Featured Poet Naomi Shihab Nye reads at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Photo Credit: Jill Brazel
Monday, March 1, 2010
Photo of the Week: Naomi Shihab Nye
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 Naomi Shihab Nye reads at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Photo Credit: Jill Brazel
Featured Poet Naomi Shihab Nye reads at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Photo Credit: Jill Brazel
Friday, February 26, 2010
Up Close and Poetical: Bruce Weigl
Welcome to the second in a series of profiles of featured poets here at Blog This Rock. The series, titled "Up Close and Poetical," aims to introduce you to our featured poets and their body of work. Other profiles can be found here. This profile was written by GMU student and Split This Rock intern Michael McGrath.
I’m often reminded of the difficulty many of us experience when trying to find the words to express what we’ve been through. This can be especially true when such experiences forced us to act in ways that were so overwhelmingly transformational; the person staring back from the mirror can look like a stranger. Someone who has found a way to make this type of experience accessible to others is poet Bruce Weigl.
The work of the Split This Rock Festival featured poet, Bruce Weigl, gives voice to the darker side of existence that often emotionally isolates us from society and even the humanity within us. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, Weigl was exposed to the demons of humanity through firsthand experience with horrors of war. In today’s modern America, the ghost which followed Weigl home from Vietnam are etched into the faces of modern warfighters returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For these individuals, Weigl’s work and subsequent career demonstrates hope for the future that even though their lives have changed, they have not lost that which makes them human. For those whom have never lived through such atrocities, Weigl’s work creates a vivid moment of accessibility that guides an audience to share in the emotional experience within his words.
Those new to poetry will find Weigl’s work quite different from the poetry they once dread from high school English classes. Rather than using abstract constructions, Weigl’s words flow off the page in a familiar manner that resembles the way thoughts flow freely through our minds as we experience the events of our own lives. Speaking about poetry, Weigl has said, “The poem itself, means that no matter however horrible the subject, we can somehow go beyond it as people, as human beings.” This connection with the average individual speaks to the importance of his work and the promise of poetry to empower every man, woman, and child.
While introducing Song of Napalm at the College of Southern Maryland’s 1991 Literary Collection Series, Weigl spoke of his struggles to reconcile the horrors he experienced as a Vietnam Veteran through the his craft as a poet. He said, “You learn that as a poet you want to make the words beautiful, yet your subject is so dark and terrible. I think the salvation comes in the belief… that somehow in the act of writing the poem, is an affirmation of life.” This notion of redemption is not unique to warfighters, and serves as a beacon for anyone struggling with the unique demons of their own pasts.
Bruce Wiegl will be a featured poet at the upcoming Split This Rock Festival in Washington, DC, March 10-13, 2010. Weigl is currently a Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities at the Lorain County Community College and has been an active member of the poetry community for quite some time. He has won multiple awards for his work which include such honors as the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Poet’s Prize from the National Academy of Poets, as well as two Pushcart Prizes. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a poem he wrote in 1998, "Song of Napalm," which drew from his experiences as a warfighter during the Vietnam War.
Michael McGrath has recently come to appreciate poetry after he was dragged kicking and screaming to a live reading. His postings on this blog will be from the perspective of someone completely new to poetry, so he asks that he be forgiven if his views seem under-informed. Michael is a native to the DC Metropolitan area and has been involved in the LGBT community for more years than ought to be said publicly. He is senior at George Mason University majoring in communication with a minor in conflict analysis and resolution. And, if everything goes as planned, he will graduate in May 2010.
I’m often reminded of the difficulty many of us experience when trying to find the words to express what we’ve been through. This can be especially true when such experiences forced us to act in ways that were so overwhelmingly transformational; the person staring back from the mirror can look like a stranger. Someone who has found a way to make this type of experience accessible to others is poet Bruce Weigl.The work of the Split This Rock Festival featured poet, Bruce Weigl, gives voice to the darker side of existence that often emotionally isolates us from society and even the humanity within us. As a veteran of the Vietnam War, Weigl was exposed to the demons of humanity through firsthand experience with horrors of war. In today’s modern America, the ghost which followed Weigl home from Vietnam are etched into the faces of modern warfighters returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For these individuals, Weigl’s work and subsequent career demonstrates hope for the future that even though their lives have changed, they have not lost that which makes them human. For those whom have never lived through such atrocities, Weigl’s work creates a vivid moment of accessibility that guides an audience to share in the emotional experience within his words.
Those new to poetry will find Weigl’s work quite different from the poetry they once dread from high school English classes. Rather than using abstract constructions, Weigl’s words flow off the page in a familiar manner that resembles the way thoughts flow freely through our minds as we experience the events of our own lives. Speaking about poetry, Weigl has said, “The poem itself, means that no matter however horrible the subject, we can somehow go beyond it as people, as human beings.” This connection with the average individual speaks to the importance of his work and the promise of poetry to empower every man, woman, and child.
While introducing Song of Napalm at the College of Southern Maryland’s 1991 Literary Collection Series, Weigl spoke of his struggles to reconcile the horrors he experienced as a Vietnam Veteran through the his craft as a poet. He said, “You learn that as a poet you want to make the words beautiful, yet your subject is so dark and terrible. I think the salvation comes in the belief… that somehow in the act of writing the poem, is an affirmation of life.” This notion of redemption is not unique to warfighters, and serves as a beacon for anyone struggling with the unique demons of their own pasts.
Bruce Wiegl will be a featured poet at the upcoming Split This Rock Festival in Washington, DC, March 10-13, 2010. Weigl is currently a Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities at the Lorain County Community College and has been an active member of the poetry community for quite some time. He has won multiple awards for his work which include such honors as the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Poet’s Prize from the National Academy of Poets, as well as two Pushcart Prizes. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for a poem he wrote in 1998, "Song of Napalm," which drew from his experiences as a warfighter during the Vietnam War.
Michael McGrath has recently come to appreciate poetry after he was dragged kicking and screaming to a live reading. His postings on this blog will be from the perspective of someone completely new to poetry, so he asks that he be forgiven if his views seem under-informed. Michael is a native to the DC Metropolitan area and has been involved in the LGBT community for more years than ought to be said publicly. He is senior at George Mason University majoring in communication with a minor in conflict analysis and resolution. And, if everything goes as planned, he will graduate in May 2010.
The World & Me Youth Poetry Contest Awards Reception
Split This Rock Presents:
The World & Me Youth Poetry Contest Awards Reception
Saturday March 6, 2010
4-6PM
BUSBOYS & POETS
14th & V STREET, NW
Keynote Poet: Samuel Miranda
Hosted by: Regie Cabico
The Top Youth Poets of Washington, DC
read original poems of Provocation & Witness.
Poets Representing:
Archbishop Carroll, Seed Charter School,
Bell Multicultural High School,
Sousa Jr. High, Powell Elementary, Alice Deal Middle School, Willam E. Doar
EVENT IS FREE
Please R.S.V.P. by March 3, 2010 to gregory [at] splitthisrock [dot] org.
Co-sponsored by Busboys and Poets
The World & Me Youth Poetry Contest Awards Reception
Saturday March 6, 2010
4-6PM
BUSBOYS & POETS
14th & V STREET, NW
Keynote Poet: Samuel Miranda
Hosted by: Regie Cabico
The Top Youth Poets of Washington, DC
read original poems of Provocation & Witness.
Poets Representing:
Archbishop Carroll, Seed Charter School,
Bell Multicultural High School,
Sousa Jr. High, Powell Elementary, Alice Deal Middle School, Willam E. Doar
EVENT IS FREE
Please R.S.V.P. by March 3, 2010 to gregory [at] splitthisrock [dot] org.
Co-sponsored by Busboys and Poets
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Split This Rock Volunteer Party Tonight!
Don't forget, the Split This Rock Volunteer Party tonight, Thursday February 25, 2010, 6-8pm
@ The Rabbit Room
Studio of Lisa Marie Thalhammer, Thom Flynn, DJ Natty Boom, and Danielle Evennou
The 52 O St. Studios/Contemporary Artists Working
52 O St, NW #100
Washington, DC 20001
(Red Line - New York Ave. Metro)
The next party will be Friday March 5, 2010, 6:00-8:00pm
@ Split This Rock Headquarters
Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th St. NW
Washington, DC 20036
(Red Line - Farragut North)
or
(Blue/Orange Line - McPherson Square)
To RSVP and if you can't make it to a party, but would like to volunteer, please e-mail Abdul at ali at splitthisrock dot org.
@ The Rabbit Room
Studio of Lisa Marie Thalhammer, Thom Flynn, DJ Natty Boom, and Danielle Evennou
The 52 O St. Studios/Contemporary Artists Working
52 O St, NW #100
Washington, DC 20001
(Red Line - New York Ave. Metro)
The next party will be Friday March 5, 2010, 6:00-8:00pm
@ Split This Rock Headquarters
Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th St. NW
Washington, DC 20036
(Red Line - Farragut North)
or
(Blue/Orange Line - McPherson Square)
To RSVP and if you can't make it to a party, but would like to volunteer, please e-mail Abdul at ali at splitthisrock dot org.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Poem-of-the-Week: Martha Collins
……………………………………....lynch
not as in pin, the kind that keeps the wheels
turning, and not the strip of land that marks
the border between two fields. unrelated
to link, as in chain, or by extension whatever
connects one part to another, and therefore
not a measure of a chain, which in any
case is less than the span of a hand hold-
ing the reins, the rope, the hoe, or taking
something like justice into itself, as when
a captain turned judge and gave it his name.
that was before it lost its balance and crossed
the border, the massed body of undoers
claiming connection, relation, an intimate
right to the prized parts, to the body undone.
* * * *
there was a second another
a white there were two
that night the second an after
thought said one of the papers
the other said when they couldn’t find
the second black in the jail they took
instead the white who’d murdered
his wife because (she said before
she died) she’d refused—
not prejudice the papers
said the hanging of Henry Salzner
proves they were not moved by race
-Martha Collins
Selections from Blue Front (Graywolf Press 2006). Used by permission.
Note: In Blue Front Collins describes the lynching of a Black man - and later, a white man - in Cairo, IL in 1909, an event her father witnessed when he was five years old. The book, part lyric and part narrative, is a collage of investigation into this event, and an exploration of hate, mob mentality, and race in America.
Martha Collins’ work Blue Front (Graywolf, 2006) won an Anisfield-Wolf Award and was chosen as one of “25 Books to Remember from 2006” by the New York Public Library. Collins has also published four collections of poems, two collections of co-translations of Vietnamese poetry, and two chapbooks of poems. Other awards include fellowships from the NEA, the Bunting Institute, and the Witter Bynner Foundation. Collins founded the Creative Writing Program at UMass-Boston, and for ten years was Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College. She is currently editor-at-large for FIELD magazine and one of the editors of the Oberlin College Press. www.marthacollinspoet.com
….
Collins will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010 in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism—four days of creative transformation as we 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. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org.
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!
Split This Rock
202-787-5210
Activist Vital Stats: Phyllis Bennis
This new feature will showcase activists that embody the spirit of Split This Rock in the world. If you would like to suggest an activist to feature, please contact me at khsplitthisrock at gmail dot com.
Activist Vital Stats: Phyllis Bennis
Name: Phyllis Bennis
Location: Washington, D.C.
Causes: Ending wars and occupations; these days so urgently Afghanistan and Iraq, but for too many decades now, Palestine. My latest book is Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, available from Interlink Books.
Website: The Institute for Policy Studies
Inspirational Quote: "I have gone through a difficult apprenticeship and a long search, and also through the labyrinths of the written word, to become the poet of my people. That is my reward, not the books and poems that have been translated, or the books written to explicate or to dissect my words. My reward is the momentous occasion when, from the depths of the Lota coal mine, a man came up out of the tunnel into the full sunlight on the fiery nitrate field, as if rising out of hell, his face disfigured by his terrible work, his eyes inflamed by the dust, and stretching his rough hand out to me, a hand whose calluses and lines trace the map of the pampas, he said to me, his eyes shining: "I have known yo for a long time, my brother." That is the laurel crown for my poetry, that opening in the bleak pampa from which a worker emerges who has been told often by the wind and the night and the stars of Chile: "You're not alone; there's a poet whose thoughts are with you in your suffering." ...But how wonderful to have been in Ulan Bator! More so for someone like me who lives in all beautiful names. I live in them as in dream mansions intended just for me. And so I have lived, relishing every syllable, in Singapore's, in Samarkand's names. When I die, I want to be buried in a name, some especially chosen, beautiful-sounding name, so that its syllables will sing over my bones, near the sea." - From Memoirs by Pablo Neruda
A favorite poem:
I Am There
by Mahmoud Darwish
I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the ken of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there, I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:
Home
Activist Vital Stats: Phyllis Bennis
Name: Phyllis Bennis
Location: Washington, D.C.
Causes: Ending wars and occupations; these days so urgently Afghanistan and Iraq, but for too many decades now, Palestine. My latest book is Ending the US War in Afghanistan: A Primer, available from Interlink Books.
Website: The Institute for Policy Studies
Inspirational Quote: "I have gone through a difficult apprenticeship and a long search, and also through the labyrinths of the written word, to become the poet of my people. That is my reward, not the books and poems that have been translated, or the books written to explicate or to dissect my words. My reward is the momentous occasion when, from the depths of the Lota coal mine, a man came up out of the tunnel into the full sunlight on the fiery nitrate field, as if rising out of hell, his face disfigured by his terrible work, his eyes inflamed by the dust, and stretching his rough hand out to me, a hand whose calluses and lines trace the map of the pampas, he said to me, his eyes shining: "I have known yo for a long time, my brother." That is the laurel crown for my poetry, that opening in the bleak pampa from which a worker emerges who has been told often by the wind and the night and the stars of Chile: "You're not alone; there's a poet whose thoughts are with you in your suffering." ...But how wonderful to have been in Ulan Bator! More so for someone like me who lives in all beautiful names. I live in them as in dream mansions intended just for me. And so I have lived, relishing every syllable, in Singapore's, in Samarkand's names. When I die, I want to be buried in a name, some especially chosen, beautiful-sounding name, so that its syllables will sing over my bones, near the sea." - From Memoirs by Pablo Neruda
A favorite poem:
I Am There
by Mahmoud Darwish
I come from there and remember,
I was born like everyone is born, I have a mother
and a house with many windows,
I have brothers, friends and a prison.
I have a wave that sea-gulls snatched away.
I have a view of my own and an extra blade of grass.
I have a moon past the peak of words.
I have the godsent food of birds and an olive tree beyond the ken of time.
I have traversed the land before swords turned bodies into banquets.
I come from there, I return the sky to its mother when for its mother the sky cries, and I weep for a returning cloud to know me.
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single one:
Home
Monday, February 22, 2010
Photo of the Week: The Empty Seat
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.
The Empty Seat at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Photo credit: Jill Brazel
The Empty Seat at the 2008 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
Photo credit: Jill Brazel
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