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Split This Rock cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness
to injustice and provokes social change.
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Poems of the Week
Youth Poets Laureate Jackson Neal, Azura Tyabji, and Maren Wright-Kerr
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At this juncture of possibility and risk, with so much at stake, we reflect back to poems offered in response to 2020's many challenges and crises. This month, we share the tonic of poetry from poets featured in Split This Rock's Virtual Poetry Reading Series earlier this year. We are grounded in socially engaged poetry, where there is the opportunity to name what is intolerable, what must be protected, and what we treasure. Earlier this year, we invited all featured poets to consider their reading as a time to name what most needed to be named. May they offer you strength, comfort, and fire for the work ahead.
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Used with permission. Video is of a virtual poetry reading presented by Split This Rock on Wednesday, July 1, 2020, featuring Youth Poets Laureate Jackson Neal, Azura Tyabji, and Maren Wright-Kerr. Split This Rock's 2020 Virtual Poetry Reading Series was supported by the Academy of American Poets with funds from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Poetry Coalition's Poetry & Protest programming.
Accessibility: The video is captioned. Visual descriptions are shared by each speaker. The cover image for this video includes a collage of the 3 featured poets and text that reads "Split This Rock presents a poetry reading with Jackson Neal, Azura Tyabji, and Maren Wright-Kerr. Recorded July 1, 2020, 4-5:30 pm EST on YouTube Live." For other accessibility questions, please contact us at access@splitthisrock.org.
About the Featured Poets
Jackson Neal is the 2019 Southwest Regional Youth Poet Laureate and a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin where he is a member of the First Wave Program and a three-time member of Houston's premier youth poetry slam team, Meta-Four Houston. He is the 2018 Space City Grand Slam Champion, a 2018 National YoungArts Foundation Winner in Writing, and a U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts nominee. His writing and videos have been featured in the Houston Chronicle and Houston Public Media.
Azura Tyabji is the 2019 West Regional Youth Poet Laureate and the 2018-19 Seattle Youth Poet Laureate with Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools Program. She is a writer, spoken word performer, facilitator, and educator. What motivates every aspect of her artistic practice is a love for community, justice, and healing.
Maren Lovey Wright-Kerr is the 2019 Northeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate and was the youngest to obtain the role of Baltimore Youth Poet Laureate in 2018. She is also the 2018 winner of Split This Rock's Hyper Bole Youth Poetry Slam Festival, and a two time Baltimore Youth Grand Slam champion. This year (2020) is also her fourth year on the Baltimore City Youth Poetry Team, with whom Maren became an International Youth Grand Slam Champion at the Brave New Voices Festival in 2019. She has also recently published her first collection of poems and illustrations this book is all lowercase because i don't cap. Maren is a freshman in film studies at Pratt Institute and can be found on Instagram @afr0delic.
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Please feel free to share Split This Rock Poems of the Week widely. We just ask that you include all of the information in this post, including this request and a link to the poem at Split This Rock's YouTube Channel. Thanks!
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Please note: We strive to preserve the text formatting of poems over e-mail, but certain e-mail programs may distort how characters, fonts, indents, and line wraps appear.
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Next Week: 2020 DC Youth Slam Team Virtual Reading!
Friday, November 20 | 6:30-8:30 pm EST
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Photo of Charlotte Maleski by Anais Lowenthal.
Photo of Takier George by Gelilla Mekonnen.
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Split This Rock is proud to present a public showcase of the 2020 DC Youth Slam Team (DCYST), featuring Takier George, Charlotte Maleski, Marjan Naderi, Gabriela Orozco, and Kashvi Ramani on Friday, November 20, 6:30-8:30 pm EST. Lauren (Lo) May will host. To attend the reading, tune in via YouTube live-stream.
This reading also celebrates 10 years of DCYST at Split This Rock! Join us to lift up, listen to, and celebrate the leadership, wisdom, and power of youth poetry, which has been carving a path forward for us at Split This Rock for a decade. For more information about the reading and the DCYST, visit the Facebook event page.
Accessibility: Links to live captioning and an access copy of the poems and host comments will be available. Links will be provided on the Facebook event page, in the YouTube video description, and on Twitter immediately prior to the reading. A captioned video of the reading will be posted on YouTube after it concludes. We will post on social media when it is available. For other accessibility questions, please contact us at access@splitthisrock.org.
2020 DC Youth Slam Team members appear in collage above from left to right as follows: Top row includes DCYST logo, Takier George, and Marjan Naderi, Bottom row includes Charlotte Maleski, Gabriela Orozco, and Kashvi Ramani.
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Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge: A Virtual Open Mic
Thank you to everyone who submitted to this year's Virtual Open Mic! We were so moved by the incredible response and celebrate all the poets who shared work with us as we bring the Virtual Open Mic to a close this week. If your poem wasn't shared, please stay tuned for our next Poem of the Week Call for Poems in 2021.
Featured Poets for the Final Digest of Poems for Split This Rock's Virtual Open Mic for Poems of Persistence, Solidarity, and Refuge includes Alex Carrigan, Meg Eden, Elliot Frost, Janlori Goldman, Jen Karetnick, Shwa Laytart, Jen Martin, Kelsey May, Laura Mazzoleni, Philip Metres, Kim B. Miller, Purvi Shah, Shivkanya Shashi, Deema Shehabi, and Aimee Suzara. To read all featured poems, visit Split This Rock's website.
Big thanks to current and past volunteers who help make the virtual open mic possible: Danielle Badra, Melissa Bittner, Fran McCrae, Tyler French & Claudia Rojas.
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Safety Planning Resources for COVID-19
As we prepare for community care between now and January 20th, we know our folks are still facing multiple crises at global, national, and local levels. In support of anyone working on community safety plans, here are some resources we've used at Split This Rock that build on what we offered last week:
- As you make winter quarantine plans, you might find this checklist from poet and virologist Joseph Osmundson helpful for negotiating safe practices with your household, family, or pod. View the Quaranpod checklist here.
- For a community-based guide for creating neighborhood mutual aid support in your building, on your block, or in your town, check out this mutual aid pod-building document created by Rebel Sidney Black.
- Whether you can offer support or need it, local food banks and mutual aid funds will be lifelines for millions of people in the coming months. Refer to this article for DC-area mutual aid groups. To find a food bank in the DC area or near you, visit Feeding America's website.
These resources can be used by individuals, friends, pods, families, organizations, or communities. We'll be sharing more as appropriate in the weeks to come.
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Poems in support of shared action
It is going to be a very hard winter and we all know it in our bones
an almost atavistic memory with instruction--wear heavy clothes
horde food, drink water, stand against the wind
listen.
Split This Rock staff offer poem categories in support of public action, grieving, organizing, teaching, or words to start a meeting. In The Quarry, Split This Rock's social justice poetry database, you can find poems by content and author identity. We encourage those who visit The Quarry to read and listen to poems by Black poets and others on the following themes:
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If you have events, a call for submissions, or other opportunities you'd like to share with the Split This Rock network, send us the info via our Newsletter Updates Request Form. If the online form is not accessible to you, please contact us at info@splitthisrock.org for an alternate method of submission.
Folger Poetry's "Shakespeare's Sisters: Say Her Name" Course
Folger Poetry is offering a special "Say Her Name" edition of its educational course, Shakespeare's Sisters. This 8-week virtual seminar traces the poetry of Black women in America, starting with Phillis Wheatley and including poets Anne Spencer, June Jordan, Ai, Lucille Clifton, Rita Dove, Tracy K. Smith and others. Led by poet and Folger Poetry Coordinator Teri Cross Davis and poet and author Kim Roberts, the course supports participants in creating their own work. For more information and to register, visit Folger Poetry's website.
2021 Mass Poetry Festival | Submit a proposal by November 15
Mass Poetry is searching for individuals and groups to submit proposals for virtual events at the 2021 Massachusetts Poetry Festival (May 14-16, 2021). The festival is committed to showcasing creative, innovative, and diverse events. This includes panel discussions, poetry readings, poetry slams, poetry with music, workshops, and other events that defy categorization. All events should be designed to take place virtually. The deadline to apply is November 15, 2020. For more information and to submit a proposal, visit Mass Poetry's website.
Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice presents Carmen Giménez Smith and José Olivarez | November 17 at 7 pm EST
Join the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice for an evening with poets Carmen Giménez Smith and José Olivarez on November 17, 2020 at 7 PM EDT. To register, please visit our Crowdcast webpage.
City Verses Jazz & Poetry Fall Event Series | October-November
In this one-of-a-kind program co-founded by New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) and Rutgers-Newark, discover the extraordinary connection between poetry and jazz. These two art forms have intertwined throughout history, and now it's your turn to create the magic that happens when they play together! Join a workshop to write poems set to jazz, or improvise music inspired by poetry. Read your work aloud at one of our community poetry shares. And enjoy performances showcasing poets and jazz artists from Newark and beyond. Creativity ignites when you explore, experiment, and express yourself at any of our free City Verses events. Learn more and sign up for events at City Verses' website.
Gaithersburg Book Festival Poetry Contest | Enter by February 18
High school students from across the Washington Metropolitan Area are invited to submit 1 poem to the Gaithersburg Book Festival Poetry Contest by February 18, 2021. Students must attend public, private, or homeschool, grades 9-12, in the 2020-21 school year and live in Maryland, Virginia, or Washington, DC. Entry cannot have been published elsewhere. It must be an original and sole work of the author. For more information, visit Gaithersburg Book Festival's website.
Bi-Monthly Writing to Wellness Workshops | 1st & 3rd MondaysWriting to Wellness is a discussion-based workshop designed for writers to use poetry as a tool for healing when navigating trauma. Participants will learn helpful tips via discussion on how to navigate trauma through expressive forms of creative writing, how to advocate for others and how to build a safe space for self-care. Hosted by Creative Suitland and facilitated by C. Thomas every first and third Monday of the month. This a donation based workshop. Once registered, the link to workshop will be provided. To register for this one-of-a-kind writer's workshop, visit Creative Suitland's website.
The Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant
The Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) has created a temporary fund to meet the needs of experimental artists who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through FCA's Emergency Grants COVID-19 Fund, we are offering one-time $2,000 grants to eligible artists who have lost income from an engagement that has been canceled or postponed due to the pandemic. This fund is focused on providing support to composers, choreographers, playwrights, directors, visual artists, and poets, and cannot support artists who were working on a canceled or postponed project of work that is not their own. Our panelists have been prioritizing losses from non-commercial opportunities, rather than losses from potential sales opportunities. We encourage artists who are interested in applying to read our eligibility guidelines at
Artist Relief Fund -- Apply for a $5K Grant by November 18!
With performance spaces, galleries, libraries, theaters, and studios closed and the temporary halting of most cultural productions, artists are some of the hardest hit among the millions of workers across the United States who are currently unemployed and facing financial hardships due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "Artist Relief," is an emergency initiative launched to support artists facing dire financial emergencies due to this global health crisis. "Artist Relief" is an emergency, non-restricted fund that will grant $5,000 to individual artists facing financial hardship. If you have applied in one or more of the previous cycles and not ever received a grant, you may apply again. To apply and learn more, visit the fund's website.
Now Hiring: Milkweed Editions Marketing & Publicity Associate Position | Apply by December 4
Milkweed Editions, one of the nation's leading independent book publishers, seeks a Marketing & Publicity Associate. This is a full-time, exempt position with benefits, and it requires an individual to work some full days per week in Milkweed Editions' warehouse, which is located in the Open Book literary center in downtown Minneapolis. Applications for individuals seeking to work remotely will not be accepted. This person will work closely with the Marketing Director, Sales & Operations Manager, and Publicist to assist in a range of tasks related to marketing and publicity data management, as well as research to support marketing and publicity campaigns. This individual will also assist with mailings in the warehouse, as well as with direct sales fulfillment. Specific responsibilities include but are not limited to managing data in the warehouse, as well as with direct sales fulfillment. Specific responsibilities include but are not limited to managing data in Salesforce, updating and adding content to milkweed.org, copyediting marketing and publicity documents and content, and assisting in management for promotional projects. For more information about the position and how to apply, visit Milkweed Editions' website.
Now Hiring: George Mason University Watershed Lit Associate Director Position | Apply by December 9This is an opportunity to join a new literary center at George Mason University as an Associate Director. Watershed Lit is home to the robust and diverse initiatives that have flowed from Mason's Creative Writing Program since its launch in 1980. The Associate Director will play a pivotal role in sustaining and growing the center and its partner entities. Independently and collaboratively with other institutional development offices, they will research external fundraising opportunities, cultivate a donor base, and take a leading role in writing and managing grant proposals on behalf of the center. For more information about the position and to apply, please visit the application's webpage at GMU's website.
"I Matter!" Poetry Contest| Submit by July 23, 2021
The "I Matter" Poetry Contest was launched in 2020 by a 14-year old student from the Philadelphia area to allow students across the country to speak from their hearts about why Black Lives Matter. The contest provides an outlet for youth to process and express their thoughts, fears, and hopes. Winning poets will receive cash prizes, and their poems will be published in an anthology distributed to schools and libraries across the country. The "I Matter" Poetry Contest is a program of the National Youth Foundation. For more information, visit the National Youth Foundation's website.
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