Split This Rock was in full force at the Associated Writers & Writing Programs
(AWP) Conference in Washington, DC, February 8-11, 2017. This year's conference was jammed pack with poetic resistance and one of our favorite highlights is the Haiku
postcards, inviting attendees to send messages to the President or their representatives. We're sharing some of our favorites here.
HAIKU
it is beautiful
but it is just too damn cold
help them find their warmth
-- anonymous
Mom, I say, Please don't
leaves fall slower than my hope
Another let down
--anonymous
HAIKU TO PRESIDENT TRUMP
Oregon is real dope
Try not to ruin Portland
Save the arts alright
-- Will Schweinfurth
Words of history,
cold on the page, flare in the
flame of burning books
-- Virginia Gilbert
Mr. President
You depend on our silence
I have some bad news
-- anonymous
Hey Donald J. Trump
Help us save our grandchildren
Climate change is real
-- anonymous
this land was never
yours. Didn't your mother teach
you better than that?
-- anonymous
DeVostation comes
to publicize education.
Come on! Grow a spine!
-- anonymous
The earth is dying
My body is no longer mine
Not one of you care
-- a student afraid for the future
I wonder if
you've sat down
to eat at a
Persian Restaurant
ate Lebanese food --
Heard poetry from that world?
-- anonymous
I dislike you. Please
Do not do anything ever.
Eat Mexican food.
-- anonymous
How long will my gay
marriage last? forever is
relative these days.
-- anonymous
Gentle, angry -- we
Life up. Fists, hearts. And justice,
Holds us. Does not die.
-- Brook Petersen
Save us from today
Help us stand for peace and love
We did not choose this
-- anonymous
Orange ogres are not
fit to decide who should get
rights and who should not
-- Alex Carrigan
History and glass
capitol like the country
yes, it can be broken
-- RJ Hazard
HAIKU TO REPRESENTATIVES
To Congressman Earl Blumenaur
This is a shit show
How can we get to that point
Four years is so far
-- Kole Nakamore
To Congressman Tom McClintock
The Cabinet
Before spring blooms
Our land has seen such darkness
Facism is a slippery slope
To Attorney General
This fox, in his suit
Will be the one to assume
No hens face injustice
-- Robin Martin
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| photo by Mai Der Vang |
On Saturday, February 11, 2017, over 1,000 writers gathered in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, to speak out for free expression.
Split This Rock and a number of hard-working individuals joined together to organize the vigil to coincide with the annual conference of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), which brought thousands of writers to the nation's capital. Thirty organizations cosponsored, spreading the word and helping writers gather at this time of intense threat to our basic human rights, of which freedom of expression is one of the most fundamental.
Split This Rock is publishing the statements of those who spoke, Kazim Ali, Gabrielle Bellot, Melissa Febos, Carolyn Forché, Ross Gay, Luis J. Rodriguez, and Eric Sasson. Today we bring you Melissa Febos and her rousing call to love and action.
Statement by Melissa Febos for the Candlelight Vigil at the White House, February 11, 2017
When I was asked to speak here, my first thought was, free speech, yes. But “candlelight vigil”? That sounds like a funeral for free speech, or a prayer circle. And while I believe in the power and necessity of both funerals and prayer, neither fits my mood so far under this administration. I don’t really feel like lighting a candle unless that candle is intended to burn the house down.
But then I looked up what vigil was. Here’s what I found: “a period of keeping awake during the time usually spent asleep.”
That sounded exactly right to me. Because awake as I have always believed myself to be, I also know that I’ve spent more time sleeping than I can now afford.
When I woke up on November 9th, I felt powerless. I felt naïve. I felt like I wanted to call up Obama, or my mother, or God, and cry mercy. And say: "This is more than we can handle. It is even bigger than we thought. I have already been fighting. I am already tired. If what I have been doing is not enough, then I am not enough." That morning, I whispered what I have always whispered when I cry: “I want to go home.” This has never been a longing for a place, at least not any place outside of this body. It has been a wish to find a home in my own body, something on which to brace myself as I move through a world that often hates such bodies.
But I didn’t call my mom, or Obama, or God. Or at least, none of them picked up. And then I remembered that I am a fucking adult. A grown woman, whom, though not always at home in her body or in this world, still has access to resources, and language, and more safety than the vast majority of humans on this desecrated planet.
Mercy has never come to me through any man, or my mother, or even God. It has come to me over and over and over in the hands and mouths and hearts of other people. It has risen from my own hands, and throat and heart.
So, I stopped crying. Because I am a writer and a teacher and a feminist and a fighter, and it not anyone else’s job to rescue me. I don’t need rescuing.
What I mean is, I have already been lucky enough to find the ways that I can be most useful in the world. I am not a politician or a political scientist. I am not a journalist, and I do not form fast opinions. I change my mind a lot. I have no desire to police the manner in which other people respond to their fear.
But I know the power of a person’s story. I know the power of mine. I know how to raise my voice, and, even more importantly, how to amplify and listen to those of others. I know that my own tender parts are also my strongest.
Part of my fear on Nov 9th was that the ways I found of speaking freely might be trivialized by what is happening, and will likely keep happening.
But I don’t think that is true.
You don’t have to be Van Jones, or Ta-Nehisi Coates, or Chimamanda Adichie or Charles Blow. You don’t have to be an expert at anything other than what you already are. There is already mercy in you, to be given, to find. The thing is not to become something else, it is to bring what you are into greater service to this resistance.
If that is make phone calls, make phone calls. If that is marching, you fucking march. And if that is writing the stories of humans, including your own, then that is what you must do. That is the knife you must sharpen and use to carve a way for all of us through this nightmare.
If I have learned anything in my life, it is that I can walk through fear, I can work through fear, and sometimes, I can borrow its power for my own.
I’m here on behalf of some organizations that are doing this work – VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, and PEN America. If you are not sure where to start, or where to continue, and you want to join me in working with them, ask me how, or just join PEN America to fight censorship, protect persecuted writers, and defend free expression.
And come to VIDA’s dance party/fundraiser tonight. Because I’m also here to tell you, that yes, dancing is a part of every revolution. And that denying your own joy does not deliver it to anyone else. It only deprives you before they even get a chance to.
So, go ahead and feel afraid if you are afraid. Feel hopeless if you do. Now is “a period of keeping awake during the time usually spent asleep.” Don’t go to sleep, and don’t stop using your words. It isn’t trivial; it is more important than ever. This vigil isn't going to end when we blow these candles out.
 |
| photo by Mai Der Vang |
On Saturday, February 11, 2017, over 1,000 writers gathered in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House, to speak out for free expression.
Split This Rock and a number of hard-working individuals joined together to organize the vigil to coincide with the annual conference of the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), which brought thousands of writers to the nation's capital. Thirty organizations cosponsored, spreading the word and helping writers gather at this time of intense threat to our basic human rights, of which freedom of expression is one of the most fundamental.
Split This Rock will be publishing the statements of those who spoke, Kazim Ali, Gabrielle Bellot, Melissa Febos, Carolyn Forché, Ross Gay, Luis J. Rodriguez, and Eric Sasson. We're proud to begin with that of Carolyn Forché, a model and guide to us for so many years.
Statement by Carolyn Forché for the Candlelight Vigil at the White House, February 11, 2017
This is the first amendment, as written by James Madison: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
We are gathered here in vigil as defenders of these rights, and to declare our allegiance to the party of humanity; to proclaim that walls do not offer protection but rather enclosure and are a sign of fear rather than strength. As Monsignor Oscar Romero once said, “A society’s reason for being is not the security of the state but of the human person,” and “peace is not the silent result of violent repression,” but “the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all.”
We are guided by the words of one of the Republic’s founding poets, Walt Whitman: “This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency.”
The hour calls us to be moral and ethical in our private and public lives, to live with our hearts open, to cultivate our empathy and capacity for self-sacrifice. To the darkness of bigotry, racism, xenophobia and misogyny, we bring the light of conscience, for we are a Republic of Conscience or we are nothing. To those suffering injustice, we offer our resistance to oppression. We offer our protection. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and anti-Nazi dissident once said, "We are not called simply to bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice. We are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."
We will not stand down. We will not end our just resistance. We will work together with compassion, intelligence, hope and commitment. We will base our decisions not on narrow politics but on the wisdom of the heart. We will not tire, we will not flag in our efforts. We are watching, we are clear, we are awake.
