The second day of Split This Rock was fantastic-- filled with interesting people, ideas, and beautiful readings and workshops. I began the day with Naomi back at Busboys & Poets. She did a wild and funny reading and workshop for children. She read some of her poems, asked the kids questions, and they gave hilarious answers. At the end of this program, Reggie Cabico, one of the Festival's hosts, read the Langston Hughes alphabet book, which the children enjoyed immensely. A great start!
Then, I went to a workshop called Writing Down The Walls, on writing workshops in jails and prisons. This was sad and hopeful, all at once. It took me back to the work I did back in the 90s at the Indiana State Prison. Shelley Savren, who has done this work in California for 30 years and Clarinda Harris who does it in Maryland, were fascinating. Former prisoners, who founded a Writer's Club at the Maryland House of Correction were inspiring and amazing-- they were Walter Lomax and John Mingo. Also, Kyes Stevens who runs the Alabama Prison Arts Project spoke. Finally, the poet Jimmy Santiago Baca spoke. He learned to read and write in prison, and credits discovering poetry with saving his life. An inspiring start for the workshops.
For the next workshop, I made my way over to the Thurgood Marshall Center, an old YMCA building that has been renovated. It's a beautiful office and meeting building now. Langston Hughes lived there once, when it was the Y, and they have preserved one of the rooms as he would have seen it. I walked over there with Alicia Ostriker, Naomi, and Pamela Uschuk. These in-between conversations and connections are so rich.
This workshop was sponsored by the Institute for Policy Studies and was moderated by E. Ethelbert Miller. Ethelbert, who always moderates discussions beautifully, was joined by Marc Raskin, one of the founders of IPS and John Cavanaugh, a scholar there. This was a fantastic and layered discussion about the need for poetry in political discourse. We discussed the essential friendship between the scholar and the poet, the current administration's twisting of our language, and the poets' role in reclaiming it. Many people made good comments during this invigorating discussion.
After this, I met my Arkansas friends, Mendy and Path for lunch at Busboys. Then I picked up Naomi and we went up to Bell for the 5pm reading. This reading too, was brilliant. It started with winners of the Split This Rock Youth Poetry Contests. These young people were inspiring, funny, nervous, and good. Then the reading began with poet Grace Cavalieri, who read from a book of poems written in the voice of Mary Wollestonecraft. Then she read from a series of poems on Anna Nicole Smith. Yes, it was fascinating!
Stephen Kuusisto was next. Stephen is a blind poet whose writing is dense and precise and powerful. Over and over, I found myself saying to Naomi, "This guy is fantastic!" Joel Dias Porter was next. Joel is primarily a performance poet, and he read some beautiful poems, personal and rich. Then we heard from Ishle Yi Park, the poet laureate of Queens. She is a beautiful, young , Korean woman, who sang and read. Particularly gorgeous was a poem she wrote about Korean family picnics.
I had a nice and relaxing dinner at Bell with Naomi, Stephen Kuusisto, and a couple of new friends whose names are now escaping me. Stephen showed me the device he uses to read poetry at readings. It's a kind of "audio teleprompter." Fascinating! He also had some good political insights. It is those moments of conversation, between the official events, which are often so profound and beautiful.
The night's reading then included Brian Gilmore, who read funny, layered poems about New Orleans, his family, jazz. Semezhdin Mehmedinovic, who wrote "Sarajevo Blues" read next. He was a little hard to hear but his poems were sharp and loaded. I'm sorry I couldn't hear him better. Susan Tichy also read. She read a beautiful collage poem and a poem touching on her husband's Vietnam experience. Jimmy Santiago Baca then read a piece of fiction he is working on from the perspective of a Mexican-American man in a deportation camp. Finally, Patricia Smith read. She gave us a number of poems but most memorable to me was a beautiful series of short pictures of New Orleans. This was a moving poem, like a slide show of images and voices.
We loaded Naomi, Pamela, Mendy and Path into the Volvo and I dropped them at Busboys for the open mic. Mendy was hoping to perform. I was knocked out so I headed for home.
On to Day Three!
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