Ten Ways to Support Split This Rock

Split This Rock has been a people's movement since its founding in 2008. Sustained by the community's call for a permanent home for progressive poetry, together we have engaged poetry as an agent of change, speaking up for peace, elevating the voices of the disenfranchised, and using poetry to call forth the just community we wish to see. 

June Jordan's words ring true when reflecting on Split This Rock's history and accomplishments: we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

As we head towards the end of Split This Rock's fiscal year, in a society fraught with turmoil and with the future of arts funding uncertain, the need for continued solidarity is crucial. 

Our goal is to raise $5,000 by June 30 and with your help -- financial and otherwise -- we know this goal is in reach. We're halfway there! If you believe in the work of this organization, there are so many ways to show your support and help equip us to enter our next fiscal year, marking Split This Rock's 10th anniversary, strong. We offer 10 suggestions below. 

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1. Repost, Share, Shout Us Out! Moved by a Poem of the Week? Share it on your social media and encourage people to sign up to receive our emails. Excited about the DC Youth Slam Team? Invite friends to attend its next event. Love the new Split This Rock merchandise? Point people to the website. Let others know what moves you about Split This Rock and that the organization is worth their time and investment.

2. Attend David v. Goliath on Tuesday, June 27, 9-11 am at Busboys and Poets - Brookland! Split This Rock’s DC Youth Slam Team goes up against the adults of the Beltway Poetry Slam team in a fundraiser to send both teams to their national slams. It’s a night of fun competition you won’t want to miss! Tickets are on sale for $10 at Eventbrite.

3. Hire Poets! Split This Rock’s Ushindi Performance Tribe, composed of dynamic DC Youth Slam Team alumni, is available for performances, workshops, and other engagements. We promise they’ll blow you away! Just ask the folks at the opening of The National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Kennedy Center, Poetry Out Loud national finals, and all the other places they’ve shared their talents. For details, send an email to slam@splitthisrock.org  

4. Host a Fundraising Event and/or Donate Signed Copies of Your Book! Help us widen the Split This Rock network by hosting a house party, reading, or other fundraising event. You supply space and refreshments and invite your friends. We'll provide poetry and info about Split This Rock. If you’re a poet, send us a signed copy of your book (or a few!) to sell at one of these special events or to offer as a perk for fundraising campaigns.

5. Connect Split This Rock Poets & Poetry to Activist Circles! Encourage activist friends and groups to incorporate poetry of provocation and witness into their work for social change. Let them know about The Quarry online social justice poetry database and Split This Rock as a resource.

6. Get Creative with Your Giving! Gayle Brandeis donated $5 for every pre-order she received for her latest chapbook. Be like Gayle and get out of the box! What can you do to encourage others to give? What other resources or talents could you contribute? Visit the wish list on Split This Rock's website to see if it sparks an idea.

7. Give the Gift of SkyMiles! Help us send youth to Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival and bring featured poets to Split This Rock Poetry Festival 2018 and other events.

8. Help Secure Venues for Split This Rock Poetry Festival and other events! DC venues are costly and hard to find. But poetry deserves beautiful spaces! Help us find donated or discounted venues. Festival sponsorship opportunities are also now available. Visit Split This Rock's website for details.

9. Volunteer! It’s festival planning season! And 2018 will be full of 10th Anniversary activities! Though Split This Rock's reach has expanded dramatically over the last ten years, we remain a small organization internally and simply could not pull off the festival and other major events without a strong crew of volunteers. Check out the festival leadership roles on the website! Volunteer positions are always available!

10. Donate! Your donations send the DC Youth Slam Team to Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam 2017 in California, support 2018 festival costs such venue rental, event mobile app fees, featured poet stipends, and the like, bolster efforts to make Split This Rock programming accessible to all, and so much more! Visit Split This Rock's website to read further about what your gift can do or to give online!

And there are so many other ways to help! Reach out to us if you'd like to assist in any of these ways or explore other options at 202-787-5210 or info@splitthisrock.org. We'd love to hear from you!

10 OUTSTANDING REASONS TO SUPPORT SPLIT THIS ROCK!

1. Gathering Together Socially Engaged Poets of All Ages

2016 Festival | Photo by Kristin Adair

Through Split This Rock, poets, activists, and dreamers come together in our nation’s capital to connect, share, learn, and gain inspiration to fuel efforts for justice. In addition to Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, we engage hundreds of youth at annual gatherings: Louder Than a Bomb-DMV Teen Poetry Slam Festival, modeled after the nationally acclaimed program in Chicago, and Hyper Bole Slam Festival.

2. Raising the Platform for Poetry of Provocation & Witness
Split This Rock’s website, online poetry database, Poem of the Week series, annual poetry contests, awards, and events champion poetry and poets engaging with the world, bearing witness to the beauty of our diversity, and calling for change. Because of Split This Rock, poets are read, and heard far and wide.

Delivering Black Lives Matter poems to Dept of Justice (DOJ)
Photo by Jonathan Tucker

3. Integrating Poetry into Movements for Social Change
From its beginning as an outgrowth of DC Poets Against the War, Split This Rock has mobilized poets to take action, pressing our society to fulfill its promise as a place of welcome, peace, equity, and embrace.

4. Creating Community by Embracing Difference
Whether it’s through poetry readings, open mics, workshops, or slams, Split This Rock brings us together across our many divides, creating safe spaces to share our narratives, name injustices, and embolden us to act collectively.

5. Connecting DC Area Students with Poets as Mentors

Split This Rock places exceptional poets serving as teaching artists in DC metro
area schools to introduce youth to socially engaged poetry and help them hone
their writing and public speaking skills. There’s more demand now than ever.
Imagine a teaching artist in every DC school!

6. Providing Dynamic Resources for Teachers
What if all teachers had access to poetry lesson plans that awaken their students to the relevance of literature in their lives? Split This Rock offers DC-area teachers a curriculum designed to inspire young people to speak their truths.

7. Developing the Next Generation of Poets of Witness

2016 DC Youth Slam Team at Brave New Voices
Photo by Outlier Imagery

Split This Rock programs are cultivating a generation of young people who love the written word, perform evocatively, and imagine a world free of hatred and bias. Through the DC Youth Slam Team, the Youth Writers’ Guild, the Ushindi Performance Troupe, open mics, slams, writing workshops, and
other ongoing activities, youth learn the social and political context of their lives, turn their struggles and triumphs into powerful art, find a sense of community, and gain confidence through poetry.

8. Making Poetry More Accessible
Accessibility is one of Split This Rock’s core values, so we continually strive to
remove barriers that keep people with disabilities from being full participants
in our programming. With your help, we can offer more events with ASL
interpreters, caption more videos, maintain and improve features on our
website, and more!

2014 Festival Session | Photo by Kristin Adair

9. Breaking the Silence on Hard Issues
Whether it’s through the annual Abortion Rights Poetry Contest, the Eco-Justice Project, or calls for poems in response to violence in our society, Split This Rock aligns itself in solidarity with - and brings poetry into - efforts to build awareness, destroy stigma, demand justice, and make our world a place where we all can thrive.

10. Celebrating a Decade of Elevating Poetry of Conscience
So many anniversaries to mark! Ten years of Sunday Kind of Love Reading
and Open Mic series as of 2016, ten years of awarding stunning poems
through Split This Rock’s Annual Poetry Contest in 2017, and, coming up in
2018, ten years since the very first Split This Rock Poetry Festival! All sustained by people like you! With your support, we are excited to see what’s ahead for the next 10!

INVEST IN THE FUTURE OF PROGRESSIVE POETRY!

Donate Online Today at Split This Rock's website.

DOJ Poem Demonstration | Photo by Jonathan Tucker

Or send a check made out to “Split This Rock” to:

Split This Rock

1301 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 600

Washington, DC 20036

Your gift is fully tax-deductible. THANK YOU!

A Letter From Kit Bonson, Split This Rock Board Member & Newly Reborn Poet!

Greetings Friend, 

As a Board member of Split This Rock, I spend time throughout the year helping my colleagues assess how well our events have gone and their impact on participants. Since this was a Festival year, it was damn easy to conclude at our Spring Board meeting that we had just put on a kickass gathering of some of the greatest socially-engaged poets in the world. 

If you were lucky enough to be with us in DC this March, you know exactly what I mean. Not only did the Festival run like clock-work, but the camaraderie between attendees was amazing.

When the Board went around the meeting table after the Festival, sharing what influenced us the most, many mentioned a particular session that moved them. Maybe it was a daring poem that was read, or an intense discussion that made an impression. 

When it came to my turn, though, I shared something a little different. I told my Board friends that over those four days, I'd found my poetic voice again.

Split This Rock staff & board celebrate after Sunday's final reading at the 2014 festival. Kit is second from the right, in the back row.

You see, I had put away my own writing for almost 20 years, not knowing how to incorporate a lyrical reality with my life as a scientist and an activist. But being among other politically-minded poets changed that. I saw that I could capture the poems in my head in a way that enhanced, not detracted from, everything else that went on in my life.

For me, this is the essence of why Split This Rock is so important. It brought me back to a place of community and artistic expression, in ways that are socially meaningful. I believe it brings all of us home to our commonalities, so that the poems we share help us overcome feeling separated from each other and perhaps even from ourselves.

Which is why I feel so comfortable asking you to donate to Split This Rock as we close out our fiscal year. You are already part of this tremendous community that we happily create and develop. Now I'd like to ask you to support us financially as well.

Please contribute today online. Or you can send a check made out to Split This Rock to: 

1112 16th Street, NW

Suite 600

Washington, DC 20036

With gratitude & solidarity,

  

Kit Bonson

Newly reborn poet

Split This Rock Board member

"Split This Rock has changed our lives."-- Amina Iro, DC Youth Slam Team Member

Don't just take our word -- see for yourself how two members of the DC Youth Slam Team, Hannah Halpern & Amina Iro, have benefited from the program in the short video below!
 

How Hannah + Amina Met: Poetry for the People of DC

Here at Split This Rock we are committed to fostering the voices of the next generation of poets. Our youth programs operate year-round to offer exceptional writing and performance opportunities to young people interested in the power of language.

Through programs like the DC Youth Slam Team, teens from all quadrants of the city and surrounding area, from all backgrounds and walks of life, unite with poetry.

The bond between Hannah and Amina is only one example of the transformative relationships that are fostered in this program year after year.

At Split This Rock we value the power and perspective of our youth and are committed to their growth.  

Our youth programs have helped Amina achieve a full-tuition scholarship to University of Wisconsin-Madison, under their First Wave Program. Malachi Byrd will be heading to Princeton in the fall on another full-tuition scholarship. And Ayinde Grimes is off to Morehouse College, also on scholarship.   

Won't you consider a gift to help us ensure this vital programming will be available to area youth for years to come?

  

Remember -- your gift of $250 or more gets you the Collector's Edition of the March issue of Poetry magazine, signed by all 16 of the 2014 festival featured poets.

Split This Rock counts on its passionate family.  

Contribute today online. Or you can send a check made out to Split This Rock to: 

1112 16th Street, NW

Suite 600

Washington, DC 20036

Do it for the youth!  

With gratitude,

Split This Rock & the DC Youth Slam Team