Sarah Browning

Take Action: Tell Congress to protect free speech: http://action.freepress.net/campaign/verizon




Take Action: Tell Congress to protect free speech: http://action.freepress.net/campaign/verizon

From Chun Pan:

I am the filmmaker that made the documentary "Skipping in Camp Casey."

I want to heavily recommend the movie that I just saw, In the Valley of Elah, with Tommy Lee Jones and Charlize Theron. It is the first Iraq anti-war movie that I have seen in the American mainstream cinema.

As a filmmaker I can testify to the power of this film and how it could possibly affect the American public. I wouldn't call the movie pretty or entertaining. It goes beyond that. It depicts a generation of soldiers whose moralities are molded by the circumstances of this tragic war.

Chun

At such a time, our polemical prose is not enough. We need the power of song, of poetry to remind us of truths deeper than the political slogans of the day.
-- Howard Zinn, Historian

Split This Rock Poetry Festival:
Poems of Provocation & Witness is only 6 months away –

Volunteers are needed to make this historic gathering a roaring success!

Come to a get-together for potential volunteers and learn how you can be involved. Help is needed in the areas of publicity/marketing, outreach, fundraising, accessibility planning, administration, hospitality, and more!

Volunteer Get-Together
Thursday, October 4, 7 pm

626 Quebec Place, NW, Washington, DC
GA Ave/Petworth stop on the green line
Refreshments will be served!
For more info and directions: 202-787-5210

Split This Rock Poetry Festival, March 20-23, 2008, calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national community of activist poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination. Some of the most important poets of our time will be featured, including Jimmy Santiago Baca, Lucille Clifton, Joy Harjo, Martín Espada, Galway Kinnell, Mark Doty, E. Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Alix Olson

Split This Rock Poetry Festival
1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600 - Washington, DC 20036 - 202-787-5210
info@SplitThisRock.org - www.SplitThisRock.org

If you're visiting Oregon in December:
SAVE THIS DATE:
Celebrating Grace Paley’s Life and Work – 12/11/07

Grace Paley's writing and political activism are being commemorated around the world. Here in Portland, our celebration will be on the evening of her 85th birthday, December 11, 2007, at Broadway Books in NE Portland.

In New York and Vermont, the places she lived, and anywhere/everywhere else she's been important to readers, writers and activists struggling to be conscious, to make real art out of what we know as real life – people are mourning her death by celebrating her life. More info coming this fall about the event, which will feature Oregon activists and writers talking about Grace, reading from her poems, stories and essays, with audience participation – and birthday cake! (Contacts: jarcana@earthlink.net or lapaglia@q.com or miriambudner@hotmail.com ).

The first thing you have to know about me, with regard to this mini-review, is that my mother is English and I was raised on Upstairs, Downstairs, James Herriot books, everything British. So I have an avowed weakness... included in my very small video/DVD collection are Sense & Sensibility, An Ideal Husband, Room With a View, etc.

So, needing an escape in the midst of a very grueling week, not to mention a husband and son watching the umpteenth Nationals game on TV, I took myself off to see Death at a Funeral on Friday night.

And, I really didn't like it. So am I getting old? I just don't find old people poop jokes funny. Corpses falling out of coffins during eulogies - funny? Not so. Accidental ingestion of halucinogens? Only mildly amusing - results in a naked guy on the roof. So?

I like Rupert Graves (Freddy, in aforementioned Room With a View) but he doesn't do much here. And no one does - the writing is limp, the acting only OK. Sunday's Washington Post Book World had a review of the diaries of Michael Palin (of Monty Python fame) and I grinned just reading the review. There's lots of baggy ridiculousness in any given Python episode, granted, but the flashes of brilliance (sometimes sustained flashes...) made up for the animated farts and the like. Those guys could write. And I guess that's what I missed at the damn Funeral: funny language, not just a dead man with a hidden gay sex life with a dwarf. Ha ha.

From Anu Yadav:

Day laborers who clean Baltimore's Oriole Park baseball stadium wonthe right to a living wage last week, after a three year campaign.The group of folks is the United Workers Association. Here's their website: http://www.unitedworkers.org/

Good friends of mine are a part of this campaign, and this is a huge victory that we in DC should be aware of. To me, it's hopeful in what often can feel like dark times. It's important for us to remember victories near and far -- of others and of our own -- celebrate them,and use them to keep our own light going.

Here's the story: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bal-bz.cleaners07sep07,0,6339831.story

They had been gearing up for a major hunger strike and cancelled itupon receiving word of their victory. A friend said it well, this is historic, and I'm proud to help share the news. Congratulations UWA!!!!!!!!

anu

DC Poets Against the War invites you to march this Saturday with young poets from Archbishop Carroll High School and their teacher, DC PAW activist Joseph Ross.

It's time to bring the troops home and end this immoral war!

The group will be meeting Saturday, September 15, at 12:30 pm on the front steps of St. John's Church, the yellow church on the corner of 16th and H Streets, across Lafayette Park from the White House. The closest Metro stations are Farragut North and McPherson Square. Look for the banner bearing the words of D.C. poet Samuel Miranda: “I Will Bring You Flowers, No Matter How Many Bullets You Bring.”

You can read about the young poets' experience marching in the January mobilization here: http://www.archbishopcarroll.com/published/student_life/peace_in_three_moments.html

For more information on Saturday's demonstration: http://www.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=S15_homepage

Whiskey in the Garden of Eden is #5 on the Busboys and Poets Bestseller List. How cool is that??

Thanks to all of you!

Split This Rock Poetry Festival
CALL FOR PANEL DISCUSSION PROPOSALS

Split This Rock calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national community of activist poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation and witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.

Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness
March 20-23, 2008, Washington, DC

Split This Rock Poetry Festival will bring poets and writers to Washington DC on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, in the midst of the presidential election. The festival will feature readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism, and walking tours - opportunities to build community, hone our activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. To read more about the festival, see our website at: http://www.splitthisrock.org/.

In addition to featured readings by guest poets, Split this Rock invites proposals for panel discussions and workshops on a range of topics at the intersection of poetry and social change. Possibilities are endless. Challenge us. Let’s talk about craft, let’s talk about mentoring young poets, let’s talk about working in prisons, connecting with the activist community, sustaining ourselves in dark times, the role of poetry in wartime. Let’s remember great poet activists and discover new, let’s think international, visual, collaborative, out of the box.

A panel may consist of 3-4 persons, with one person designated as facilitator. Please title your panel and include brief biographical information for each participant, along with a two paragraph description of your panel—what are the questions you wish to explore—why is this conversation timely and necessary at this time—how will this panel further the goals of Split This Rock? How are the members of your panel uniquely qualified to lead a conversation on your proposed topic?

We have a strong interest in interactive conversation and community building, so please indicate how you will involve participants in the discussion.

Please note that panel presenters must register for Split This Rock Poetry Festival. Some scholarships will be available. There is no limit to the number of proposals you may send, but please be sure that all proposed presenters have agreed to be part of your proposed panel. Also, we are a small, mostly volunteer group, so please send only your favorite ideas.

Send proposals in the body of an email to: info@splitthisrock.org by December 1, 2007. Please include full contact information for yourself and all proposed panel presenters. Please use or recreate the attached form. Just copy or retype the questions into an email and paste or write your answers in. You may also mail your proposal to: Split This Rock Panel Proposal, 1112 16th Street, NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC, 20036. Please be sure to save a copy of your proposal, as emails do sometimes go astray. We will acknowledge receipt of your proposal, with a timeline for hearing back.

Questions? Email us at info@splitthisrock.org. We look forward to reading your proposal!

Please spread the word and sign up for the workshop today!
Scroll down for a poem!

Sunday Kind of Love: A Busboys & Poetry EventReading & Workshop with Susan Tichy
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Workshop, noon - 3 pm
Reading, 4-6 pm
Open mic following the feature.
Hosted by Sarah Browning, DC Poets Against the War, and Regie Cabico, Sol & Soul

Workshop - Writing Isn't Lonely: Collage & Collaboration in Political Poetry
In this workshop we’ll read some politically and socially active poems that ask us, the readers, to work actively with the poet to find and complete the meaning, poems in which the dance of creation and the whole process of reading and discovery (and even mistakes) is part of the “message,” not just its vehicle. …And then we’ll do some writing, based on the language and forms of these poems. Pulled-text, collage, diction clouds, N+7, erasure, Boolean poems—sound nuts? Good, come and see for yourself. Susan Tichy will also talk a little about why she believes collage and collaborative writing can be a powerfully political, and spiritual, practice.

To Register for the Workshop: Email Sarah Browning at womenarts2@aol.com. Include your full contact information. Then send a check for $25 made out to “DCPAW” to DCPAW, 626 Allison Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20011. Scholarships are available - to apply, include in your email an explanation of your circumstances.