Workshop with Keith Jarrett & Sophia Walker

Capturing Fire 2014:
Workshop with Keith Jarrett & Sophia Walker

"The Great British Wank Off" 

  

 

June 1st

2:30-5pm

DC Center for the LGBT Community

2000 14th St NW #105

Washington, DC 20009

Register Now!
Open to all!

$25
or
FREE for Capturing Fire Festival Registrants
(e-mail browning@splitthisrock.org for code)

**Scholarships are available**
(e-mail browning@splitthisrock.org)

Workshop Description

There is nothing a Brit can't get away with, and it's not just the accent. Preaching to the choir is boring. It's easy. How do you turn your biggest detractors into the ones snapping loudest at your lines? Push boundaries, push uncomfortable truths, push your audience. With satire, we can say anything. Looking at the work of some of the most successful British poets (Gerry Potter, Anna Freeman and others), we'll take on everything we're not supposed to talk about. Be ready to write.

Bios

Keith Jarrett lives in London, England. A former London and UK poetry slam champion, he writes performance poetry and short fiction and teaches as part of a pioneering Spoken Word Educator programme. He is also working on his first novel, a tale written partly in verse.  

Sophia Walker is an internationally touring poet and teaching artist. She is the 2013 BBC GrandSlam Champion, winner of the 2012 London Poetry Olympics, 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival Slam and is a former Scottish National Slam Champion.  

Workshop with Gayle Danley and Pages Matam!

Pastries & Poetry: 

An Intergenerational

Writing Workshop

with Gayle Danley & Pages d. Matam

 Saturday August 24

2-5pm

1112 16th St. NW

Suite 600

Washington, DC 20036

   

Watch Gayle Danley's "5 Steps to Slam Poetry"

 ~

Register now! 

In the TED Ed animated video "5 Steps to Slam Poetry," author, educator, and internationally acclaimed poet Gayle Danley describes the process of creating a "slam poem" with narration by Pages d. Matam. What is slam? Slam combines movement, voice, drama, and the written word for an unforgettable spoken word experience. It is a competitive poetry event in which the audience plays a central role. Join Gayle and Pages for pastries and poetry as they facilitate an inter-generational writing workshop that expands on the "5 Steps to Slam Poetry" - from writing to editing to reciting - and delves deeper into what ingredients are essential in baking the perfect poem. In this experiential workshop, participants will share their stories, engage in writing exercises, and discuss both the technical and emotional aspects of creative writing and performance.  

All levels welcome! Limited to 25 participants.  

All participants must register.  

$25 registration fee

Scholarships available -  

contact Elli Nagai-Rothe for details  

Registration Deadline: Thursday August 22 

Register now! 

About Gayle & Pages 

Gayle Danley's explosive style combines movement and emotion as she performs her magic on the audience, sweeping them up in her words as she addresses and explores contemporary issues. In addition to her motivational speaking and college performances, she has maintained a constant tour of elementary and secondary schools, helping students with traumatic experiences and teaching workshops on Slam poetry to all age groups. A multi award winning international Slam poet originally from N.Y., but now residing in Baltimore, her accomplishments as an artist, educator, and author are but a small part of her riveting mastery in fusing her poetry with the ability to touch her audience through real life experiences, leaving a lasting emotional message.

Pages d. Matam is a multidimensional creative writing and performance artist, residing in the D.C. metropolitan area, but originally from Cameroon, Africa. Author, educator, activist, playwright, host, event organizer, Award Winning slam poet, and his greatest accomplishment, being a father. A proud gummy bear elitist, bowtie enthusiast, professional hugger and anime fanatic, be prepared to be taken on a journey of cultural and personal discovery unapologetic in its silly, yet visceral and beautifully honest in its storytelling. 

Poetry as Connection: A Workshop with Theresa Davis

Poetry as Connection: 

A Workshop with Theresa Davis

Sunday June 16, 2013 

2-4pm

@ The DC Center for the LGBT Community 

1318 U St. NW 

Washington, DC 20009

Poetry as Connection invites participants to create an original piece of work from a prompt and image that incorporates personal experiences. In this workshop we will discuss, share and receive feedback from the group followed by a discussion and tips on performance, how to put your poem in your body. World Champion Slam Poet Theresa Davis will facilitate.

All Levels Welcome! 

 Limited to 20 participants.

Workshop fee: $25. Scholarships available.  

All participants must register in advance.    

Register Now!

Theresa Davis is the mother of three and was a classroom teacher for over twenty years. She reclaimed her love for poetry ten years ago after the loss of her father. Since then, she has been a member of the ArtsInterface, Co-founder of Art Amok Slam Team, Women of the World Slam Champion (2011), poet in residence as the 2012 McEver Chair of Georgia Tech University, Emerging Artist Grant Recipient, co-producer of the staged poetry performance with Jon Goode "Wish You Were Here", and was honored by the City of Atlanta with a proclamation making May 22, Theresa Davis Day.

In July 2012, Theresa released her chapbook Simon Says poems about teaching and anti-bullying themes. This project, in partnership with the City of Atlanta's Bureau of Cultural Affairs, is a call to action to bring about an end to bully culture in our children's classrooms. As a contracted author, with Sibling Rivalry Press, Theresa has released her first published collection of poems entitled After This We Go Dark.

A Workshop with Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Risking Sight:

Poetry & Photography

A Workshop with Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Saturday September 17, 2011
2:30-5:00pm

The Institute for Policy Studies

1112 16th St. NW
Suite 600

Washington, DC 20036

$25 registration fee

To register, please e-mail Program Assistant Alicia Gregory: gregory@splitthisrock.org

How does the eye see and speak in a poem? How might blindness or blur affect poem-making? This workshop will focus on ways to use works of art, mostly photographs, to generate new work. We will challenge the evolving conversation between the physical world and the imagery that language provides in poetry.

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is a poet and a photographer. She is the author of Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press), and her newest collection poetry, Mule & Pear (New Issues Poetry & Prose), will be published this fall. A Cave Canem Fellow and recipient of numerous fellowships, Griffiths' literary and visual work has been widely published. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College.

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.

Sunday Kind of Love and Workshop with Kathy Engel

Sunday Kind of Love
Sunday, February 21, 2010
4-6 pm
Featuring Kathy Engel
author of Ruth's Skirts and co-editor of We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon
Busboys & Poets
14th & V Streets, NW, Washington, DC
Hosted by Katy Richey and Sarah Browning
Cosponsored by Busboys and Poets and Split This Rock
Open Mic at each event!

Admission free, donations encouraged
For more info: Busboys and Poets browning at splitthisrock dot org
Split This Rock 202-387-POET

Workshop by Kathy Engel:
Everything is Translation: Poetry that Breaks Boundaries

Saturday, February 20, 2010
1-4 pm
Institute for Policy Studies
1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC

$25 fee. To apply, send a check made out to "Sarah Browning" to Split This Rock/IPS
1112 16th Street, NW
Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036

No experience necessary. First come, first served. Scholarships available - contact Sarah at browning at splitthisrock dot org to apply.
Made possible in part by a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities

Everything is Translation: Poetry that Breaks Boundaries

We will each bring a favorite poem and our readiness to listen, to write, and to share our work. We will share poems we love and discuss why, talk about fear and censorship that gets in the way of telling our stories through poetry. Why poetry? we will ask. We will look inside the notion that everything is translation, even within one language, the ways in which we make assumptions about one another without understanding each others' languages, and what can happen when we break open the assumptions and move inside the language. We will write using prompts that push us in language, form and narrative. We look at questions of identity, form, sound, story, magic, dream, research, journey, connection. Our time together as poets will be informed by an understanding that community is not separate from poetry and that community cannot exist without the sharing of all the stories, all the voices.


Kathy Engel is a poet, activist, essayist, organizer, producer and educator. Founder and first director of the women's human rights organization MADRE, co founder and former President of Riptide Communications, she has worked as a consultant for more than 20 year in creative strategic development for human rights, peace, and justice groups. Her passion is the fusion of imagination and change and border crossing. Her book of poems Ruth's Skirts was published by IKON in 2007. The same year she co edited We Begin Here: Poems for Palestine and Lebanon, Interlink Books, with Kamal Boullata. She is an adjunct professor at New York University in the Tisch School of the Arts/Art & Public Policy Program and the Gallatin School of Individualized Study's Community Learning Initiative. She is co producer of a film in process in which more than 175 women from the East End of Long Island speak about their hopes and fears the week preceding the election of Barack Obama. She is a student in the MFA program in poetry at Drew University. She has worked with the people of Haiti for years and will continue to. Kathy lives in Sagaponack, New York with her husband, dogs, cats, and her daughters who are suddenly grown, when they come home.

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.
*************************************************************************************
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.
*************************************************************************************
mothertongue presents Jenny C. Lares (plus open mic)
August 19, 9pm, The Black Cat,
1811 14th St. NW, Washington, DC
*************************************************************************************
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!

Sunday Kind of Love This Sunday June 21

Return to Sunday Kind of Love on the first day of summer in the Langston Room at Busboys and Poets at 14th and V NW this Sunday, June 21, 4 - 6 p.m.

This reading will feature Lorna Dee Cervantes, Alice B. Fogel, and Reb Livingston.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wing Press, 2006) and From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada(1981), which won an American Book Award. Her work has been included in many anthologies including Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award. She is also leading a workshop on Saturday the 27th. Register by emailing melissa.dcpaw [at] gmail.com. Also, check out the FaceBook event page

* Alice B. Fogel is the author of Be That Empty(Harbor Mountain Press, 2007), I Love This Dark World (Zoland, 1996) and Elemental, Zoland Books (Cambridge, 1993). Her poems have been anthologized in The Best American Poetry, Poets Choice, and many other anthologies. She teaches at the University of New Hampshire.



Reb Livingston is the author of Your Ten Favorite Words (Coconut Books, 2007), Pterodactyls Soar Again (Whole Coconut Chapbook Series, 2006), co-author of Wanton Textiles (No Tell Books, 2006) and co-editor of The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel anthology series. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, and other publications. She's also the editor of No Tell Motel and publisher of No Tell Books.

*Photo credit John Clarke Russ

Workshop Opportunity and Updates

Split This Rock and the Sunday Kind of Love reading series invite you to participate in a writing workshop with Lorna Dee Cervantes (who is reading at Sunday Kind of Love on Sunday the 21), Saturday, June 27, from 1-4 pm. Thanks to support from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities, the cost is $25. The workshop is open to all levels of writing from beginning to advanced—and will be geared towards helping you generate new work. (Our next and final writing workshop of the season will be in August with Terrance Hayes... stay tuned for more details on that).

Register today; send an email to melissa.dcpaw@gmail.com.

Workshop Description: Ecopoetics: A Poet's Way of Knowledge

There are about as many ways to write a poem as there are people on the planet. In poetry, as in love, there are no absolutes, and that's the only absolute. So, how does one make sense of the plethora? How, when faced with the whole enchilada, does one go about the process? For poetry is a process, above all else. As Coleridge once wrote, "Poetry is the pleasurable activity of the journey itself."

In this workshop we will map out the journey by dividing the poetic universe (multiverse) into four distinct phases of the creative/critical process: GENERATION, SELECTION, Re-VISION, and CRITICAL EVALUATION. Much the way we splay out the patterns on a globe into east, south, west and north in order to get anywhere, no individual phase is more important than another and each has its own distinct character and unique phenomena. We will participate in exercises designed to match each phase of the process - rather than focus undue or premature attention upon poetry as product. We will discuss and consider many roads leading us there, to the finished poem ("finished" in the orgasmic sense rather than as executioner or, worse, as taxidermist.) We should, by the end of the day, come away with at least 4 new poems and a sense of our own patterns and patterning (for better or worse) and we will acquire a new toolbox of techniques and methods, a new confidence and playfulness, a new sense of our own strengths and weaknesses as writers, and maybe even become acquainted with our own inner critic as well as become accustomed to the sound of our voice as well as our own individual "Voice" as a poet.

Each workshop will be unique to its participants. This workshop respects all and expects such from participants. Expect diversity. Expect to learn how to pleasure yourself - so to speak.

Lorna Dee Cervantes is the author of DRIVE: The First Quartet (Wing Press, 2006), From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (Arte Público Press, 1991) and Emplumada (1981), which won an American Book Award. Her work has been included in many anthologies including Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry (eds. Maria Mazziotti Gillan and Jennifer Gillan, 1994), No More Masks! An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Women Poets (ed. Florence Howe, 1993), and After Aztlan: Latino Poets of the Nineties (ed. Ray González, 1992). In 1995 she received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award.

*************************************************************************************
For an update on poets reading at Artomatic, see First Person Plural, the blog of the Writer's Center.