| Author | Message | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 29194 Registered: 11-1998 |
Dearest All -- One of the highlights of our trip to the east coast was attending the Split This Rock Poetry Festival. I just wanted to share a few words with you about this event. The following comes from the program: "Welcome to the birthplace of Duke Ellington and Marving Gaye, City where Walt Whitman wrote "Drum Taps." Birthplace of the Harlem Resistance. Home to Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Zore Neale Hurston, Sterling Brown, Essex Hemphill, and so many others. City of barricades, city of contradictions, city of poets. Split This Rock builds on our city's legacy by calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of activist poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation's capital, we celebrate the poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination. Our goal is to build a lasting network, to establish Split This Rock as an organization that will serve activist poets here in Washington, DC, and nationwide. With your involvment and support, Split This Rock Poetry Festival will be not just the culmination of years of dreaming and hard work, but the beginning of something greater than all of us -- a network, an advocate, a platform, a home. The most inspiring aspect of this festival for the organizers is the knowledge that yes, poets are writing necessary poems, breaking silences, keeping us alive and awake. But just as importantly, in a time of war and at a time when the majority of our population fears poetry and can't find the words for truth, poets are serving their communities. As celebrated at this festival: poets are doing the work of poetry, teaching in prisons, in community centers, in public schools and universities; offering poetry as a means of healing for veterans, for victims of domestic abuse and other kinds of violence, for patients with chronic and terminal illness; preserving culture and history through poetry; resisting the dehumanizing language of war through poetry; organizing across the fault lines of race and gender and class to imagine, as Martin Espada does in his poem by the same name, a "republic of poetry." We are part of a living, breathing community. The helplessness we felt that first day of the war (pick any war), or the day after the election (pick any election), began to ease as soon as we found one another. It is our hope not just to oppose an unjust war, but to call attention to our nation's radically misplaced priorities and to engage the public imagination in envisioning a more democratic, humane future. We believe that poets have always played a central role in naming injustices and defining the best aspects of the hope that is our country. As citizens and artists, we feel that our obligation has never been greater. "When I split this rock / Stand by my side" -- Langston Hughes calls us to solidarity. Together we can sustain one another in this essential work and amplify one another's voices as poets and as citizens. Please join us." One of the main reasons that steve and I decided to attend the festival is because we learned that Patricia Smith would be a featured speaker. Patricia Smith is a poet, teacher, performer and author of four books of poetry, including Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection and winner of the first-ever 2007 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry and winner of the 2007 Paterson Poetry Prize. She also penned the history Africans in America and the children's book Janna and the Kings. She is a Cave Canem faculty member and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam. If you have never experienced Patricia Smith's work, please do yourself a favor and take a few moments to listen to her speak on YouTube. We promise you that you will not be disappointed. We think you will find that she has been crowned one of the best slam poets who ever lived for very good reason. In a word, she is stunning: Patricia Smith on YouTube Why should she matter to you? Because for the next three months, Patricia Smith will be the judge for the IBPC. Doing your homework and knowing what kind of poetry Ms. Smith writes and performs could guide you in what types of poems you might like to pen during the next few months. If you're searching for inspiration, turning your attention to poems of witness and activism (if you enjoy writing those types of pieces) could be especially appreciated right now while she will be judging. steve and I had the opportunity to introduce ourselves to her after her reading and to thank her for serving as the IBPC judge during this three month term. We told her she can expect to see poems from our membership in the competition. It would be really terrific to be able to send her poems that she will appreciate and respond to. We do like to consider the judge when we are selecting poems that will go on to the IBPC. So now might be a great time to haul out and work on those poems of witness and political activism. Here are some quotes from the program to inspire you further: "Poetry, in its own way, is the carrier of sparks, because it too comes out of silence, seeking connection with unseen others." ~ Adrienne Rich "When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." ~ Audre Lorde "I am the sworn poet of every dauntless rebel the world over." ~ Walt Whitman "The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers." ~ James Baldwin "At such a time, our polemical prose is not enough. We need the power of song, of poetry to remind us of truths deeper than the political slogans of the day. ~ Howard Zinn "But when poetry lays its hand on our shoulder . . . we are to an almost physical degree, touched and moved. The imagination's roads open before us giving the lie to that slammed and bolted door, that razor-wired fence, that brute dictum "There is no alternative." ~ Adrienne Rich "Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs! Whoever degrades another degrades me . . . and what is done or said returns at last to me, And whatever I do or say I also return." ~ Walt Whitman This week's Challenge will have you working on a poem of witness. Please check it out as the exercise could provide you with excellent motivation and a direction in which to start your journey. Thanks for your attention and now go out and create! Love, M & s | ||
| Lazarus
Senior Member Username: lazarus Post Number: 3129 Registered: 10-2005 |
M~ Thanks for providing this perspective on our craft. Thanks also for taking the judge into consideration for our entries into the IBPC competition. In the book I'm reading on "practicing presence" the author notes that many writers of our time; Elliot, Joyce, Camus; exposed the alienation that they felt, and in that way brought awareness to a predominant condition. It made me realize that we are working on many levels in our art to bring about an understanding of our common human condition. -Laz | ||
| Kathy Paupore
Moderator Username: kathy Post Number: 8253 Registered: 12-2003 |
M, could you clarify which months Patricia Smith is the IBPC judge? Does she start judging in March or April? This may help some members with what to post and when. Thanks *Kathy You're invited to: Wild Flowers Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.--Robert Frost | ||
| ~M~
Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 29205 Registered: 11-1998 |
Thanks, Kathy. Sorry for not specifying her term. Patricia Smith will be judging entries for April, May, and June. Every IBPC judge is selected for a three-month term; the start of that process coincides with the calendar year, i.e., Jan-Feb-Mar, Apr-May-Jun, Jul-Aug-Sep, Oct-Nov-Dec. So, what we will be submitting at the end of this month are April's selections and those have already been determined in this month's (March) POtW winners (in other words, our IBPC selections in the month of March are referred to as April's submissions). But there's still May and June to consider when penning poems. Love, M | ||
| Kathy Paupore
Moderator Username: kathy Post Number: 8255 Registered: 12-2003 |
M, thanks for clarifying. I probably should pay more attention to how the IBPC works, but then I should spend more time writing too. Sigh. *Kathy You're invited to: Wild Flowers Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.--Robert Frost |
