Poetic Resistance Events & Virtual Open Mic - January 2017!

In Washington, DC, for the marches and protests taking place inauguration weekend? Join us in forging a nationwide community for the struggle ahead by participating in these upcoming opportunities:


Virtual Open Mic: Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience
Submit poems by Tuesday, January 31, 2017

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. We invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience. We will post every poem we receive unless it is considered offensive (Ex: containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes,etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post.


WRITERS RESIST Sunday Kind of Love Reading & Open Mic!
Featuring Annie Kim and Samantha Thornhill
Sunday, January 15, 5-7 pm, $5 online or at the door (if available)
Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St, NW, Washington, DC
Nearby Metro Stop: U Street/African-Amer Civil War Memorial/Cardozo

Hosted by Sarah Browning & Katy Richey, this month's featured poets are Annie Kim, author of Into the Cyclorama, and Cave Canem fellow Samantha Thornhill. Open mic follows their readings. Sign up sheet available at the door. 

Writers Resist is a national network of writers driven to #WriteOurDemocracy by defending the ideals of a free, just, and compassionate democratic society. This month's Sunday Kind of Love will be one of dozens of Writers Resist events happening on January 15 around the country.

Sunday Kind of Love tickets go on sale midnight on January 14! Purchase tickets and learn more at Busboys' website.

Co-Sponsored by Busboys and Poets & Split This Rock. 


Poetry Speak Out: Resistance Open Mic 
Saturday, January 21, 7-9:30 pm
FREE & Open to Public
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D St NW, Washington, DC 
Nearby Metro Stations: Archives/Navy Memorial & Gallery Place/Chinatown

Join poets and social justice organizations to speak out for a free, just, and compassionate democracy. Gowri Koneswaran will serve as event MC. Share a poem, make a friend, build the resistance! To read a poem, sign up in advance online. If the form is not accessible to you, please email info@splitthisrock.org. Each reader should plan on one poem, up to three minutes long. Space is limited. We can't promise a specific time slot so please plan on attending the entire event. 

Poets who've signed up to read a poem so far: Danielle Badra, Sophie Cabot Black, Laurie Blair, Tara Campbell, Doritt Carroll, Teri Ellen Cross Davis, Hayes Davis, Amy Dryansky, Zein El-Amine, Michael Gushue, Camisha Jones, Alan King, Tatiana Figueroa Ramirez, Simone Roberts, Joseph Ross, Margaret Rozga, Jeneva Stone, Francisco Luis White

Event is wheelchair accessible and CART service will be provided for the D/deaf and hard of hearing community. The concession stand will be open selling snacks & drinks, including beer & wine. 

Sponsored by Split This Rock, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, and Institute for Policy Studies. For more info: info@splitthisrock.org.


MORE TO COME! STAY TUNED...

The resistance will continue - watch for AWP event details in the days to come. And if you'd like to be involved in organizing, to join a new Split This Rock Social Justice Organizing Committee -- from wherever you live -- please email Sarah Browning directly at browning@splitthisrock.org.

Call for Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge

We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

― Gwendolyn Brooks

As we journey through this unprecedented global crisis, we turn to poetry to share truths that unearth its underlying causes, impact, and insistence for genuine change. For many of us, today’s challenges are not new. The struggle of isolation, economic insecurity, inadequate medical care, deadly institutionalized negligence, governmental decisions that put black, brown, indigenous, Asian, disabled, sick, and other marginalized people at greater risk are not new. Today all the world experiences the vulnerability of these unrelenting issues and a heightened awareness to how our very survival depends on one another. 

Poetry cannot solve our present challenges, but it can help keep the flame of resilience, solidarity, and resistance alive in us. It can help us process and move through grief, anger, loneliness. It can be comfort when the most necessary action is to rest and recover. It can remind us what’s at stake, that our lives and legacy are worth the fight. All things begin in the imagination and poetry gives us a tool to paint the way forward, the reasons not to return to what does not honor and protect all lives. 

We offer this Virtual Open Mic as a well from which to draw replenishing water. We invite you to pour into this communal resource. Send us your poems of affirmation, protest, and witness. Give us the words you chant to get out of bed, to raise your fist, to encourage your kin, that will remind us, as this crisis does, that “we are our each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.” 

Guidelines

• Poems will be accepted until May 15, 2020. We invite one poem per person.
• Poems will be published on a rolling basis to Split This Rock’s blog, Blog This Rock (blogthisrock.blogspot.com), to create a Virtual Open Mic.
• We welcome poems new and old, whether previously published or not.
• Thematically, the call is wide open. We welcome: resistance, mourning, rage, solidarity, celebration, love. We especially welcome poems of witness and challenge by people experiencing an elevated level of risk in this crisis, such as disabled, sick, D/deaf, Brown, Black, Asian, Indigenous, queer/trans, and poor people. Religious and spiritual content is allowed, but please: no religious proselytizing.
• While we appreciate all poetic forms, Split This Rock's blog is not compatible with poems with complex or experimental formatting. Please choose your submission with this in mind. Should we find that your poem can not be properly posted, we will be in touch to request a different poem.
• Submissions to the Virtual Open Mic that have not yet been published as text online may also be considered for Split This Rock's Poem of the Week Series. We will contact you directly if we identify your poem as one we’d like to include as a Poem of the Week.

Submitted poems will be posted at Split This Rock’s blog, pending review for harmful content. Content that might be considered harmful includes poems with language, themes, and metaphors that:

• target marginalized groups, such as (but not limited to) D/deaf, disabled, and sick people; people of color, Indigenous people, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people; people discriminated against for being from other countries, Muslim people, religious minorities, poor people, incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, etc.
• include slurs used to refer to groups to which the author does not belong
• uses people’s lived experiences, such as illness and disability, as pejorative metaphors (Ex: “blind to the fact,” “deaf to the truth”) 
• appropriate the experiences or cultures of identities the poet does not hold
• call for violence against vulnerable people or groups

How to Submit Your Poem

Online: Send us your poem via the online Submission Form by May 15, 2020.

If the form is not accessible to you: 

• Send your poem as an email attachment (.doc or .docx only) with the subject line “Virtual Open Mic Poem-[Your Name]” to submissions@splitthisrock.org. 
• Please include the following in the body of your email: the poem's title, your name and email address, and, if the poem has been previously published online or in print, include  publication information (publication name, press name, if applicable, and year of publication). Additionally, we ask that you review the statement below and confirm your agreement with it by including this  statement in the body of your email: "I confirm originality of [YOUR POEM TITLE]."
  Confirmation of Originality Statement: Author warrants that all material submitted to Split This Rock for the Virtual Open Mic originated with the author and were created by the author except where otherwise credited. Author agrees to indemnify and hold harmless Split This Rock from any and all claims, damages, and expenses which may arise for alleged breach of author warranties associated with material to be published. The Author warrants and represents they are the sole owner of the copyright to the poem submitted for publication and have full power and authority to grant Split This Rock with the rights herein provided for.

• For greater accessibility, please include an audio recording of your poem with your emailed submission titled with this format: [Your Name]_[Title of Poem]_Audio. Be sure to check the recording’s sound quality and consistency with the written text before you send it. To record your poem, use your cell phone, tablet, or computer to make an MP3 or MP4 file. Make your recording in a quiet place, speaking clearly and at an understandable pace. Please be sure to read the poem as it is written. Follow this script to begin your recording: “This is [Your Name] reading [Title of Your Poem] for Split This Rock.” After that, if the poem has an epigraph, state “This poem has an epigraph that reads” and read the epigraph. Then repeat the poem’s title and read the poem.

Questions

Send questions to info@splitthisrock.org.

Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience

Photo by Jill Brazel

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience. 

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.).

• Poems will be accepted until January 31, 2017. 
• Send us your poems of resistance and power, and we will publish them on Split This Rock’s blog, Blog This Rock (blogthisrock.blogspot.com), to create a Virtual Open Mic. We welcome poems new and old, whether previously published or not. (Please include credit information for previously published work.) 
• Thematically we are wide open: resistance, mourning, rage, celebration, love. We are especially open to poems in solidarity with marginalized people, poems that celebrate activism and community, poems that sustain us in these perilous times. What would you like your country to know at this moment? What do you need to say to America?
• Unfortunately, Split This Rock's blog is not compatible with poems with complex formatting. Should we find that your poem can not be properly posted we will be in touch to request a different poem.
• Send the poem(s) as email attachments (.doc or .docx only) with the subject line “Resistance Poem” to submissions@splitthisrock.org. Include the poem name and your name in the document title.
• Please include the poem's title and your full contact information in the body of the email. 
• We invite one poem per person. 
• From the open mic collection, we may occasionally choose poems to run as Poem of the Week in the weeks ahead. We will contact you directly if we decide to use your poem for Poem of the Week. 
• Send questions to info@splitthisrock.org.

After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

Thank you for refusing silence.

Check out other resistance opportunities at our Poetic Resistance Events & Virtual Open Mic - January 2017 blog post!

Call for Poems that Speak Against Violence and for Embrace

If the back & arms you carry riddle with black

spots & marks made by birds who don’t want us here—

I will remind you: There are people who did this before us,

brown & black-spotted, yellow, with rattails,

born from what others did not want & loathed & aimed

to never let belong, & so, we are here today—

the field is wide. We make saliva from root & light.

Our spikelets grow, & do you feel the wind?

       - Joe Jiménez, Smutgrass

Orlando. Dhaka. Istanbul. Baghdad. Medina. Nice. The killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the murder of police officers in Dallas. This summer, terrible bigotry and violence have rent our global community. The killings must end, and we in the poetry community must contribute in any way we can. As we search for answers to these horrors and for ways to combat hatred and prejudice, we are reminded of poetry’s capacity to respond to violence, to help us regenerate, like spikelets sprouting in a contested field, claiming our public spaces for everyone.

In solidarity with all those targeted at home and abroad, from the LGBT community in the United States to devastated families of Baghdad, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. Over the next couple of weeks, from July 14 to 28, we are requesting poems in response to and against violence toward marginalized communities:

• Poems will be accepted until July 28, 2016. 
• Send us your poems in response to this violent summer, and we will publish them on Split This Rock’s blog, Blog This Rock (blogthisrock.blogspot.com), to create a Virtual Open Mic. We welcome poems new and old, whether previously published or not. (Please include credit information for previously published work.) 
• Thematically we are wide open: resistance, mourning, rage, celebration, love. We are especially open to poems focused on how we build again, how we heal, the places of light shining through the pain. 
• Unfortunately, Split This Rock's blog is not compatible with poems with complex formatting. Should we find that your poem can not be properly we will be in touch to request a different poem.
• Send the poem(s) as email attachments (.doc or .docx only) with the subject line “A Call in Response to Violence” to info@splitthisrock.org. Include the poem name and your name in the document title.
• Please include the poem's title and your full contact information in the body of the email. 
• We invite one poem per person. 
• From the open mic collection, we may occasionally choose poems to run as Poem of the Week in the weeks ahead. We will contact you directly if we decide to use your poem for Poem of the Week. 

After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to Congress and the National Rifle Association.

Split This Rock is also accepting poems for its 10th Annual Poetry Contest until November 1, 2016. For submissions guidelines, visit Split This Rock's website or Submittable.

January Resistance Events - Add Your Voice!

Dear Friend in Struggle,

Poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance in the years ahead. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

Split This Rock will be active in this poetic resistance and we invite you to add your voice. Or join us as a reader or audience member, experiencing the challenge and comfort that poetry can provide.

We plan two major events in DC in January, as well as an online platform.

First, we're proud to present a special Writers Resist Sunday Kind of Love featuring Annie Kim and Samantha Thornhill! Writers Resist is a national network of writers driven to #WriteOurDemocracy by defending the ideals of a free, just, and compassionate democratic society. Join us on January 15, 2017, at 5pm at Busboys and Poets, 14th & V. Details at the Facebook event page.

Then, on Saturday, January 21, 2017, at 7 pm, we plan an open mic Poetic Speak Out to complement the anti-inaugural marches and protests taking place that weekend, including the Festival of Resistance and the Women's March. Stay tuned for location details and information on how to sign up to read a poem at this historic event.

Won't be in the DC area that weekend? We'll also be opening this blog, Blog This Rock, as a virtual open mic for poems of resistance and power. Check back in the new year with details on how to submit. And to see a past virtual open mic, go to Blog This Rock, where we posted poems against gun violence and for embrace.

If you believe this work is essential, that poetry is the language of transformation, power, and vision, Split This Rock needs your help. Please invest. Learn what your donation can do at our website. Gifts from first-time donors and increased gifts from existing donors will be matched by the Cafritz Foundation!

With our fists in the air and poetry on our lips,

Split This Rock

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Simone Roberts

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

                

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, explicitly condones or implies a call for violence, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

***

O! Let It Be an Arms Race
by Simone Roberts

               -- This ring in you you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever.

                                             Friedrich Nietzsche

               -- We will outmatch them at every pass and out last them all.

Oh, then, let it be an arms race

to blow it all to kingdom come.

Let the sky glow unlight
and prowling with fury,

liquefy, or open its mouth to scream,

and the air run off

to safer planets.

Let there be an arms race

of our arms. Let our arms race

to wind behind each other’s backs,

to brace each other

for the concussion of riot police
in their neat line,
against the gas
and the rubber
and the need.

O! Let it be an arms race

to lift each other just slightly up now,

support the back to open the chest,

up to chase the air chasing the sky.

Laced arms and great arched trunks,

we could be our own damn fence,

a shelter for someone softer,

a watershed of arms encircling anyone left thirsty,

on the wrong end of the Old World’s fear

and its metal, its trembling law. O! Let it be,
oh, that carrying End in us like an open blade,
a sharp stone in a ring.

Oh, let us be a race

to gaze longest into each other's eyes,
see the dust of long-dead suns,
blasted and never known planets,

swirling and waving in the tides of our blood anyway,

a bit of the great ocean spilling maybe

over the lid and onto the cheek
so difficult is it for mortals
to look to the back of time and say Yes.

O! Let it be an arms race
to speak the language of adoration with our hands,

an arms race to cry the widest YES
to every future we must live into now,
even that one where, you know the one,

a tiny star returns us to being stars.

Let us let live into whatever may come,

singing.

If we must embrace a flashing end

let the boiling air slam our ghosts

onto the shattering walls behind us

like graffiti sprayed by the Angel of History,

all the world churning to rubble

in the wings’ sky-wide wake. Let,

O! then, let this end with
photo negatives of our last being,

our arms braced behind each other’s backs,

holding each other up, ready, and forward,

even into this, yes. And the future race, yes, 

of more intelligent, yes, and gentle beings, yes,
will see our ghosted shadows, yes,
and tell stories about never giving in
and never, yes oh yes,

letting fall.

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Robin Lynn Millstone

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

***

Who Hears the Voice of the Voiceless?
by Robin Lynn Millstone

Who hears the voice of the voiceless?
Who holds the power for change?
Who has the sway in persuasion?
Who sees beyond the short range?
-----------------------------------------------------------
In order for our country to be and remain a truly legitimate world leader, we must

strive to constantly monitor, adjust and improve ourselves, while being able to 

morph in an instant with the winds of change. We are the United States. And in 

every nuance of our name, we are STATES, UNITED! United in our universal entitlement, as human beings, to live our lives as WE choose - by sheer right of 

birth. The fathers of our country used such specific language to protect our 

freedoms; and even though their era disallowed true freedom for everyone, our founding fathers made sure to keep an open forum for improvements as time and cultures advanced. They knew that nothing ever remains the same and a good 

country takes into account all possibilities to better itself. We must be brave and 

just in looking at ourselves as a whole. We must find and listen to those who can envision our future and lead us toward a world where we can be in charge of our 

own destinies with pride and choice. If we don’t lead the world by example, we have 

no right to consider that we are, in any form, an authority on FREEDOM.
-------------------------------------------
Our power is chillingly mighty;
Our influence grows by the day.
Our judgments are made most rashly!
Our values move ever astray...
-----------------------------------------------
As the most powerful country in the world, we must accept the limitations of being human, just as our forefathers did. Humanity is built upon our ancient beginnings. 

We are a naturally warring species, and as such, we must endeavor to grow and 

improve – work to rise above long ingrained tendencies. We need true leaders who 

lead by example using insight and wisdom, thus, inspiring and motivating others 

around them; not wannabe leaders hiding behind false confidences, using bravado 

and charisma to gain power for their agenda. Mindful and mindless leaders of every 

ilk are deeply rooted in all races, colors and creeds. Politicians wills are built upon 

their winning hands. We, the people, must pause and listen and watch those we 

choose for our leaders, lest we find trickery in forms of bills and legislation built 

on open corporate palms and empty promises. We are the People! Each and every 

one of us are The United States – States, united in the single goal of achieving freedom and truth. For one cannot be had without the other. One of our most 

beloved founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson stated, “The entire art of 

government is the art of being honest”. Old truths can set us free, for we are most assuredly, who we were...
---------------------------------------------------------
Our time here on earth - so fleeting...
Life lessons derived from the Source –
The Age of Truth is upon us!
Let’s find a clear approach and course.
----------------------------------------------------------
We are all children of the Light, and thus are required, as human beings, to strive 

to understand the reality of our truths. We are obliged to uncover the 

ludicrousness of our modern circumstance - by way of the many validations placed before us. It is our responsibility to find ways to educate our nation on the positive points of living side by side in cultural harmony, allowing ALL people of virtue to 

live and believe what they will, as we spread our own individual brand of light into a country - in desperate need of healing...
---------------------------------------
Our future is ours to ponder;
Our vistas have yet to unfold.
Let's forge our fronts - stand UNITED!
A new proclamation from old...
-------------------------------------------
The Light shades the Dark -The Dark shades the Light;
with lines drawn ostensibly in black and white...

Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience – Olga Alexandru

As the incoming administration builds its agenda of attack on marginalized people, on freedom of speech, on the earth itself, poetry will continue to be an essential voice of resistance. Poets will speak out in solidarity, united against hatred, systemic oppression, and violence and for justice, beauty, and community.

In this spirit, Split This Rock is offering its blog as a Virtual Open Mic. For the rest of this frightening month, January of 2017, we invite you to send us poems of resistance, power, and resilience.

We will post every poem we receive unless it is offensive (containing language that is derogatory toward marginalized groups, that belittles, uses hurtful stereotypes, etc.). After the Virtual Open Mic closes, we hope to print out and mail all of the poems to the White House.

For guidelines on how to submit poems for this call, visit the Call for Poems of Resistance, Power & Resilience blog post. 

***

Immigrant
by Olga Alexandru

I don't know what it's like to have olive skin

in a country so pale

because it never occurred to me that it was different

so I tell myself, inhale

I know what it's like to wish

these brown eyes blue

because it's what I envied

wished for, too

I don't know what it's like to be Jane or Sarah

but I know what it's like to have extra letters in my name

that are undecipherable

without strain

I know what it's like to have English as my fourth language

but have it be the first now

to feel the lack of my mother tongue

and so often wonder, how?

When eyes are on me

I know what it's like to act tough

to keep the expression off my face

when you say this country's not big enough

I don't know how to be Romanian and Canadian at the same time

to not fit firmly in either box

to reconcile the in betweeness

so I wish someone would just open the doors and locks