Photos from Thursday Evening Reading

Many thanks to Jill Brazel for the amazing photographs here.


Francisco Aragόn reads.


Lillian Allen, dub poet


Mark Nowak


Nancy Morejόn


Lillian Allen and Nancy Morejόn sign books for festival goers.


Co-Director Melissa Tuckey and Program Associate Abdul Ali

All Photo Credits: Jill Brazel

Poem-of-the-Week: Nancy Morejón

Nueva fábula de albañil

Entre arena y gravilla,
mezcla y paleta,
va transcurriendo su vida
que irradia cien mil vidas
en la fiereza del andamio
en donde nace su espalda peregrina,
tan dura como el ágata,
dispuesta a todo
para el porvenir.


The New Fable of the Bricklayer

Amid sand and fine gravel,
mortar and trowel,
his life unfolds
and beams down on a hundred thousand lives
from the fierce strength of the scaffold
where his pilgrim back is born,
hard as agate,
ready for everything
the future brings.


-Nancy Morejón

From With Eyes and Soul - Images of Cuba (White Pine Press 2004). Used by permission.


Nancy Morejón, one of the foremost Cuban writers and intellectuals, has published more than twelve collections of poetry, three monographs, a dramatic work, and four critical studies of Cuban history and literature. Her lyrical verse, shaped by an Afro-Cuban sensibility and a feminist consciousness, evokes the intimacy of family, the ephemerality of love, and the significance of Cuban history. Her poems have appeared in several bilingual editions in the United States, including Where the Island Sleeps Like a Wing (The Black Scholar Press) and Looking Within-Mirar adentro (Wayne State University Press). She has translated numerous acclaimed French authors including Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Éluard, and Aimé Césaire, and her books of criticism of the work of Nicolas Guillén are considered classics.
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Morejón 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
http://www.splitthisrock.org/
info@splitthisrock.org
202-787-5210

A Poetry Discussion: With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba by Nancy Morejón

Split This Rock and The Writer's Center present:

A Poetry Discussion:
With Eyes and Soul: Images of Cuba
by Nancy Morejón
Discussion led by poet and translator
Yvette Neisser Moreno


Wednesday, February 10, 7:00 pm
at Mt. Pleasant Neighborhood Library
3160 16th St. N.W., Washington, DC
(at corner of Lamont Street, near Columbia Heights Metro)
202-671-0200
Free and open to the public. The library is
wheelchair-accessible.

With Eyes and Soul is available for purchase for $19 at The Writer's Center (Bethesda) and Busboys and Poets (14th and V Streets NW) or online here. However, advance reading is not necessary. Please join us!! Check out our Facebook Event Page!

Please note, the author will not be at this event. To hear Nancy read, join us at Split This Rock in March!

Patricia Pego Guerra, Representative of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, will provide a brief introduction about Nancy Morejón, her poetry, and the Cuban context.


Nancy Morejón-one of the foremost Cuban writers and intellectuals-will be a featured poet at the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival. With Eyes and Soul features poems by Morejón (Spanish with English translations) and photos by renowned photographer Milton Rogovin, offering a multi-dimensional portrait of the landscape and people of Cuba.




The Writer's Center cultivates the creation, publication, presentation, and dissemination of literary work. We are an independent literary organization with a global reach, rooted in a dynamic community of writers.

For more information: yvettenm at verizon dot net or 240-462-6458