Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Venus Thrash Profiled in the Examiner


The Examiner has given us more love by featuring yet another one of our poets! Venus Thrash, a featured reader for the 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival, has been profiled by the Examiner. Read the interview here.

Split This Rock Featured Poet Jose Padua in the Examiner


Jose Padua, a 2012 Split This Rock Poetry Festival featured poet, receives a special shout out from the Examiner. Check it out here.

Petition to Restore Art Funding

Support the DC Commission on the Arts and the Humanities and sign the petition to restore art funding. This year the art budget is only 0.034%. Ask Mayor Gray to help increase funding, and bring the arts back into DC. Sign here and show your support.

JoAnne Growney's Take on Poetry, Math, and Featured Minnie Bruce Pratt


JoAnne Growney blogs on poetry, mathematics, and featured poet Minnie Bruce Pratt! The poem "Someone is Up," as well as two other pieces, will be seen in the current issue of Beloit Poetry Journal. Check it out and support Split This Rock!

Moe Ma Kha Plant


Moe Ma Kha Plant was written by dissident Burmese poet Naing Win Swe, and edited by our very own, Melissa Tuckey, co-founder of Split This Rock. Read the rest of this inspiring poem here.

Get Your Beautiful Split This Rock Notebook


Notebooks will be on sale at Split This Rock festival and at the AWP table N 7. Only $10.00. Check out the beautiful Alicia composing in her very own Split This Rock notebook!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Abortion Rights Poetry Contest



Sponsored by the Abortion Care Network & Split This Rock


Deadline: April 1, 2012 - Free to enter



The Abortion Care Network (ACN), a national organization of independent providers and prochoice supporters, and Split This Rock, a national network of socially engaged poets, announce a poetry contest in conjunction with ACN’s annual meeting, to be held in May 2012 in the DC metro area.

The experience of women who seek abortion and other reproductive services is as varied as the individuals involved. For some, there is safety, relief, and good medical care. For others, there is doubt, harassment, and stigma. For all, health care takes place in a politicized context in which even the most basic choices about our bodies, sexuality, and childbearing can be scrutinized.

The ACN and Split This Rock welcome the submission of poems on these themes. We will award the following prizes: First ($100), Second ($75) and Third Place ($50), and Honorable Mention. Judging will done by Split This Rock and ACN.

The first-place winner will read the winning poem at ACN’s annual meeting in May. The prize-winning poems will be published in the ACN’s quarterly newsletter, The Provider, in the conference program distributed to all meeting attendees, and on Split This Rock’s website at www.SplitThisRock.org.

Poets from any part of the U.S. may submit poems, but we regret that no travel funds will be provided so that the winning poet may read at the meeting.

Submission Guidelines:

  • · Submit up to 3 poems (6 pages maximum) by midnight, Sunday, April 1, 2012, in the body of a single email to: info@splitthisrock.org.
  • · Attachments will not be opened. We will request Word attachments of finalist poems.
  • · One entry per poet, please.
  • · All styles and approaches accepted.
  • · Free to enter.
  • · Previously published in print is acceptable, but, please, not on the web.

· Simultaneous submissions accepted. Please inform us at info@splitthisrock.org immediately if the poem has been accepted for publication elsewhere.

· Poets must be able to be in the Washington, DC, area in May, 2012 to read the winning poem at the annual meeting of the ACN.

Questions? info@splitthisrock.org

Friday, February 24, 2012

Poem of the Week: Rachel McKibbens

RM

Across the Street from the Whitmore Home for Girls, 1949

The Mad Girls climb the wet hill,

breathe the sharp air through sick-green lungs.

The Wildest One wanders off like an old cow

and finds a steaming breast inside a footprint in the snow.

She slips it into her glove, holds it close like a darling.

At night, she suckles the lavender tit, still warm

in her hard little hands. She drapes it over her heart--

the closest she will ever come to a Woman Thing.

She sleeps on her right side with the breast

tucked between her legs. Her eyes flutter like a rocked doll.

She dreams of Before the Father, when her body

was smooth as a crab, her fingers

tip-toe soft. Her mouth was a shining crown,

her hair moved like a hungry dog.

Outside her bedroom, the Lonesome Boys hide in trees

to watch the Father lift her gown.

In the morning, she is who she is again.

Her hair, a soft black brick, her body held together

by hammers. The breast is shriveled up. Gone cold

in her lap. A death-blue fish with one stone eye.

-Rachel McKibbens



Used by permission.


From Beloit Poetry Journal
Spring 2012 - Split This Rock Edition


Order this special issue now from the BPJ website for only $5.00. The issue will also be available for sale at Split This Rock's table at AWP and at the festival.


Rachel McKibbens is the author of Pink Elephant and is a New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow. She was an Urban Word NYC mentor, teaching poetry at Bellevue Hospital through The Healing Arts Program, targeting at-risk youth. She teaches poetry and creative writing throughout the country. Her poems, short stories and nonfiction have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including World Literature Today, The New York Quarterly, and The American Poetry Journal.

McKibbens will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. Join us!

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

Friday, February 17, 2012

Poem of the Week: Minnie Bruce Pratt

Minnie Bruce Pratt

The Street of Broken Dreams


The dog lunged at me and choked on its chain

guarding a house on the street of broken dreams.

What does it take to be safe? A sun-porch window

barred shut with a wood-spooled bed frame. Fradon

lock store down the block, a giant curlicue key

advertising sleep all night, sweet dreams. A bumble-

bee in the clover fumbling to find its damp-dirt home.


No way to tell who owns my neighborhood homes

until the for-sale-by-bank signs grow overnight,

and of course there's the bank at James and Lodi

with the blue light, CHASE, that stays on 24/7.

On my street some people harrow a vacant lot,

green turned under into small rows, they harvest

weathered rocks and pile those up in the corner.

In another city, some foreclosed people got so angry

the big finance company had to hide its sign, AIG.

The people were so angry. That makes me feel more

safe, the people come out of their houses to shout:


We demand. Not rabble and rabid, not shadow, not terror,

the neighbors stand and say:The world is ours, ours,.ours.

-Minnie Bruce Pratt

From Inside the Money Machine
(Carolina Wren Press, 2011)

Used by permission.


Minnie Bruce Pratt's most recent book is Inside the Money Machine, described by one reviewer as "anti-capitalist poetics." Her previous book, The Dirt She Ate: Selected and New Poems, received a Lambda Literary Award. Her poems about her relationship to her sons as a lesbian mother, Crime Against Nature, were chosen as the Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets. A member of the National Writers Union, Pratt does anti-racist and anti-imperialist organizing with the International Action Center and its Women's Fightback Network. After 30 years of adjunct teaching, she is a part-time Professor of Writing & Rhetoric and Women's & Gender Studies at Syracuse University.


Pratt will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. Join us!


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

Thursday, February 16, 2012

The power to mold worlds with your creative visions comes from within





Do not let anyone else pen your future, past or present. You must write your life into being. Words create worlds.

- Read the interview with Split This Rock Youth Programs Coordinator Jonathan B. Tucker here.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Poem of the Week: Venus Thrash

Venus Thrash


Uncivil


I am wearing a white tux with tails,

or a baby blue one with a ruffly shirt,

or decked out in classic black, or coolly

clad in a pearl-white dashiki embroidered

in gold silk, or my favorite pair of holy

blue jeans with a white tee shirt that says

I Heart Pussy, or the green one with the black

velvet fist raised in the air, & you're not

wearing a white dress at all but a wispy

wraparound, strawberry-red, that hugs you

warm & tight around the waist, cut low

at the small of your back, showing off

peek-a-boo cleavage & legs with no quit,

& our folks are here with tissues & hankies

bawling the way parents do at weddings,

& I won't be waiting for you at the end

of any aisle, but we will walk together,

arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand, our wrists

tied & bound with sheer purple scarves,

& we will be the only ones giving us away

under a moonlit sky abundant in stars,

& there will be no Wedding March

on the Steinway but Nina Simone

demanding Be My Husband & I'll Be

Your Wife or Aretha Franklin's luscious

You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman,

& we won't exchange vows or rings,

but smoldering kisses & lingering hugs,

& there will be no parchment certificate

stamped with any State's approval

confirming we're married or in love,

but we will jump over a brand new straw

broom, we will light candles & pour red

wine into the earth where our ancestors sleep,

we will wash & anoint each other's heads

with frankincense & myrrh, & the women

will unwind butter-yellow kangas

from their hair & toss them on the ground

before us to cushion our feet.



-Venus Thrash


Used by permission.


Venus Thrash has had poetry published in Gargoyle, Beltway Quarterly, Torch, and the Arkansas Review, and in the anthologies Spaces Between Us: An HIV/AIDS Anthology, Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC, Gathering Ground: A Reader Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade, and Haunted Voices, Haunting Places: An Anthology of Writers of the Old and New South. She has read at the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Schomburg Center for African American Research, and The Library of Congress. She is a professor of fiction and poetry, and a mother.


Thrash will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. Join us!


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

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Lend a Hand at Split This Rock 2012!

We're in the final stretch for organizing the 2012 Split This Rock Festival and we need your help to make this work! Please consider volunteering during the Festival from March 22nd to March 25th. Some of the roles for volunteers include:

  • Venue Czarina: Set up rooms according to the needs of the session, including posting the correct sign for current session. Check that all attendees have valid festival passes. Answer questions and help guide participants to appropriate rooms. Assist the session coordinator as needed. Ensure that all rules of the venue are observed. A cell phone is required for this position.

  • Register/Check in: Responsible for cash handling/taking credit card info, checking student IDs, coordinating with organizers to hand over cash box when sales close. May help with signups for open mics.

  • Info/Press/T-Shirt sales: Work alongside registration/check-in volunteers, to sell t-shirts and festival publications, hand out press packets/passes, and answer questions as needed. Responsible for cash handling/taking credit card info, coordinating with organizers to hand over cash box when sales close.

Jaime Volunteer


We are hosting three brief, fun volunteer training sessions to prepare you for your shifts! This is a great chance to meet our team and fellow poets & organizers. We ask all volunteers to please attend one of the following sessions:

  • Thursday, March 8th from 6 - 7pm @ Split This Rock Office, 1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600 - Washington, DC 20036
  • Saturday, March 17th from 10:30 - 11:30 am @ Split This Rock Office
  • Thursday, March 22nd from 9:30 - 10:30 am @ Thurgood Marshall Center, 1816 12th Street - Washington, DC 20009

If you are coming from out of town and can't make one of these sessions, please let us know. We're happy to accommodate you!


Volunteering has its benefits!

Volunteers who work two or more 2.5 hour shifts will receive a free pass to the festival and a free Split This Rock 2012 t-shirt. Plus you'll meet wonderful, fascinating people and be a part of a movement of poets working for a better world.

To volunteer or for more information, contact our Volunteer Coordinator Kaitie O'Hare at
Kaitie.str@gmail.com.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Poem of the Week: Sherwin Bitsui

Sherwin Bitsui


In a cornfield at the bottom of a sandstone canyon,

wearing the gloves of this song tightly over closed ears;

the bursting sun presses licks of flame

into our throats swelling with ghost dogs

nibbling on hands that roped off our footprints

keeping what is outside ours tucked

beneath the warmth of their feet cooling to zero,

as they swarm luminous landmines like gnats,

as thunder shakes white sand from wet hair,

as police sirens trickle from water jars onto squash blossoms,

as starlight, opened inside a darkened room,

begins to tell its story from end to beginning . ..................again.


-Sherwin Bitsui

from Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2009)

Used by permission.


Sherwin Bitsui is the author of two poetry books, Flood Song (Copper Canyon Press, 2009), and Shapeshift (University of Arizona Press, 2003). His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a 2010 PEN Open Book Award and an American Book Award. He is originally from Baa'oogeedí (White Cone, Arizona on the Navajo Nation). He is Diné of the Todich'íi'nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tł'ízíłání (Many Goats Clan).


Bitsui will be reading at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 22-25, 2012. Join us!


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

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Michon Boston of Eclectique | 916 Interviews Sarah Browning

E916: How did poetry become so popular in Washington, DC? What makes DC a poetry or a poetic city?

Essex Hemphill


SB: DC has a long and rich poetic tradition, to which we are all the lucky heirs. Walt Whitman spent the Civil War years in the city and the Harlem Renaissance poetry movement was launched here by Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Jean Toomer, and others. DC was home to influential Black Arts Movement poets Larry Neal, Gaston Neal, and Amos Zu-Bolton, among many others. Essex Hemphill was the best known Black gay poet of that gorgeous generation tragically lost to AIDS, those who came of age in the 1980s.

It’s no coincidence that most of these poets are African American, of course. Our city’s Black writers and artists have always nurtured and supported one another, developing a strong cultural voice that has been critical to the survival of the District’s Black community.

Today is no different. Older poets mentor younger ones, communities of poetry form and dissolve and re-form. DC becomes a living center for oral poetry – the oldest of poetic forms – newly named “Spoken Word.” The District of course is also home to the federal government, an institution endlessly dissected and analyzed by the press and the popular imagination. Those of us who live here, in contrast, are often forgotten. We claim our place in the world, therefore, with poetry. Here is our story, our poems declare. Pay attention.

Hot Off the Press: Beloit Poetry Journal's 2012 Split This Rock Chapbook

Beloit Poetry Journal
Vol. 62 No.3 - Spring 2012
Split This Rock Chapbook

BPJ Langston 2012

For over sixty years of continuous publication, the Beloit Poetry Journal has worked to expand American poetic language and vision through its publication of international poetry and of work that challenges social, political, and aesthetic norms.


The Spring 2012 issue of the journal is a chapbook of new poems of provocation and witness by featured readers at the 2012 Split This Rock Festival: Homero Aridjis, Sherwin Bitsui, Kathy Engel, Carlos Andrés Gómez, Douglas Kearney, Khaled Mattawa, Rachel McKibbens, Marilyn Nelson, Naomi Shihab Nye, José Padua, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Kim Roberts, and Venus Thrash. Robert Shetterly's probing portrait of Langston Hughes, from his portrait series Americans Who Tell the Truth, graces the cover. You can currently preview a handful of the poems on the BPJ website.


Order this special issue now from the BPJ website for only $5.00.

The issue will also be available for sale at the festival.


A subscription to the BPJ costs just $18/year (4 issues); student discounts are available for classroom adoption. Visit the BPJ website to order, browse the full-text archive, or join the conversation with poets from the 2012 Split This Rock Chapbook on the Poet's Forum.