Split This Rock with Me - Part I

(Photo: Poets Joseph Ross, Mendy Knott and Naomi Shihab Nye)

I’m sure this writing will only begin to cover my profound feelings for and about “Split This Rock” Poetry Festival held in Washington DC over Easter weekend, March 19-23 in 2008. Poetic insurrection and resurrection all rolled up in one. Here was a time and place where the peace poets felt safe to talk about their anger and sorrow, their grief and frustration during these war years as the Bush administration holds court in our nation. We also shared the joy that rises to the surface of our ordinary days and lives, fortifying each other where the skin wears thin. Here was a communion of souls, like-minded individuals with hearts too large to keep at home, where too often we feel isolated and give into wild imaginings that we are beating our little peace drums alone. People, we are not alone.

(Photo: A Poet reads in front of the White House)

We need each other, though, and that seemed obvious with the absolute delight we took in one another’s company and words over the long weekend. At Split This Rock no lines of divisiveness were drawn. One could not distinguish the “famous” poets from the community poets, the academic poets from the slam and performance poets. We were all together, gathered as one body to share our hopes and strengths and determination through the rhythms of our voices, our bodies, our hearts and minds. Our voices fell on receptive ears–finally, good soil for the seed. The rock was split, the Earth turned, and ideas were planted around the clock. New gardens were started every hour in workshops and on subways, in the streets and around tables of food and drink as we spoke and were heard, listened, learned and laughed together. And occasionally, our tears watered the beds. People, we were shining!

(Photo: Panel/Hosts DC Poets Against the War)

I think I can speak for us all when I say we felt lucky, indeed privileged, to be a part of this first gathering organized by DC Poets Against the War. What a lot of time and energy they poured into preparation for this event! Their handiwork and dedication was obvious at every turn. We tried to thank them as often as possible: Sarah Browning, Regie Cabico, Jaime Lee Jarvis, Melissa Tuckey, Mary Clare McKesson, Joseph Ross. Sponsors like The Institute for Policy Studies, Busboys and Poets, and Sol & Soul made life easy for the participants and created an atmosphere in which poetry thrived. We could never thank them enough. Their efforts made it possible to practice communion, not just on Easter Sunday, but every hour on the hour for four whole days. People, we were fed!

(Photo: Word Warriors Panel)

(Photo: The Princess of Controversy)

Our poetic pilgrimage took us from the Thurgood Marshall Center to the Center for Community Change but our home was always Busboys and Poets with its peace slogans and peace makers graffitied everywhere. Always packed wall to wall with diners, wait staff, poets, booksellers, authors, young people, old people, people of every color, orientation and national origin, words bouncing off the ceilings, lying in open notebooks on the tables, spoken, shouted, prayed, sang. It all began there with Sonia Sanchez and her poetic chant/scat rhythms as she implored us to reach out to the young ones and make them want to not just live, but come alive. Appropriately for her opening words, Busboys and Poets held the late night open mics, the high school poets and the women word warriors: Alix Olson, Theresa Davis, Karen Garrabrant, and Natalie Illum. The Princess of Controversy was a high priestess of poetry and our waitress, following a long line of tradition by serving the public in more ways than one. People, I tell you, the joint was jumping!

(Photo: Poet Naomi Shihab Nye)

(Photo: Poet Martin Espada)

(Photo: Poet E. Ethelbert Miller)

In the evenings we gathered in our poetry cathedral, Bell Multicultural High School where we listened to the words of poets who have been long in the making. Their words, ringing with truth, were pained with the suffering and injustice to which they bore witness. Sensual with imagery and metaphor, their poems made us mad, made us laugh and made us cry. Naomi Nye took us flying with her while keeping us rooted firmly in our humanity and delighting us with the confectioners sugar that has sifted the shirtfronts of all of us at one time or another. Martin Espada, E. Ethelbert Miller, and Alix Olson kept it real and we started off the first night with a bang.

(Photo: Poet Alix Olsen)

...To Be Continued in the Next Post

Split This Rock with Me - Part 2

(Photo: Poet/Yogi Jeff Davis)

I took the “Yogic Path to Poetry and Conscious Action” Friday morning and found the poets both stunningly beautiful and flexible. Jeff Davis was so conscientious about sharing time that I didn’t get nearly enough of his words and presence. He left me wanting more, as a poet should. Kazim Ali, Susan Brennan and Jeff complimented one another’s styles wonderfully and I am only waiting for Jeff’s book From the Center to the Page to be re-issued in print so I can turn my friends onto the power of combining yoga practice with writing practice.

(Photo: Poet/Yogi Kazim Ali)

At “Off the Page and Into the Streets” Nathaniel Siegel regaled us with ways to reach the regular folks as they go about their everyday days, walking to and from work or heading to the local grocery. He offered great ideas about reaching out, keeping your protest and your activism “human-sized” which made so much sense to me. Put a small poem in someone’s hand and they’ll find it in a pocket later. Offer a strip of tape with “Peace and Love” printed on it. Who doesn’t want a little peace and love in their lives, right? Nathaniel delivered his ideas and comments with a grace that serves him well in the streets and makes me want to be THAT kind of activist.

(Photo: Poet Nathaniel Siegel)

I found Elijah Imlay’s “The Healing Role of Poetry in Wartime” to be particularly moving and the kind of workshop I myself like to lead. There we listened to some of Elijah’s experiences as a Vietnam veteran (a veteran myself, I appreciated this) and he read us some poems written by other war veterans. They were hard to hear and they were why we had come. He then had the class do a freestyle writing based on a painful memory of our own pasts.Those of us who cared to, were allowed to share. Again I found myself not ready to leave when this workshop ended. Our hearts had been opened and we had bled. It was good and it was necessary fodder for future work, but I found it difficult to return to the Washington streets. I needed to take a break and I missed the 5 pm readings while my friend Path and I returned to our rooms to rest.

(Photo: Poet Mendy Knott & Poet/Artist Path Walker)

We made it to Bell Multicultural HS in time to hear Jimmy Baca, Brian Gilmore, Semezhdin Mehmedomovic, Patricia Smith (one of my all-time faves) and Susan Tichy read. Then it was back to homebase at Busboys and Poets where the first open mic was being held. Slam-jam packed, it was, with a list an arm-long of poets waiting their turn to read. I signed on and it was good to look around that room and see so many active poets and their supporters. And it was good to see Naomi Nye, Alix Olson, Patricia Smith “in the house” as our host, Regie Cabico, continually pointed out one world-renowned poet after another who was there to hear US read! We ate the body politic, passed the cup of sorrow, shared our many stories and walked away fortified, everyone with a hammer the size of their writing hand, knowing we would never have to split this rock alone again. People, we rocked the house!

(Photo: Poet Patricia Smith)

(Photo: Poet Regie Cabico)

(...To be continued in Part 3)

Split This Rock with Me - Part 3

I missed many excellent workshops on Saturday morning in favor of having some special time with my sister who lives in the DC area. I needed this time with her as I don’t see her nearly often enough, but I know I sacrificed some excellent learning opportunities with the DC Walking Tours which featured Walt Whitman’s Washington, “Harlem” Renaissance in Washington, and GLBT Writers of Washington. “Writing Isn’t Lonely” and “Poet as Oracle” were certainly enticing workshop titles led by poets such as Susan Tichy and Coleman Barks. I didn’t join up until later in the afternoon when I enjoyed “Word Warriors–Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution.” Again, time felt too short when the high school open mic began just as soon as this crew of women warriors finished speaking.

(Photo: Mendy at Bus Boys & Poets)

The high school open mic was just what some of us older poets needed to remind us that, yes, there are young ones waiting and willing to carry on the torch of peace, freedom, and poetry. Every poem was so vivid and fresh, every verse a lifeline slung out from one generation to another. Here is another chapter in the book of Revelations that Split this Rock opened for me: We need a high school/ youth open mic in my town of Fayetteville, AR. I came back with a renewed dedication to seek out the young poets and get them to come to Omni’s Peace Open Mic and to HOWL, the open mic I host in celebration of women’s voices. I stood to read as the room’s OLDEST teen, getting a by from host Regie Cabico because the subject matter of my poem, “Education,” was autobiographical, having to do with coming of age in a newly integrated junior high school in Jackson, MS in 1968. I felt right at home in a room full of teens, but then I would. I wanted to say it over and over, “You, Young People, the world can’t change without you!” People, these kids are the Future!

(Photo: Path on the train)

Path and I took the train one stop to Bell Multicultural HS to watch a lineup of poets you had to see to believe. Swept away, I was, in their words and the movements that accompanied their words. Their hands were like well-formed birds shaping their verses before they flew from the stage. Often, their bodies did a little dance or swayed with the rhythms of their lines. Some couldn’t stand still long enough to photograph. These poets were on the move. This was a bus stop, a way station on the road to more activism, and they moved us right along with them. We sat at the feet of poets such as Coleman Barks, Belle Waring, Dennis Brutus, Kenneth Carroll, Mark Doty, Carolyn Forche, and Alica Ostriker.

(Photo: Poet Mark Doty)

They taught us with metaphor, yea, even with parables. Can I get a witness? We practiced the sermon on the mount, in their presence, in their words:
Blessed are the peacemakers.
Blessed are those who mourn.
Blessed are the meek and humble,
those who hunger and thirst after righteousness (feed them).
Blessed are the merciful (for everybody needs a little mercy now),
the pure in heart,
the peacemakers (persecuted for all the right reasons).
Blessed are the poets
who say the words, paint the pictures, report to the public
and tell the truth whenever, wherever they can;
who never, ever, ever, give up....

We left our cathedral feeling like we were the salt of the earth. We are the light of the world and we are being called to return to our homes as poets and prophets, place our cities on hills so they can see again, become like potato chip people, yes, that salty, which imbues others with a thirst for truth and justice. And we read our poems to one another at the open mic, on the sidewalks, in the subway stations, on the trains, and all the way back to our rooms.

(Photo: Poet and Organizer Sarah Browning)

We awoke on Easter Sunday with one mission, to get to Busboys and Poets in order to hear the panel made up of DC Poets Against the War and to learn how they were inspired and able to put this event together. We left our baggage at the State Plaza Hotel (which we loved for its old-fashioned charm, roominess, and incredibly helpful staff) and headed once again to our favorite home away from home. The DC Poets were terrific as we heard them read some of their poetry and talk about the fundamentals of organizing Split This Rock. They discussed the importance of putting together their book of poems against torture, “Cut Loose The Body.” What amazing people, good as their words; serving, organizing, inspiring.

(Photo: Poet Naomi Ayala)

Our last trip took us back the way we came to the Cafritz Conference Center on the George Washington University campus. Here we were blessed and fired by the words of Naomi Ayala and Galway Kinnell to begin our pilgrimage to the White House, our final stop. We gathered outside the center on the sidewalk. We picked up signs with quotes by various poets and peace activists. We hung them around our necks on string or waved them in the air as we walked, without a word, to Lafayette Park across the street from the White House.

(Photo: Poet Galway Kinnell)

(Photo: Easter Tree)

Here then a preacher’s kid turned poet and peace activist finds new meaning in an Old Story once again. I loved this silent march, this mishmash of someone else’s Easter ritual into my own. How quiet it must have been that early morning in the land where war never seems to cease, when the disciples went to the cemetery looking for what they could not know they’d find. There were bird singings and the sound of sandals (sneakers) flapping against stone. A white tree bloomed atop a tall building, and for the moment it caught the corner of my eye I imagined the resurrected Christ, a holy ghost, a dove. The wind tunneled the streets and alleyways as we walked to the big white sepulcher with its guards and gates. Sure enough, centurions rode up on horseback and brought their dogs to search for bombs. But we had come in peace and it seemed they would be disappointed not to be able to send us away. For they and we all knew that words are stronger than swords, and last longer, too.

(Photo: DC Street Poet)

People, we wanted that stone to roll away--far, far away and not come back. We wanted that rock to roll, to set free the spirit of compassion, of love and truth and wisdom. But it wouldn’t budge and so with the hammers of our voices and twelve strikes each, we began to split that rock ourselves. Each of the 300 or so poets there pronounced a line of twelve words into the microphone directed at the White House, and we created a Cento with quotes that would ring in the air long after our departure. We split the rock and we are splitting it still. Peacework is all about splitting rocks instead of hairs. And the work, my friends, is never done. Won’t you come and split this rock with me?

(Photo: Naomi, Path, Joe and Jeff)

Instrument of Peace

Take two oaks and a cotton cord
then wrap the rope around the trunks
back and forth let the rope unwind
tie it tight and what do you find?
A earth-friendly, wind-catching
homemade clothesline.
Ah, the world is full of images
and instruments of peace–
what we take for granted is
that wonders never cease.

Looking out the window, hands in the kitchen sink
washing up the dishes gives a person time to think.
I see our colorful clothing fly, 
this old Arkansas home’s prayer flags;
from t-shirts stitched with slogans to denims and dust rags.
The blessed sun shines down.
The breeze it blows and fills.
They sail and pull at pins
as if the billowing clothes
could keep this old world spinnin’
spinnin’ spinnin’ spinnin’ spinnin’
spinnin’ round.

My clothesline is a work of art–
I hang those damp clothes out,
arrange each piece to suit my mood
then watch them blow about. 
I ponder how this ties me to Palestinians and Jews,
Chinese, Pennsylvanians, Iraquis, Zulus, too.
And for a moment all the world
is gathered here beneath my trees
hanging clothes of many colors
on lines in a merry breeze.
Here we are together
dependent on each other
holding hands we shake out wrinkles,
share a perfect crease–
feeling for a moment we’re all instruments of peace.

Oh, the world is full of images
and instruments of peace.
And what we take for granted is
that wonders never cease.
‘Cause the blessed sun shines down.
The breeze it blows and fills.
The clothes pull at their pins.
as if their billowing sails
could keep this old world spinnin’
spinnin’ spinnin’
keep her spinnin’ round.

Mendy Knott Sept. 2006-2007