The activist poets are gathering next week in Washington, D.C. for the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, taking as their title and motto these lines from Langston Hughes’ poem “Big Buddy”:
Don’t you hear this hammer ring?Featuring such luminaries as Dennis Brutus, Lucille Clifton, Mark Doty, Carolyn Forché, Galway Kinnell, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alicia Suskin Ostriker and Patricia Smith, the festival was organized in response to the U.S. “crisis of imagination on the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, for two purposes:
I’m gonna split this rock
and split it wide!
When I split this rock,
Stand by my side.
- “To celebrate the poetry of witness and provocation being written, published, and performed in the United States today.
- “To call poets to a greater role in public life and to equip them with the tools they need to be effective advocates in their communities and in the nation.”
More articles on politics and poetry:
The November Third Club, a new online journal for politically inclined poets
A new & engaged review in New England, The New Hampshire Review
Neruda: Politics & poetical judgment
May the poets speak freely?
“Raising Their Voices: Poets speak out against the war with Iraq”
“Poetry in Times Like These,” by Victor Infante, a meditation on poetry’s place and the debt of our art in the post-9.11.01 time of war & crisis
“Willie Perdomo Gets Political: Where a Nickel Costs a Quarter”
“The Center Cannot Hold: Slam, Academia & the Battle for America’s Bourgeoisie,” also by Victor Infante, an essay on the generational cycles of poets & poetic institutions, class & politics in American poetry, slam poetry’s evolution into a new establishment.
“The Beat Goes On: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Still a Rebel,” an interview with Ferlinghetti on the Poet as Outsider by Victor Infante
“Stranded: Poet Mark Strand Preaches Political Indifference at UCI,” Victor Infante’s response to the effort to divorce poetry from politics
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