The remarkable 2008 event that was Split This Rock Poetry Festival returns to Washington, D.C. this coming week, March 10-13, 2010. Split This Rock: Poems of Provocation and Witness urges a larger public role for poets to voice their dream for a more just society. The poets will once again descend upon the nation’s capital for readings, workshops, and panel discussions, all with an urgent message of peace. As the country is still engaged in two wars, health care for all is only a dream, and rendition continues to be a practice of our government,  these engaged poets will gather to make their voices heard once more.

You can still register for the Festival through the link above. You can also come to individual days or events. All the information you need is at the Festival’s website.

The Festival takes place in Washington’s U Street neighborhood with Busboys & Poets as the hub. From there the workshops and panels take place at the Thurgood Marshall Center, which is the historic 12th Street YMCA where Langston Hughes once lived, and at the True Reformer Building, the historic civic club for African Americans. The readings by the featured poets all take place in the beautiful auditorium at Bell Multicultural High School just a few blocks from Busboys & Poets.

There will be workshops and panel discussions on such themes as yoga and poetry, how to work with museums and other civic institutions, nurturing rural poets, how to create poetry workshops, and many more. I will be on a panel, Thursday, March 11th, at 11:30am in the True Reformer Building on U Street, a panel of Gay and Lesbian poets discussing their inspirations, how being Gay and Lesbian in America today affects their writing, and how their poetry witnesses to the Gay and Lesbian civil rights movement.

The Festival also includes films and open mic poetry sessions, as well as various social events.

The featured poets include some of America’s finest. The remarkable Chris Abani, Lillian Allen, the Iraqi-American poet and film-maker Sinan Antoon, Francisco Aragon, Holly Bass, Jan Beatty, Benny Blaq, Derrick Weston Brown, Martha Collins, Cornelius Eady, Martin Espada, Andrea Gibson, Allison Hedge Coke, Natalie E. Illum, Fady Joudah, Toni Asante Lightfoot, Richard McCann, Jeffrety McDaniel, Lenelle Moise, Nancy Morejon,  Mark Nowak, Wang Ping, Patricia Smith, Arthur Sze, and Quincy Troupe.

On Thursday, March 11th, the poets will head for Upper Senate Park at the U.S. Capitol. There we will create a cento, a poem in which each poet writes and reads one line, creating a patchwork quilt poem calling for a re-ordering of our national priorities away from military spending and toward human needs.

Some of the most memorable moments of the 2008 Festival were what I call the “in-betweens.” The “in-betweens” are those moments when you get into a rich conversation “in-between” one panel or workshop and another, as you’re walking with poets you have not met before to lunch, as you wait for the next workshop to begin. With a gathering of such devoted and talented artists, it’s hard not to experience some fine, unplanned moments.

Split This Rock is the dream of a remarkable D.C. poet and activist Sarah Browning. Sarah, along with a small staff and an army of volunteers, brings this amazing and inspiring event to life. In 2008, the first festival took place and, I think it is safe to say, the participants were moved and fired up at the gathering. It was magical. This year, I have no doubt we will discover that same fire and magic anew.

                            www.JosephRoss.net