Post-Festival Thank You Reception Tomorrow

Split This Rock
Post-Festival Thank You Reception

Thursday March 25, 2010
6-8pm
Split This Rock Headquarters
Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th St. NW
6th Floor
Washington, DC 20036

(Metro: Farragut North on the Red Line or Farragut West on the Blue/Orange Line)

Split This Rock invites you to our Post-Festival Thank You Reception. We'd like to express our appreciation for your significant contribution in making the 2010 Split This Rock Poetry Festival a success. Stop by for some snacks and drinks! This is also a great opportunity to collect your festival t-shirt if you have not already.

Please RSVP by contacting Program Associate Abdul Ali at ali at splitthisrock dot org or calling 202-787-5210.

Celebrating Lucille Clifton

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

- Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)

Karren Alenier Write-Up of Dennis Brutus Memorial

The following is an excerpt from Karren Alenier's blog discussing the Dennis Brutus event last Sunday. To read the full article and see more pictures of the event, click here.

The occasion of the Dresser meeting the venerable Brutus was the 2008 Split This Rock poetry conference. As a keynote speaker, Dennis Brutus viscerally made real what conference organizer Sarah Browning meant by naming her conference Split This Rock. What was especially moving to the Dresser was how such a modest and giving person could stand and suffer great hardship in the name of social justice and good common sense. Without hearing him speak, the Dresser would not have attended the LaFayette rally that crisp Sunday in March. The Dresser told those assembled that she was inspired to speak because of what Dennis Brutus said at the Split This Rock conference and she saw that Mr. Brutus who was standing in front of the crowd was moved by that confession. Afterwards, she spoke with him face to face and he embraced her. He said he was hoping people would be moved to action.

Photo credit: Karren Alenier

Happy Tenth Birthday, Beltway Poetry Quarterly!

Beltway Poetry Quarterly Celebrates Ten Years of Publication!

Announcing Volume 11.1: Winter 2010
Beltway Poetry's Tenth Anniversary Issue:
A Celebration of Guest Editors

Beltway's newest issue features poems and reminiscences from the 15 talented people who have generously served as guest editors since the journal's founding: Merrill Leffler, Brian Gilmore, 2008 Split This Rock Featured Poet, Hilary Tham, Saundra Rose Maley, Grace Cavalieri, 2008 Split This Rock Featured Poet, Naomi Ayala, 2008 Split This Rock Featured Poet, Sarah Browning, Split This Rock Co-Director, Andrea Carter Brown, Kwame Alexander, Teri Ellen Cross, Split This Rock advisory board member, Regie Cabico, Split This Rock core leader, Katie Davis , Maureen Thorson, Toni Asante Lightfoot, 2010 Split This Rock Featured Poet, and Dan Vera, key Split This Rock activist. Editor Kim Roberts is also a member of the Split This Rock advisory board.

Bid on Fabulous Auction Items - and Benefit Split This Rock

Split This Rock's auction items, to be auctioned off at a party at Busboys and Poets Thursday night, have been generating so much excitement that we've decided to open the bidding to email bids. So, even if you live in Maine, or have to work Thursday night, you can still bid.

Here's how it's going to work. Peruse the list of auction items detailed below. Choose what you'd like to bid on and send us an email at info [at] splitthisrock [dot] org. Please include the following information: Name, email address, phone number, which item or items you're bidding on, starting bid, and final bid (that is, the highest you are willing to go.)

We will appoint a proxy for you at the party who will bid on your behalf. We will contact you after the party only if you are the winning bidder. If two people send the same final bid for the same item, we will contact them both before the party to see if either wants to go higher. So please check your email frequently between now and 6 pm on Thursday.

That's it! Send your bids today and help support Split This Rock, your national network of socially engaged poets.

Items up for bid:



Candlelight dinner with Patricia Smith at Eatonville






Candlelight dinner with Cornelius Eady at Eatonville






A week at Wellspring House, a retreat for writers and artists in Western Massachusetts.




A Coaching Session for a Non-Profit Leader with Yael Flusberg of Y Elements







A Large Box of Giandujotti, chocolate-hazelnut confections direct from Turin, Italy

Party With Split This Rock, Thursday August 27!

Featuring A.B. Spellman and Regie Cabico with the DC Youth Slam Team!



Thursday, August 27, 6-8 pm
Langston Room, Busboys and Poets
14th & V Streets, NW
Washington, DC

Split This Rock invites you to a party Thursday, August 27, 2009, 6-8 pm, in the Langston Room, Busboys and Poets at 14th and V Streets, NW. Busboys will be donating fabulous refreshments and creating a couple of funky Split This Rock cocktails.

Why party? Split This Rock has recently received nonprofit status, a crucial step on the road to becoming a permanent home for socially engaged poets from DC and nationwide. Plus, believe it or not, it's just 6 months until the second Split This Rock Poetry Festival. So we figure it's time to celebrate.

Reading and performing will be 2010 featured poet and DC leading light A.B. Spellman, along with Regie Cabico and the DC Youth Slam Team. See below for more details. Entry will be $10-$25, sliding scale, and you'll have a chance to bid on amazing prizes at auction. Come prepared for readings, for fun, for volunteer opportunities, and for celebrating! For more information: info [at] splitthisrock [dot] org or 202-787-5210.

Can't make the party? You can still volunteer - just contact us at the above email or phone. We'd love to have you involved! And you can definitely still make a donation. Just click here. Many thanks!

Poets Celebrating with Split This Rock August 27 - Join Us!

A. B. Spellman is an author, poet, critic, and lecturer. His poetry collection, Things I Must Have Known, was recently was published by Coffee House Press. He has published numerous books and articles on the arts, including Art Tatum: A Critical Biography (a chapbook), The Beautiful Days (poetry), and Four Lives in the Bebop Business, now available as Four Jazz Lives (University of Michigan Press). In recognition of Spellman's commitment and service to jazz, the National Endowment for the Arts in 2005 named one of its prestigious Jazz Masters awards the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy. He was a poet-in-residence at Morehouse College, in Atlanta, Georgia, where he taught various courses in African-American culture, and at Emory, Rutgers, and Harvard Universities, where he offered courses in modern poetry, creative writing, and jazz.


The DC Youth Slam Team poets utilize their vocal energy and strength to channel emotions, generate a message, or participate in the artistic field they enjoy. Through their poetic works, they rejuvenate the art of poetry and create individual identities with distinct voices. These teens are the future voices of America. Welcome to the beginning of a movement.



Regie Cabico is the Director of Split This Rock's World & Me youth poetry contest and Artistic Director of Sol & Soul. Cabico is a poet, playwright, and spoken word performer. He took top prizes at the 1993, 1994, and 1997 National Poetry Slams. His work appears in over 30 anthologies and he co-edited Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry. He received a NYFA Artist Fellowship for Poetry in 1997, NYFAs in 2003 for Poetry and Performance Art, and two Brooklyn Arts Council Poetry Awards. Cabico has been a teacher for Urban Word and developed a poetry and performance program for teens with psychiatric illness at Bellevue Hospital. He received the 2006 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers in recognition of his work with diverse communities.

Upcoming August Events - Sunday Kind of Love, Terrance Hayes Workshop, and Celebration

New Shadows: Moving Poems from Imitation to Innovation
a workshop with Terrance Hayes
Saturday, August 15, 1-3pm

The workshop is full--to be added to the waiting list, contact Melissa at melissa.dcpaw [at] gmail [dot] com.

This workshop is intended to help new poets help themselves. It will offer concrete strategies for sustained writing when the only teacher available is a book. We will explore the ways inventive imitation (Think of imitation as transformation not reproduction.) can lead to poetic discovery and innovation by discussing and then imitating published poems from a multitude of styles and traditions.

Terrance Hayes' most recent poetry collection, Wind in a Box (Penguin 2006), was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the best 100 books of 2006. His other books of poetry are Hip Logic (2002), which won the National Poetry Series Open Competition, and Muscular Music (1999), which won the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Poems in Lighthead, his collection forthcoming from Penguin in 2010, have appeared in journals such as the American Poetry Review, Poetry, and The New Yorker. His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Carnegie Mellon University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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SUNDAY KIND OF LOVE
Featuring Terrance Hayes
Sunday, August 16, 4-6pm
Langston Room; Busboys and Poets
@ 14th & V

Featuring Terrance Hayes. Hosted by Melissa Tuckey and special guest Regie Cabico.

Sunday Kind of Love happens the 3rd Sunday of every month in the Langston Room at Busboys & Poets, 14th Street NW (V & 14th Streets NW, U Street/Cardozo metro). Sponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock Poetry Festival, with support from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
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mothertongue presents Jenny C. Lares (plus open mic)
August 19, 9pm, The Black Cat,
1811 14th St. NW, Washington, DC
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Celebrate our Non-Profit Status with Us at Busboys
August 27, 6-8 p.m. in the Langston Room at Busboys and Poets
Suggestion donation 10-25 dollars.
There will be readings, an auction, volunteer opportunities, and lots of poetry and love. Save the Date!