our run of 15 festival poets with Sonia Sanchez's "14 haiku" - a poem for Emmitt Till. Now, it's also a poem for Trayvon Martin and for all of the Black boys and men who have been taken from us.

Split This Rock encourages you to call on the Department of Justice to take over Trayvon's case and launch an independent investigation into the Sanford police department's unwillingness to protect Trayvon's civil rights.

Sonia Sanchez at Split This Rock 2008 @Jill Brazel

14 haiku

(for Emmett Louis Till)

1.

Your limbs buried

in northern muscle carry

their own heartbeat

2.

Mississippi...

alert with

conjugated pain

3.

young Chicago

stutterer whistling

more than flesh

4.

your pores

wild stars embracing

southern eyes

5.

footprints blooming

in the night remember

your blood

6.

in this southern

classroom summer settles

into winter

7.

i hear your

pulse swallowing

neglected light

8.

your limbs

fly off the ground

little birds...

9.

we taste the

blood ritual of

southern hands

10.

blue midnite

breaths sailing on

smiling tongues

11.

say no words

time is collapsing

in the woods

12.

a mother's eyes

remembering a cradle

pray out loud

13.

walking in Mississippi

i hold the stars

between my teeth

14.

your death

a blues, i could not

drink away.

-Sonia Sanchez

Used by permission.

From Morning Haiku (Beacon Press, 2010)

Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including, among others, Morning Haiku (Beacon Press, 2010) and Does your house have lions? (1995), which was nominated for both the NAACP Image and National Book Critics Circle Award. She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University, where she began teaching in 1977, and held the Laura Carnell Chair in English there until her retirement in 1999. She is the first Poet Laureate of Philadelphia.

Sanchez will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. The festival is SOLD OUT. Join us for a poetry action at the Supreme Court Friday March 23. Details here.

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!

If you are interested in reading past poems of the week, feel free to visit the blog archive.

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

AWP Wrap Up: What People Are Saying

Things have been a little crazy in Split This Rock's post-AWP world. In many ways we're still recovering from our mini-festival, and in the lull we sometimes forget to mention how tremendously pleased we are that our programs were well received. Rather than rehash anything we've already said, we opted to share what other bloggers have been saying- enjoy:

(click on each excerpt to read the rest of the post)

Jessica Vooris
From The Bucknell Afterword

This conference made me remember how much I love writing and has made me want to finish some new poems. Hopefully this newfound determination will help me produce some new things. Also, with the political poet panelists voices in my ear, perhaps I can rekindle both my activism and writing at the same time. Here’s to a productive 2011!

Barbara Jane Reyes
From barbarajanereyes.com

Espada does not romanticize the existence of the poet dissident, and neither should we; we should recognize this as the power of the word, a potential all of us poets have when we take pen to paper, indeed why we come to poetry in the first place.

Adam Pellegrini
From THEthe

Nor do I think, looking back on my full experience, that AWP should be cornered as some sort of backwoods, yet fancy, family reunion, rife with inbreeding, as was my initial cynicism. I did hear moments of life, feel excitement, swallow poetry and sweat it out.

Lyle Daggett
From A Burning Patience

The events I found particularly worthwhile included Undivided: Poet as Public Citizen, sponsored by Split This Rock, an excellent panel featuring Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Toi Derricotte, and Mark Nowak, and emceed by Melissa Tuckey of Split This Rock. Each of the panelists talked about various ways in which politically conscious poetry, and poetry in general, has engaged with the larger world; each quoted from the work of other poets as examples of the relevance of poetry in people's lives.

Sandra Beasley
From Chicks Dig Poetry

Most moving moment: Hearing Sonia Sanchez read Langston Hughes' work and reflect on his legacy. I got the shivers.

Serena Agusto-Cox
From The Examiner

Among some of the featured presenters this year are keynote speaker Jhumpa Lahiri, Sarah Browning of Split This Rock, Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Eric Webb
From TriQuarterly Online

The next panel, in the same room, “Dream the Dreamers Dreamed: A Tribute to Langston Hughes,” reinforced that understanding, and also sparked a need to express political outrage in my own work.


Thanks again to everyone who helped make AWP a success- we'll see you there next year!

Upcoming AWP Events

AWP is only 10 days away! We know this is a busy time for everyone, but we also want to help make it exciting. So, for the next week we will be highlighting upcoming events sponsored by Split This Rock. We hope you'll make time to visit.


Friday, February 4th, 3:00 pm
Marriott Wardman Park, Delaware Suite Room, Lobby Level


The Dream the Dreamers Dreamed: A Tribute to Langston Hughes

Sponsored by Split This Rock Poetry Festival
With: Sarah Browning, Derrick Weston Brown, Jericho Brown & Sonia Sanchez

Langston Hughes was working as a busboy here at the Wardman Park Hotel when he slipped poems to Vachel Lindsay, launching his literary career, one of the most influential of the 20th century. Two DC institutions, Split This Rock Poetry Festival, and Busboys and Poets Restaurant, are named in his honor and claim Hughes as a literary mentor and guiding light. Celebrate Langston Hughes' February 1 birthday as we pay tribute to the man, his poetry, and his enduring legacy of social and political engagement.

Derrick Weston Brown has studied poetry under Dr. Tony Medina at Howard University and Cornelius Eady at American University, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He is the author of a chapbook, The Unscene (published in 2006), and his work has appeared in DrumVoices Review, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, Black Issues & Book Reviews, and the Cave Canem Poetry Anthologies of 2002 and 2003. He is a native of Charlotte, NC and currently resides in Mount Rainier, MD. He is a Cave Canem fellow and the poet-in-residence at Busboys & Poets bookstore and restaurant. His first full collection, Wisdom Teeth, is forthcoming in April 2011 from Busboys and Poets Books.

Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is an Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award.

Sonia Sanchez—poet, activist, scholar—was the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Temple University. She is the recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books.

Sarah Browning is Director of Split This Rock Poetry Project. She is the author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007) and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004). The recipient of an artist fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, she has also received a Creative Communities Initiative grant and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. She has written essays and interviewed poets and artists for a variety of publications.

We hope to see you there!

Photo of the Week: Sonia Sanchez

This feature highlights a different photo each week from the 2 Split This Rock Festivals. For more photos from the last festival, check out Split This Rock's Flickr.



2008 Featured Poet Sonia Sanchez laughs at the 2008 Opening Ceremonies at Busboys and Poets.

Photo Credit: Jill Brazel

Photo of the Week: Sonia Sanchez

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.



Featured Poet Sonia Sanchez reads at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.

Photo Credit: Jill Brazel