Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, activists, and all concerned citizens to Washington, DC, March 10-13, 2010 for four days of poetry, community building, and creative transformation as our country continues to grapple with two wars, a crippling economic crisis, and other social and environmental ills.
The festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism -- opportunities to 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.
We invite you to send proposals for panel discussions, group readings, roundtable discussions, workshops, and small-scale performances on a range of topics at the intersection of poetry and social change. Possibilities are endless. Challenge us.
The deadline is May 30, 2009.Details and guidelines are online at: www.splitthisrock.org/documents/2010_panel_proposals.doc
Discussion and community building are at the heart of Split This Rock. We value diversity, creativity, and new ideas. Check out last year's schedule for inspiration: www.splitthisrock.org/schedule.html.
Please join us!
Help Split This Rock Spread the Word
Forward this email, post it on your blog, send a message to all your Facebook friends. We are a grassroots movement and need your help to reach a wide variety of poets and poetry lovers. Thanks!
Friday, April 3, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Call for National Action for Peace in Afghanistan
From our friends with United for Peace & Justice
(Split This Rock and DC Poets Against the War are long-time members of this national coalition of peace and justice organizations.)
Today, President Barack Obama announced his plans to send another 21,000 troops to Afghanistan: he is girding the nation for a long and costly military occupation there.
While he also made some good statements on increasing diplomacy and economic aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the emphasis is clearly on military operations. Predictably, the Pakistan and Afghan factions of the Taliban are already uniting to oppose our escalation of troops. As the spring fighting season approaches, only one thing is certain -- more death, destruction, and misery in a desperately poor country that has had little respite from war for decades.
Here in the U.S., Obama's escalation in Afghanistan and the continuing occupation of Iraq threaten our nation's urgent economic and domestic agenda. Now is the time for more diplomacy, not more war!
United For Peace and Justice calls for immediate action for peace in Afghanistan. Here are three things you can do:
1) Call the White House today - 202-456-1414
Make sure President Obama knows that you disagree with his plans to send more troops to Afghanistan. Call the White House comment line at 202-456-1414 between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM ET.
2) March with UFPJ on April 4!
Building on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are marching on the anniversary of his historic speech against the war in Vietnam and the anniversary of his assassination. On Saturday, April 4, we are taking our message to Wall Street in NYC: addressing this country's economic crisis must include drastic cuts in military spending and that means ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing our country needs is a new quagmire in Afghanistan - it is time to bring the troops home, not send more.
3) Help organize local actions April 6 - 9
Congress will be in recess so this is a perfect time to meet with your representatives while they are home. Actions can also be community or media-focused -- vigils, rallies, public education forums with local speakers, film showings or other events to educate and mobilize support in your community. This is an important time to educate people about Afghanistan and the urgent need to change U.S. policy.
UFPJ calls for the following:
- A halt to the planned escalation of 21,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. We need to bring all our troops home now, not to send more into a country where military solutions have never worked.
- A strong commitment to diplomacy as the only solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. The U.S. must support negotiations already underway among various actors in Afghanistan, and must also engage all countries in the region with a stake in a peaceful Afghanistan. The announcement that Iran will join negotiations over Afghanistan is a positive development. We need to share more cups of tea for negotiating rather than more weapons where military solutions have never worked.*
- A dramatic shift from military spending by the U.S. to funding for Afghan-led humanitarian community development and reconstruction projects to enable Afghan communities to improve daily life for their own people. Our goal is to put an end to U.S. war funding.
Please let us know of the actions you are planning by posting them on the UFPJ calendar.
*The reference is to the work of Greg Mortenson as described in his New York Times #1 best-selling book, 'Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time', by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Help UFPJ continue to do this critical work: Make a donation to UFPJ today.
UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
www.unitedforpeace.org 212-868-5545PO Box 607; Times Square Station; New York, NY 10108
To subscribe, visit www.unitedforpeace.org/email
(Split This Rock and DC Poets Against the War are long-time members of this national coalition of peace and justice organizations.)
Today, President Barack Obama announced his plans to send another 21,000 troops to Afghanistan: he is girding the nation for a long and costly military occupation there.
While he also made some good statements on increasing diplomacy and economic aid to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the emphasis is clearly on military operations. Predictably, the Pakistan and Afghan factions of the Taliban are already uniting to oppose our escalation of troops. As the spring fighting season approaches, only one thing is certain -- more death, destruction, and misery in a desperately poor country that has had little respite from war for decades.
Here in the U.S., Obama's escalation in Afghanistan and the continuing occupation of Iraq threaten our nation's urgent economic and domestic agenda. Now is the time for more diplomacy, not more war!
United For Peace and Justice calls for immediate action for peace in Afghanistan. Here are three things you can do:
1) Call the White House today - 202-456-1414
Make sure President Obama knows that you disagree with his plans to send more troops to Afghanistan. Call the White House comment line at 202-456-1414 between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM ET.
2) March with UFPJ on April 4!
Building on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we are marching on the anniversary of his historic speech against the war in Vietnam and the anniversary of his assassination. On Saturday, April 4, we are taking our message to Wall Street in NYC: addressing this country's economic crisis must include drastic cuts in military spending and that means ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing our country needs is a new quagmire in Afghanistan - it is time to bring the troops home, not send more.
3) Help organize local actions April 6 - 9
Congress will be in recess so this is a perfect time to meet with your representatives while they are home. Actions can also be community or media-focused -- vigils, rallies, public education forums with local speakers, film showings or other events to educate and mobilize support in your community. This is an important time to educate people about Afghanistan and the urgent need to change U.S. policy.
UFPJ calls for the following:
- A halt to the planned escalation of 21,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. We need to bring all our troops home now, not to send more into a country where military solutions have never worked.
- A strong commitment to diplomacy as the only solution to the conflict in Afghanistan. The U.S. must support negotiations already underway among various actors in Afghanistan, and must also engage all countries in the region with a stake in a peaceful Afghanistan. The announcement that Iran will join negotiations over Afghanistan is a positive development. We need to share more cups of tea for negotiating rather than more weapons where military solutions have never worked.*
- A dramatic shift from military spending by the U.S. to funding for Afghan-led humanitarian community development and reconstruction projects to enable Afghan communities to improve daily life for their own people. Our goal is to put an end to U.S. war funding.
Please let us know of the actions you are planning by posting them on the UFPJ calendar.
*The reference is to the work of Greg Mortenson as described in his New York Times #1 best-selling book, 'Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace One School at a Time', by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.
Help UFPJ continue to do this critical work: Make a donation to UFPJ today.
UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE
www.unitedforpeace.org 212-868-5545PO Box 607; Times Square Station; New York, NY 10108
To subscribe, visit www.unitedforpeace.org/email
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Happy Birthday, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Ferlinghetti is 90 today!
Read a lovely tribute at the LA Times website: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/03/happy-90th-birt.html
Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:
And he was also a poet, driven by a sense of both art and political engagement. "Besides molding an image of the poet in the world, he created a poetic form that is at once rhetorically functional and socially vital," the critic Larry Smith wrote. "His work exists as a vital challenge and a living presence to the contemporary artist, as an embodiment of the strong, anticool, compassionate commitment to life in an absurd time."
Read a lovely tribute at the LA Times website: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/03/happy-90th-birt.html
Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:
And he was also a poet, driven by a sense of both art and political engagement. "Besides molding an image of the poet in the world, he created a poetic form that is at once rhetorically functional and socially vital," the critic Larry Smith wrote. "His work exists as a vital challenge and a living presence to the contemporary artist, as an embodiment of the strong, anticool, compassionate commitment to life in an absurd time."
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Contest Deadline Extended to March 23 - Send those poems!
New Deadline for 2009 Split This Rock Poetry Contest: March 23
$1,000 awarded for poems of provocation & witness
Patricia Smith, Judge
NEW Postmark Deadline: March 23, 2009
We've extended the deadline for the 2nd annual Split This Rock poetry contest, to be judged by poet and National Book Award finalist Patricia Smith.
First place receives $500; 2nd and 3rd place, $250 each.
Winning poems will be published on SplitThisRock.org, and the 1st-place winner will be invited to read winning poem at Split This Rock Poetry Festival, 2010.
$25 entry fee. Proceeds support the next festival (March 10-13, 2010).
So, if you missed the original deadline, don't panic - just send those poems! And please help us spread the word by posting this notice widely. Thanks!
First place receives $500; 2nd and 3rd place, $250 each.
Winning poems will be published on SplitThisRock.org, and the 1st-place winner will be invited to read winning poem at Split This Rock Poetry Festival, 2010.
$25 entry fee. Proceeds support the next festival (March 10-13, 2010).
Find full details and guidelines online at: http://splitthisrock.org/contests.html
Friday, February 20, 2009
BEYOND ORACLE
Richard Cambridge, Fellow
The Black Earth Institute
Presented at the 2009 AWP panel “The Poet as Oracle”
The Black Earth Institute
Presented at the 2009 AWP panel “The Poet as Oracle”
Traditional societies considered poets as oracles, charged with mediating between human and greater-than-human worlds. Whether that “other world” is described as divinity, the ancestors, or the earth, poets have served as mouthpieces for forces greater than a single human personality. African griots, Native American orators, and Celtic bards put words and images at the service of their communities and their craft in the service of the transhuman. This panel presents diverse traditions of oracular poetry, both traditional and modern.
Poets, priests and priestesses, prophets, shamans, griots, and bards have been the traditional vehicles of Oracle, the ones consulted, and the response would often be in the form of a puzzle, riddle, or enigmatic statement. Saying and seeing sideways. Seeing through the glass darkly, a way of speaking directly to our unconscious perhaps because our consciousness was as yet not fully undeveloped.
Today, however, it is the hunters, trappers, and fisherman from the Artic rim who are on the front line of food and survival, and the scientists, mathematicians, and journalists, recording and reporting on the data, giving us the warnings and prophesies about climate change who are our oracles. It is the language of charts and graphs, and photographs we can see, such as the glaciers thawing southward and the line of trees marching northward. Simple math such as the plus few degrees rise in temperature in the Artic causing ice to break up before summer. Numbers and pictures everyone can understand.
You don’t need a weatherman
to know which way the wind blows.1
The new oracles are the project engineers in the Netherlands, in their far-seeing, giving land back to the sea in order to protect the cities in the near future; the climate scientists in Antarctica measuring the ice core, the mathematicians interpreting the data.
Oracle is a 42-year-old Artic hunter named Igor Macotrikas, who says, “The food is not easy to come by now that the weather has changed. The south wind is a bad wind. It moves the walrus to another place. The walrus is hard to find.” Maxim Agnagisyak, who pays close attention to the animals he hunts. “The meat of the grey whales is rancid; it smells like medicine. The sled dogs won’t eat it” Or Caleb Pungowiyi, “When this earth starts to be destroyed, we feel it.”2 Plain speaking. Simple declarative sentences. Almost like a child’s primer.
And it is the so called “dumb” animals who speak to us, especially the ones who have already checked out of existence, their no-more speaking, eloquent in their absence, their silence. At what point do you notice when someone is missing from the choir, the flute section from the orchestra, the bright threads faded from the tapestry?
Ursula K. LeGuin says, “There are areas of vast silence in any culture, and part of an artist’s job is to go into those areas and come back from the silence with something to say.”3 What if the “something to say” is the Silence itself? In the former generations governments “disappear” dissidents. What happens when the new “disappeared ones are the fauna and flora? When we must say as sacred gatherings: Polar Bear— Presente! Spotted Salamander— Presente!
Do we even need oracles anymore? Is it not plain seeing at this point? We have named recent “ages”— The Age of Enlightenment, The Age of Reason, The Age of Analysis. Did we just pass through the Age of Warning— when there was still time? Are we as a species about to be taken to the woodshed? Is Mother about to shake us off her lap? Is it the very Earth who is our Oracle?
Ask the one in Newtoc, southwest Alaska, who’s house just tipped over because the ground gave way.4 The permafrost, it seems, is no longer permanent. Why it’s been there for thousands of years. Where do you go when the ground goes? How far can you fall? Can you fall off the Earth? Is there a new word for it?
Perhaps Language itself is becoming a sort of meta-oracle. The Native peoples in the North are having to create new words to describe a change in the state of being: Native language with such precise words describing the condition of ice and snow are having to invent words such as “misullijug” for “rainy snow” and “uggiantqtuq” which is a new term for weather conditions that means “a familiar friend acting strangely.”5
Has the time for Oracles passed? There is no un-clarity to pass through, puzzles we don’t understand, riddles that make only non-sense. Perhaps we as people the world over are moving beyond the need for Oracles because the Oracles have already spoken.
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I though as a child, I understood as a child. Now that I am a man, I put away childish things.”6 Did not our new president say that? Have we grown up now to hear and understand on our own, unmediated by Oracle? Has human consciousness evolved so we see collectively the warnings, are all, with our many, beautiful and creative talents capable of letting go, in this case, rather than doing; not doing, doing less; using less. Letting there be a season, perhaps a century of rest. Now the Oracles are at rest. We know what to do. And we know what not to do. All of life is speaking to us.
Angaangak, an Inuk elder and shaman from Greenland whose name means “The Man Who Looks Like His Uncle” says, “The ice is melting in the north, but the hardest ice in the world to melt is the ice in the heart of man.”7
The Black Earth Institute is a progressive think-tank dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society.
Sources
General
“Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change” Elizabeth Kolbert, Bloomsbury, 2006
1. “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Bob Dylan
2. “The Artic Meltdown: Quick Thaw Alarms Natives and Scientists” by Usha Lee McFarling. April 15, 2002, The Seattle Times
3. “Talking on the Water: Conversations about Nature and Creativity Dreams” by Jonathon White. Random House, 1994. Interview with Ursula K. LeGuin
4. “The Village at the Tip of the Iceberg,” by Ed Pilkington. The Observer, pg. 14, Sept. 28, 2008
5. “The Artic Meltdown…” See 2.
6. “The New Testament,” KJV. 1 Corinthians 13:11
7. “The Man Who Looks Like His Uncle,” by Joshua Singer, published in The Bridge, December 6, 2007
Thursday, February 19, 2009
HAIKU to PRESIDENT OBAMA
Split This Rock was in full force at the Associated Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Chicago. One of the highlights for us was our Haiku postcards to President Obama campaign which brought in hundreds of postcards. We wanted to share some favorites. Compare these to the postcards written to He Who Will Not Be Mentioned last year (except in an international court of law!). Same country, different season. Is it spring yet?
HAIKU
We canvassed Gull Street
Snow Cross Way, goodwill turns left
you knock, doors open
-- Julie Sheehan
It's time for poetry
to storm the walls of Congress.
Now we can, Barack.
-- Frances Payne Adler
Don't forget
in Spring to
Split the rock
and drink
what's sweet. I'll
have some too.
-- Rose Berger
After lunch counters,
deafening hoses, snarling dogs,
you, basking in light.
-- Patricia Smith
A new green blue day
and high hatted trees! And sun!
Can you see it? Sir?
-- K. Bonanno
People at school made fun
of me choosing you, to be
the one who sits in the oval office,
but I stood strong.
I think if I hadn't, it
would have been a lost dream.
-- Georgia Lee, age 9
The talking of real hope
makes the continent shift its rocks
towards a mending
-- Maureen Clark
Let's make the spring sing
from Chicago to Boston
spread hope like budding
-- Moriah Purdy
I waited so long
my father would be so proud
of you, all of us
-- Suzanne Bles
Our hero of change
help your gay supporters say
"yes we can" marry
-- Jendi
Listen to the mountains
clear water, high lonesome
hope for the old folks
stones and silence
-- Sara
You can save hearts time
and space. With courage. Pace slow.
Bring peace. Save sleep please
-- Maya
My son is almost
eighteen-- his face should never
be a gun's target.
-- Donna Vonreyer
We know that hope is
not without difficulty--
and still, still, we hope
-- LKA
Do not sell out, guy
Republicans aren't your friends
compromise may kill
-- anon
Barack Obama--
It's about time!
You're our U.S.
valentine!
-- Pat
For eight bleak black years
the winds of liberty stilled,
then O! Obama!
-- Jackie Kudler
You'll note we weren't sticklers on form (Haiku are three lines, 5-7-5 syllables, with a mention of season); if you'd like to write a Haiku to add to our collection (we'll be hand delivering these to Obama's staff, and will continue to post our favorites in coming days) please email your haiku to info@splitthisrock.org and we'll write it on a postcard.
With love, Melissa Tuckey
HAIKU
We canvassed Gull Street
Snow Cross Way, goodwill turns left
you knock, doors open
-- Julie Sheehan
It's time for poetry
to storm the walls of Congress.
Now we can, Barack.
-- Frances Payne Adler
Don't forget
in Spring to
Split the rock
and drink
what's sweet. I'll
have some too.
-- Rose Berger
After lunch counters,
deafening hoses, snarling dogs,
you, basking in light.
-- Patricia Smith
A new green blue day
and high hatted trees! And sun!
Can you see it? Sir?
-- K. Bonanno
People at school made fun
of me choosing you, to be
the one who sits in the oval office,
but I stood strong.
I think if I hadn't, it
would have been a lost dream.
-- Georgia Lee, age 9
The talking of real hope
makes the continent shift its rocks
towards a mending
-- Maureen Clark
Let's make the spring sing
from Chicago to Boston
spread hope like budding
-- Moriah Purdy
I waited so long
my father would be so proud
of you, all of us
-- Suzanne Bles
Our hero of change
help your gay supporters say
"yes we can" marry
-- Jendi
Listen to the mountains
clear water, high lonesome
hope for the old folks
stones and silence
-- Sara
You can save hearts time
and space. With courage. Pace slow.
Bring peace. Save sleep please
-- Maya
My son is almost
eighteen-- his face should never
be a gun's target.
-- Donna Vonreyer
We know that hope is
not without difficulty--
and still, still, we hope
-- LKA
Do not sell out, guy
Republicans aren't your friends
compromise may kill
-- anon
Barack Obama--
It's about time!
You're our U.S.
valentine!
-- Pat
For eight bleak black years
the winds of liberty stilled,
then O! Obama!
-- Jackie Kudler
You'll note we weren't sticklers on form (Haiku are three lines, 5-7-5 syllables, with a mention of season); if you'd like to write a Haiku to add to our collection (we'll be hand delivering these to Obama's staff, and will continue to post our favorites in coming days) please email your haiku to info@splitthisrock.org and we'll write it on a postcard.
With love, Melissa Tuckey
Friday, February 13, 2009
AWP Haikus to Obama - Day 1
We're here at AWP in Chicago, meeting people, talking up the 2010 Split This Rock festival, encouraging folks to write haiku post cards to President Obama. Here's one of our favorites from yesterday's crop:
Steering around crags
left by eight years' roadside bombs -
don't fear veering left.
- Brandon Getz
We'll post more tomorrow. If you're not here and would like to send a haiku post card to the prez, just send it to us at info@splitthisrock.org and we'll write it on a card and send it. Our president even might read them!
With love from Chicago,
Sarah, Melissa, and the crew
Steering around crags
left by eight years' roadside bombs -
don't fear veering left.
- Brandon Getz
We'll post more tomorrow. If you're not here and would like to send a haiku post card to the prez, just send it to us at info@splitthisrock.org and we'll write it on a card and send it. Our president even might read them!
With love from Chicago,
Sarah, Melissa, and the crew
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