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