Split This Rock to Launch The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 17, 2015
CONTACT: Sarah Browning, browning@splitthisrock.org, (202) 787-5210
Split This Rock to Launch The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database
Unique new resource of poems indexed by social issue to be unveiled at free event June 25
Washington, DC – Split This Rock will unveil The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database on Thursday, June 25, 7 pm, at Busboys and Poets, 625 Monroe Street, NE, in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington, DC. The event, which will include appetizers, readings of poems from the database by poets and activists, music, a silent auction to benefit Split This Rock, and a demonstration of the search features of The Quarry, is free and open to the public. Busboys and Poets is wheelchair accessible and located on the Metro Red Line.
The Quarry, which will go live at www.SplitThisRock.org on Wednesday, June 24, will be searchable by social issue, making it a unique new resource for activists, organizers, religious leaders, and others who are seeking to infuse their movements for change with the imaginative language of poetry. Like all of Split This Rock’s programs, The Quarry is designed to bring poetry fully to the center of public life.
It includes over 300 poems by a diverse array of contemporary poets, published by Split This Rock in its Poem of the Week series over the past six years. Other poems are contest winners and poems read at Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
“We’re incredibly excited about The Quarry, which will give these powerful and necessary poems a permanent home on our website,” said Split This Rock Executive Director Sarah Browning. “Anyone will now be able to find the perfect poem to share at a rally, vigil, meeting, worship service, or retreat – whether the issue is racial justice or LGBT rights or community building or ending the wars and building peace.”
About Split This Rock: Founded in 2008, Split This Rock calls poets to the center of public life and cultivates, teaches, and celebrates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes personal and social change. Core programs are a biennial national poetry festival, city-wide youth programming, contests, readings, workshops, campaigns for social change, and an online index of social justice poems.