Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness
Poetry by and for the 99%!
March 22-25, 2012
Washington, DC
Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness invites poets, writers, activists, and dreamers to Washington, DC for four days of poetry, community building, and creative transformation. The festival features readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, parties, activism—opportunities to speak out for justice, build connection and community, and celebrate the many ways poetry can act as an agent for social change.
As people’s movements ignite here at home and throughout the world in response to economic inequality, political repression, and environmental degradation, the festival will consider the relationship of poets and poetry to power and to the challenges to power. We will also celebrate the life and work of poet-essayist-teacher-activist June Jordan on the 10th anniversary of her death.
Split This Rock calls poets to a greater role in public life and fosters a national network of socially engaged poets. Building the audience for poetry of provocation & witness from our home in the nation’s capital, we celebrate poetic diversity and the transformative power of the imagination.
We are the ones we have been waiting for. —June Jordan
Festival Registration Completely Sold Out!
Full registrations are sold out. Presenters may still register online through March 20 (otherwise, onsite at the festival). Thank you all! Check out the program & schedule to plan your festival experience.
See our Volunteer page and join our list to stay up-to-date on our ongoing programs and to find out how to help out with the festival!
Featured Poets
Split This Rock is excited to announce a spectacular lineup of featured poets for 2012. The festival will once again feature some of the most visionary and powerful voices of our time: environmental activists, youth organizers, Pulitzer Prize winners, slam champions, poets of all ethnicities, DC-area poets, an opera librettist, translators, editors and publishers, emerging poets and mentors to emerging poets. Split This Rock 2012 has it all.