Sarah Browning

As I wrote in an earlier post, D.C. Poets Against the War is embarking on our most ambitious project to date: Split This Rock Poetry Festival – Poems of Provocation & Witness. This event, still in its planning phase, will take place on March 20-23, 2008 and will draw poets from across the nation. I am writing now to ask for your support.

Wait until you hear our plans! Split This Rock* will feature a range of readings, workshops, panels, films, walking tours, activism, parties, and publications. Poets who have already committed include: Jimmy Santiago Baca, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Sam Hamill, Joy Harjo, Galway Kinnell, E. Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sharon Olds, Alix Olson, Alicia Ostriker, Patricia Smith, and Pamela Uschuk. These poets will be matched by an equally impressive list of local poets. Save the date!

I’m excited to tell you that cosponsoring Split This Rock with us are the arts and social change organization Sol & Soul and Busboys & Poets, the restaurant and performance space.

The place and time are important to our mission: to gather voices of strength and conscience in the capital during a Presidential election year, on the 5th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The festival will be anchored at Busboys & Poets; other events will take place along the Historic U Street Corridor, once known as the Black Broadway, home to such poets as Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Jean Toomer, musicians such as Duke Ellington and Pearl Bailey, and scholars such as Carter G. Woodson and Alain Locke. The festival will culminate with a reading at a symbolically important spot such as the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial, or the White House.

Please consider getting in at the ground floor and supporting Split This Rock now. A basic contribution of $25 will help us meet our goals. If you can afford to give more, we'd be very grateful – $50 will keep the phone plugged in, $100 will pay for a mailing, $500 will pay airfare for one poet. All contributions of $100 or more will be acknowledged in the festival program brochure. Your donation is tax deductible through Sol & Soul, a nonprofit 501(c)3 organization.

To donate, go to the Sol & Soul website at: http://www.solysoul.com/giving/index.html and click on “Click here to give to Sol & Soul through the Catalogue for Philanthropy.” You’ll be directed to a secure site for giving via credit card. Be sure to designate “Split This Rock” when it asks for a designation. Or, send a check made out to “Sol & Soul/Split This Rock” to:
Sol & Soul
916 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001

We’d love your help in other ways, too. There are loads of ways to get involved, starting today. Please contact me at: womenarts2@aol.com if you want to volunteer.

Stay tuned for more details. We’ll have a Split This Rock website up and running by the new year, plus a blog and a list serv to keep you up to date on plans. In the meantime, you can check http://www.dcpaw.org/ for updates.

Many thanks!

Warmly,
Sarah Browning, D.C. Poets Against the War

P.S. Your donation helps support poets who work hard to voice alternatives to mainstream political and cultural views. Help us get heard!

*The name is from a poem by Langston Hughes:

Don’t you hear this hammer ring?
I’m gonna split this rock
And split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.