Sunday Kind of Love with Aracelis Girmay and David Gewanter

Sunday Kind of Love!
Sunday May 16, 2010

4-6pm

Featuring Aracelis Girmay
and David Gewanter

Busboys and Poets
14th & V St., NW
Washington, DC

Hosted by Sarah Browning and Katy Richey
Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock

Open mic at each event!
Admission free, donations encouraged

For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET



Aracelis Girmay is the author of the poetry collection Teeth, for which she was named a Pan African Literary Fellow & recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award. Girmay's work has also been published in Callaloo, Ploughshares, & MiPoesias, among other journals. She teaches in Drew University's low-residency MFA program, DreamYard's Bronx Poetry Project, & will begin teaching at Hampshire College in September. Among the poets whose work is deeply teaching her are: Forugh Farrokhzad, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martín Espada, Nazim Hikmet, & Lucille Clifton.



David Gewanter is author of three books of poetry: In the Belly (1997), The Sleep of Reason (2003), and War Bird (Fall 2009) all published by the University of Chicago Press. His work appears in Threepenny Review, Poetry Magazine, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Tikkun, Slate.com, Harvard Review, PoetryMagazine.com, Crossroads, Boston Globe, Semicerchio (Italy), PMLA, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Witter Bynner fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer's award, and a Hopwood award. He teaches at Georgetown University and lives in DC.

Sunday Kind of Love with Aracelis Girmay and David Gewanter

Sunday Kind of Love
Sunday May 16, 2010

4-6pm

Featuring Aracelis Girmay
and David Gewanter

Busboys and Poets
14th & V St., NW
Washington, DC

Hosted by Sarah Browning and Katy Richey
Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock

Open mic at each event!
Admission free, donations encouraged

For more info: www.BusboysandPoets.com
browning@splitthisrock.org

www.SplitThisRock.org
202-387-POET


Aracelis Girmay is the author of the poetry collection Teeth, for which she was named a Pan African Literary Fellow & recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award. Girmay's work has also been published in Callaloo, Ploughshares, & MiPoesias, among other journals. She teaches in Drew University's low-residency MFA program, DreamYard's Bronx Poetry Project, & will begin teaching at Hampshire College in September. Among the poets whose work is deeply teaching her are: Forugh Farrokhzad, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martín Espada, Nazim Hikmet, & Lucille Clifton.

David Gewanter is author of three books of poetry: In the Belly (1997), The Sleep of Reason (2003), and War Bird (Fall 2009) all published by the University of Chicago Press. His work appears in Threepenny Review, Poetry Magazine, Boston Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Tikkun, Slate.com, Harvard Review, PoetryMagazine.com, Crossroads, Boston Globe, Semicerchio (Italy), PMLA, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Witter Bynner fellowship, a Whiting Foundation Writer's award, and a Hopwood award. He teaches at Georgetown University and lives in DC.

Metaphor, (re)vision, and the Ode: A Workshop

In this workshop, we will explore risk, metaphor, & vision in relation to the praise poem. Through a series of generative prompts & questions, we will explore the ways in which the act of practicing metaphors might teach us something essential about personal history, empathy, action, and memory.

Sunday May 16, 2010
noon-2:30pm
Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th St. NW
Suite 600
Washington DC, 20036

**To register, send a check for $25 made out to "Sarah Browning" to Split This Rock, 1112 16thStreet, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036. Scholarships available.**

Please contact Sarah at browning at splitthisrock dot org for more info.


Aracelis Girmay is the author of the poetry collection Teeth, for which she was named a Pan African Literary Fellow & recipient of the GLCA New Writers Award. Girmay's work has also been published in Callaloo, Ploughshares, & MiPoesias, among other journals. She teaches in Drew University's low-residency MFA program, DreamYard's Bronx Poetry Project, & will begin teaching at Hampshire College in September. Among the poets whose work is deeply teaching her are: Forugh Farrokhzad, Gwendolyn Brooks, Martín Espada, Nazim Hikmet, & Lucille Clifton.

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

Haiku To President Obama

The following are haiku my GW University Writing students created at the end of their semester. Although I could not post all my students' creations here, I am very proud of them. - Katherine

I would have voted
for you if I were 18
Show me I was right
- Rachel Sher

Pain, destruction, hope
Anger has taken hold of
Change, promised yet false
- S.J. Tilden

The frail, red-cloaked man
just wanted to shake your hand
fallen to the East
- Jade Batstone

War

The Apes kill themselves.
We destroy each other too.
Where is the difference?
- A.J. Hudson

inches predicted?
weather man talks job report
to believe or not?
- Alexander Leanos

Teach-In on Capitol Hill

On Thursday, April 29, 2010, a “Teach-In on Capitol Hill,” was held in Room 2168 of the Rayburn House Building , in Washington, D.C. , dealing with the question of what the U.S. Congress must do to end the U.S. Wars and secure a peaceful Middle East . Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) served as the Moderator. On the panel were: David Swanson, Chris Hedges, Ann Wright, Jeremy Scahill and Josh Stieber.

For more details on this event and its sponsors, go to: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/51592

Teach-In on Capitol Hill on Ending U.S. Wars from William Hughes on Vimeo.

Poem of the Week: Joseph Ross

If You Leave Your Shoes

.........A response to Arizona’s law SB 1070

If you leave your shoes

on the front porch

when you run

to the city pool

for swimming lessons,

you might end up

walking across the sand

of the desert in

scorched feet,

bare, like the prophets,

who knew what it was

to burn.

If you leave your lover

to run to the market

for bread and pears

you might return

to find your lover

gone and the bed

covered with knives,

hot and gleaming from

a morning in the sun.

If you leave your country

in the wrong hands,

you might return to

see it drowning in blood,

able to spit

but not to speak.

-Joseph Ross

Used by permission.

Joseph Ross is a poet, working in Washington, D.C., whose poems have been published in many journals and anthologies including Poetic Voices Without Borders 1 and 2, Poet Lore, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Full Moon on K Street. He co-edited Cut Loose the Body: An Anthology of Poems on Torture and Fernando Botero’s Abu Ghraib for D.C. Poets Against the War. He has given readings in Washington, D.C.’s Miller Cabin Poetry Series and in the Library of Congress’ Poetry-at-Noon Series. He teaches in the College Writing Program at American University in Washington, D.C.

Ross appeared on the panel Gay and Lesbian Poetry in the 40^th Year Since Stonewall: History, Craft, Equality during Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2010.

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
www.splitthisrock.org
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210